David Jahns
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Matthew!
Knee deep in the trial. Yes, I’m finding that even with 11,000 records in my Sound FX catalog, it’s preforming quite well. Although, frustratingly, it would always crash on large imports, so I had to drag each CD/Folder of SFX in separately, which took quite a while.
I understand the idea of the catalog, but since I’m starting my demo with the standalone version, I thought I’d see what it was capable of as a single unit. So far, so good…
David Jahns
Joint Editorial
Portland, OR -
Thanks, Bryson. (I watched your CatDV demo on YouTube. nice!)
So, regarding this 3000 item “limit”…
OK – any huge catalog (like 50,000 SFX) is going to require the Enterprise Server version, right?
And its best to split large chunks into catalogs of 3000 or less items, right?
Next question – One of our other needs is for a searchable job elements archive. Our shop does roughly 100-150 jobs per year. Would it be recommended to do a separate catalog for each job?
Any limit to the number of catalogs the server can search across? Does performance breakdown with hundreds of catalogs?
David Jahns
Joint Editorial
Portland, OR -
Trying out CatDV myself, and find it odd that it has a 3000 record “limitation”. I know it’s not a hard limit, but if performance bogs down too much it might as well be. (I’m somewhat database savvy, and have experience with Filemaker Pro & FC Server – both of which easily handle 100,000 records or more. I understand the thumbnails are more taxing than text, etc…)
I’m hoping to use CatDV for a number of things. One of which is as a searchable Sound Effects library.
The Sound Ideas Catalog alone has 50,000 files, and we have a few other collections as well. Sound Ideas provides a searchable FileMaker Pro database, which is great, but it doesn’t link to the media files. In the old days, we’d search, print out a list of candidates, grab the actual Audio CDs, load them up and listen to them. Now, we at least have the entire library in 48K AIFFs on a server. What we’d really like is to search for “gunshot” and be able to instantly listen to all of the choices. Then either copy the files, or send them directly to the edit system. Cat DV seems perfect, right?
Not if it can only have 3000 records… What’s the solution? Break it into 20 separate catalogs? Very clunky, I would think – and it also means you’d have to get the Server version. BUT – audio files don’t have thumbnails, right? Any idea if it could handle 100,000 records if they’re only audio?
David Jahns
Joint Editorial
Portland, OR -
I think can shed a little light on this initial post…
(I’ve tried many different workflows with FCP & Red, XDCAM, P2, Canon 5D, – sometimes using L&T, sometimes using 3rd Party tools for the initial transcode, then importing the QTs into FCP.)
When using L&T, FCP does add additional metadata to the clip – it’s called a UUID (Universally Unique Identifier). Having this UUID tells FCP that this is a tapeless media source, and that it has been transcoded from some other original camera format to what you are now using for offline editing.
When capturing from tape, FCP adds the reel name & timecode info, of course, but does NOT add a UUID.
When you simply import a QT into the project, FCP treats this as if it were a master clip, (not a transcode for offline editing), even if it has a REEL assigned to it. It does NOT add the UUID to the clip.
When you try to recapture media for online, if there is a UUID with the clip, it will launch Log & Transfer – if not, it will launch Log & Capture (assuming it has a reel name).
It would certainly be nice if it gave you the choice of which tool to use, but alas, it does not.
Maybe in the next version of FCP? (How many times have I said over the years?? 🙂
David Jahns
Joint Editorial
Portland, OR -
I’m actually trying to just gather info here about how it all works with the new AMA. The first post here was just one possible scenario – but there are dozens more…
Sometimes we take over a project that started elsewhere in FCP, but our editor would prefer to work in Avid, etc… Some of our editors only know FCP – if a project was started in Avid using AMA Quicktimes, maybe they could import an EDL into FCP and work with the same media, etc…
I’m just trying to learn the tradeoffs between flexibility of AMA quicktime and stability & functionality of MXF media.
So far – render times appear equal, and our Octo-Core MacPros have had no problem playing ProRes, so it appears to be a reasonable option, but I’m reasonably sure the best practice would be to use MXF as your standard Avid workflow, and use AMA QTs when special circumstances arise.
Thanks for the tips, everyone!
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If you only have one dongle, then your best bet is to upgrade to MC5 and run the 30-day trial.
Once you upgrade to a full software license, your dongle will be “burned” and will no longer activate your old systems.
Once you get MC5 installed on all systems, the software license can be moved around pretty easily via de-activate/activate process – as long as you have internet connections on all systems. Of course, only one system can be activated at a time, just like with the dongle.
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Oops… “Operator Error” as they say…
I didn’t notice the Video Quality output settings were at green/yellow. Switch to green, NTSC 24p output looks great.
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Actually, YES I DID!! (But it’s quite unlikely to work for anyone else, I’m afraid, we had a very unique issue.)
I meant to write a follow up, but it slipped through the cracks.
I work in the 12 person Post Production Dept of an Ad Agency (with 400 other people), and we probably have 250 Mac systems throughout the building. Unbeknownst to us, our IT Dept had remotely installed “listening” software called JAMF that allowed them to remotely install upgrades & perform IT tasks – updating MS Office, etc… There was no application to be seen, only a folder in the Library / Frameworks folder of the boot drive.
I found this after re-installing a system from scratch – wipe the drive, fresh OS, etc… testing it out, and it worked perfectly. After IT installed MS Office, the sync issues returned! I was about to lose my mind!!! But we traced it down to the secret “remote install” software, not actually MS Office.
As soon as we removed the JAMF frameworks – the sync issues disappeared completely on ALL systems.
As you can imagine, we had a pretty serious “Keep your IT hands off our systems!” chat after that, and ever since, we have not had a single sync issue. Hurray!!!
If anyone needs more details about the JAMF software, just let me know.
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we’re using EditShare, which is a gig-E based system.
But the sync issues during digitizing happen even we’re completed disconnected from the network – just local storage, and SDI to the deck – both with house sync and on free run.
By the way… how do you quote someone else’s message in your posts?
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Thanks, Jeremy.
If this were one workstation, or a new user, those might be useful suggestions, but things have worked just fine for years – and nothing has really changed in our workflow/process – (except that I’ve noticed a few different versions of quicktime on different machines – damn iPhone users, updating their quicktime w/o authorization!)
I’ve double checked all of the workflow/settings – it’s not user error. Something has changed in our setup or OS’s, and it’s damnedest thing I’ve ever run across here…
I suppose we can try the mixdown as a workaround, but that doesn’t help with the digitizing, and our SAN is running just fine – plenty of bandwidth available. Even digitizing NTSC locally to a RAID doesn’t solve it, so it’s not a drive speed issue either…