Bryson Jones
Forum Replies Created
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By size do you mean number of clips or total size of all media?
Clip count is viewable in the Browse Database window but to my knowledge total file size is not available. I’m sure support will weigh in here.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Nice work, and thanks for posting your findings to the community.
We’ve not done any Avid workflow stuff in the client in a while. Nice to see the tape name stuff is still live and available.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Alex, not sure, I’m asking one of our techs about this as I don’t do many nuts and bolts installs these days.
Not knowing your network or topology, it’s hard to speak to something that’s likely network related. Are you sure no ports are blocked on your internal network? The CatDV Pro client and Web Client (which the premiere panel is related to) use different ports so that is the most likely explanation (flying blind here.) Check the CatDV Control Panel Sertup Wizard and confirm that your Web Server is running on port 8080.
If it is, you can enter your server address as – server-ip:8080 and see if it connects. (Ex. 192.1.1.34:8080 )
I’d call your integrator, they should know your local network well. Barring that, buzz SBS support and open a ticket for this one.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Hey guys, we recently did this webinar on the XenData workflow with CatDV.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Sorry for the delay in response.
We’ve done many archive migrations. Including a Cache-A migration of over 150 tapes for a customer.
We’re currently starting a migration operation for a client who has over 400TB of tapes as I type. (Not a Cache-A rig but one from a company that was purchased and so has changed significantly.)
The good news? That LTO5 will still work (for the next year or so at least) and when you want to move that data over, it’ll fit on a mere 25 LTO-6 tapes. If you go to LTO7, you can use even fewer. A manual restore and archive mostly just requires patience and persistence.
Also, the new archive operations can be done mostly automatically, in the background once you set them up, unless you choose another archive system that does not allow archive operations to be automated.
I’ve discussed with Xendata and Square Box the need for a plan for smaller one-user systems and believe that they will be working with resellers to develop and document this so some help is on the way.
North Shore is currently focused on assisting a few larger organizations with a more automated solution, although that will surely spin off some good info for the “lone gunmen” as I call the super creative and resourceful folks who manage an archive and CatDV system by themselves. (I, more than most, know how hard this task is.)
In the end, for larger organizations, this points out the need for a long term plan as your archive might outlive the companies that build the archive systems. An effective “pack up and go” strategy as well as a plan for drive upgrades should be part of anyone’s plan who is currently purchasing an archive system.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Pierre, if that’s unchecked, I believe that the system shouldn’t import an asset more than once per catalog.
Can someone at SBS pipe up here and let us know? What determines the rules for file imports? This was recently a problem for a client of ours but that setting fixed it there.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Hi there,
As was mentioned XenData provides a product that does indeed use a “cache” to archive files in its standard workflow. Also, there is middleware to connect a CatDV Server system to a XenData system. (Written by us at North Shore actually, so I know a bit about it.) 😉
We recommend you take a look at that option as it’s powerful and a great solution.
Note that there is also a XenData plugin available from QLS. That has been available for a couple of years. The North Shore middleware was just released at NAB 2016 so be clear about which version you are evaluating and being presented.
However, back to the point. I would like to address a significant change in strategy that I personally have been advocating for for several years. And that the Cache-A EOL/Upgrade is now forcing. This may have an impact on small single-user CatDV systems so I wanted to address it asap.
The Cache-A “plugin” for CatDV allowed a single CatDV client system to push assets to a Cache-A archive device. While this was awesome for small systems/users, it had several problems that were difficult to overcome and imposed a workflow that was revolutionary, 8 or 9 years ago, but is rather creaky today. Full disclosure, I love Cache-A, the old and new owners, and I was even involved in connecting Square Box and Cache-A back when they first dev’d the solution. However, times change… as we now see.
The idea of one client machine pushing to the archive means that you were tying up that client machine with a file copy. Also it means that to restore, a client machine was involved (and tied up for the time that that action required.) This is a problem in a lot of modern post workflows. It also meant that the speed of the operation was dependent on the connection of that system to both the archive and storage systems.
Several years ago we (and Square Box but I can only speak for North Shore here) started working to connect more archive systems to CatDV and advocated for the use of Worker Node systems to perform these actions as automations. The user selects the assets to archive, sends the job instruction and then the Worker Node and Archive system perform the file operations, thus freeing the user’s CatDV system to do other work while this runs. This also allows a user on a web client to archive assets that they may not even have a mount for, and allows a user on a slower network (1Gb ethernet?) to start a job that can be performed by a Worker Node on a 4, 8 or 10Gb connection to the storage device. You can see the advantages here.
Our XenData plugin follows this model, where the CatDV user is merely sending the instructions and our middleware and XenData are pulling the files to the archive as opposed to a user having to copy them to a network cache (and wait and be limited by network speed.) So in effect, while XenData is functionally similar to a Cache-A (but far more advanced as far as workflow and capabilities,) when it is used in an automated CatDV system, it functions more like a true enterprise archive system (which it is) as opposed to the more user-centric CatDV to Cache-A plugin workflow.
Contact a reseller or XenData for more info on the structural differences in these methods. I just wanted to point out that changing from Cache-A to XenData with an automated connection to CatDV is more than simply adding a new Archive system and single piece of software. It is in-fact, a move to a far more robust and automated archive methodology.
Hope this helps. One of the best things about CatDV is how diverse their partner collection is. I’m sure you’ll find a great solution.
Has anyone else moved from Cache-A to another archive system? Pipe up.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Not sure what would cause you to not be able to delete an asset there. Maybe the tech guys can look that over.
There is one setting that I’d like to call out. I consider it the most important (and potentially the most problematic) setting in CatDV Pro.
In Preferences>Import there is a setting near the bottom of the list that says “Combine duplicates (same In & Out values.)
(Here’s a link to an image of that setting https://kb.northshoreautomation.com/catdv-portal/nsa-catdv-faq#TOC-Q:-How-do-I-prevent-getting-duplicate-clips-in-CatDV-Pro-)
I recommend that you always leave this checked (unless for some reason that I could not understand, you need duplicates of an asset in a catalog, but hey, what do I know? It’s your workflow!)
This makes the system ignore an asset that is already in the catalog. The problem that this prevents is if you are ingesting clips and then walk away or get distracted and forget if you’ve ingested a particular file or folder. If this is checked, CatDV will simply ignore the assets that are already there. If it is unchecked, CatDV will ADD THE ASSETS A SECOND TIME (Sorry to shout, but it makes me tense even typing that.)
Again, the thing that makes CatDV great is that you can do most anything you want with it. However, if you have a situation such as when an archive system is connected to CatDV and that system will fail a job that was previously submitted, you can see the issue.
Sorry to take this off track but that setting might be the thing that caused you to have duplicates in the first place.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Lee, if I’m correct audition is not actually writing that metadata into the file wrapper, but just bringing it in from CDDB or a similar service. iTunes also is linked to CDDB so it will do the same.
CatDV might not have anything to extract in that case. I’d test with some other apps that don’t use CDDB or maybe even “get info” in your OS to see if you can see the data.
Also, posting a sample file for testing would be great so we could see if there’s data in the wrapper. Let us know what you find please.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Dude, thank you for this!
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com