Bryson Jones
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Joe, it can do all of these things and more.
Generally CatDV is installed by an integrator/dealer at first so that you get it up and running quickly without being frustrated. Mostly due to the fact that most video pro’s aren’t database administrators or DAM designers. However, you can certainly get it rolling by digging in and reading the manuals as well.
If you need a deeper demo, contact your local dealer and they can walk you through the specifics. Also, JB&A are the US distributors and they can get you a demo as well and answer some initial questions.
This is exactly what CatDV is made to do.
bryson
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If quicktime is bonking, that’s a tough on. What’s the media format and what storage are they coming off of? Is it a local drive or something off of the internet?
bryson
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Rolf, I think this is the .pkg thing I was talking about.
Helge, does the system take a “package” and give you the contents instead of the wrapped bundle? I was seeing that on some files and we had to .zip them to get them into the system.
Are you seeing the same thing?
bryson
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I’m able to play a 20 second clip, in full from a Panasonic HMC150 with Xuggle. Could it be the camera format?
Also note that all AVC, depending on your CPU will be pretty choppy in my experience. How long does it run before it locks?
bryson
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Hey there,
The workflow that I was laying out was assuming that we’d use the Worker Node to make the hi-res.
You can do it the way you are laying it out manually with the standalone client, but you have to do each file into it’s folder structure manually which can be time consuming, whereas the Worker Node just puts everything in an equivalent folder structure matching your original h.264 files on your online editing storage for you.
The crash can be most anything but try single files and see that they work to rule out codec or file corruption issues.
Hope this helps!
bryson
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I almost wanted to make this a separate post but it’s pertinent to this so I’ll drop it in here. I just
The Worker is a special app and a lot like Final Cut Pro and or a Web programming app, in that it does certain things “out of the box” and it also makes certain things, “possible.”
In theory, with a copy of FCP, you can make a feature film. “I” can’t, because I don’t edit worth a d%mn but… it’s possible. Without a NLE, it’s not really possible, or at least really hard.
We who work with this app system for a living are in a tough place here on the Cow. We have to cover what’s possible as well as what is simple to do out of the box. In most larger asset management systems, there is a team of folks installing and programming things so you only need the “hooks” as we call them to get you started and it can be built from there. With CatDV, due to it’s low cost of entry, we have folks who are mostly editors and post professionals setting up their systems. This is great but there gets to be a point where you may not have the skills, want to spend the time to develop the skills, or want to even deal with the deeper integrations.
If I wanted to make a film, I could spend the years to develop my editing chops, but I’d probably just hire a good editor. (or talk my talented editor wife into it. 😉 )
I just wanted to address this since often here we speak of pretty deep things that can be done but likely wouldn’t be taken on by a typical video shop without some outside programming help. We have to cover both since places like Turner and NASCAR and other big places have programmers in-house who’d take that XML or HTML and build a list out of it and be done. While being sensitive to the needs of a smaller shop that might never want to attack that on their own. Since we never know who is writing in, we have to offer both ideas.
There are thousands of things that you can do, out of the box with CatDV and it’s associated apps, but there are millions that are made possible by the programming hooks built into these apps. We have to address both sides.
Finally, I hate to get into sales here, but know that if you want something custom, your dealer, JB&A (Matt Stamos) and Squarebox can get you the help you need to set up anything we discuss here.
bryson
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We should wait to hear from Rolf on that one then. I think it used to update now that I think about it.
The command line interface section in the manual lays out the functions of the CLI pretty well but as with all automations, it assumes a bit of knowledge of command line and shell functions. A user can search for a clip by any metadata field and then it reports the metadata fields or you can specify a field to update. Once you have the values from a query, you can pass them on to another operation or file. It’s simple in operation but very powerful in use since you can tie other API’s and systems to CatDV in an automated fashion.
I’ve not spit out data directly to a file, other than simple echo operations and errors with the CLI, but we use exported XMLs to create lists in a web app we’re developing called the Reporting Module. It takes CatDV XML and spits out a running report of operations, or files, with metadata and a selection to show as much or as little history as you like. It’s probably a bit heavy duty for what you’re doing unless you need to manage several different reports but it’s an example of what you can do with the Worker Node and some outside code.
On the Worker Node, yes, it’s a lot of fun and amazingly deep for what appears to be such a simple app. It’s some of Squarebox’s best work in my opinion. There are sneaky things buried in there that still amaze me. To anyone looking to get started, begin with the basic stuff and then add to it and also remember that you can chain workflows together to make more complex ones. No need to do it all in one script. Look in the help section for the available variables and play with those and you’ll see that there are so many things you can do once you dig below the point and click.
Let’s see what Rolf says about the update/append of Worker indexes, if that works, it’ll be way easier for a simple report. You could spend a lot of time setting up a script and Rolf probably will have a simple answer for us. If not, then you can start looking into deeper work.
bryson
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I believe the idea is to create multiple indexes by using variables to name the page created. $T for time, for instance, so you’d have a list of pages by the times that the items were processed, or by filename etc.
One caveat, If you append without a “flushing” mechanism, you end up with a huge file that someone has to manually delete from if you leave it for a while.
If you want to update a list, it’s probably going to need to be done by reading XML’s or using the Worker v4 to append to the page as items are processed via the command line.
bryson
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Filemaker or FMP, as I’m gonna type it, takes a ton of formats. CatDV will give you tab separated text, which you can clean up manually and import in easily.
If you do this a lot, get yourself an XSLT written which can do them automatically and consistently. A good programmer/CatDV integrator should be able to get this worked out for you.
As to going the other way, the best is to create an XML or collection of XML’s out of FMP which CatDV will import as either clips with media (if the path is specified, or empty clips for you to link. Again, you may need some shell scripting on this, depending on the current state of FMP’s XML output features.
bryson
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I”m betting this is a support thing but if you can’t get it to work I’ve done some weird tricks with sending out ref movies and importing them for this sort of thing, (lame, but can get you by) but I’m hoping Support’s got an answer for you.
bryson
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