[Jeff Schaap]

Hey Lee,

We’d love to have their contact info.

Are you able to use the CatDV / Cache-A plugin to write and recall footage from LTO? Can you give us an idea of how that happens in your workflow?

Also, what versions of CatDV and Cache-A are you on?

Jeff

[Jeff Schaap]

Hey Rolf,

Can WorkerNode run conversions on NEF and other raw formats? Also, is it able to embed metadata into photos?

Thanks,
Jeff Schaap

[Jeff Schaap]

I agree with the evaluation that it’s not perfect but is the best boat afoat. We are still trying to get our CatDV / Cache-A backup to work properly.

Brad, I’d be happy to talk to you more about it. I sent you a friend invite here on Cow.

[Jeff Schaap]

I can tell you what we’ve run into… but I don’t know if it is your problem for sure. I see that the “movie” and “proxy” tabs are active in your screenshot so I am assuming that the clips you are logging have proxies.

Could it be that your clips that your original clips won’t play in the “regular” browser? I ask because we have to generate proxies for our .MTS (AVCHD) files because they won’t play in CatDV. When we do, the PROXIES will play in the regular viewer but the originals (under the “movie” tab) will not. The problem is that Verbatim Logger ALWAYS plays the original file and not the proxy… (something they need to fix). So if you have original files that don’t play in the regular viewer you have a problem when you try to use Verbatim Logger even if you have proxies generated.

I’ve linked my catalog entries to my proxies before just so I could log the clips and then switched it back when I was done. That’s one way to skin the cat if this is the problem you are actually facing.

Jeff Schaap

[Jeff Schaap]

Will do!

[Jeff Schaap]

This sounds EXACTLY like our situation about 2 years ago. Three editors, 25 external drives… We went with CatDV. We’ve been evolving our edit / metadata / archive / cloud workflow for about 2 years with CatDV as the asset management component. Out of curiosity what hardware are you going to use for archival?

Haven’t heard of Phoenix…

[Jeff Schaap]

Hey Bryson,

Thanks for the info. I did come across your company and your product, Approval Q, when we were in the research phase of looking for a cloud solution. However, in the end equation, we decided on a solution that we didn’t have to manage ourselves. The appeal of Fordela, for us, was the fact that it is managed out-of-house.

I’d love to see your demo. when you have it done though. Sounds like a great product. If you helped develop it I am sure it’s quality.

Thanks,
Jeff Schaap

[Jeff Schaap]

Hello All,

I have the results from our attempts to do multiple write sessions to the same tape using just the Cache-A interface. Here’s what happened:

1) We copied a few files to the staging folder and then dropped them into the vtape. Ejected the tape, clearing the vtape and then re-insterted the tape. Wrote two more sessions (3 total) repeating this procedure of write, eject, erase vtape, reinsert tape.

2) We called for a restore all file from the tape to the vtape. Cache-A went into a pending status and never did anything. Eventually we had to restart the Cache-A.

3) After a restart the Cache-A said the vtape and and tape were not a match. It only offered three options and selected “eject the tape.” Then we re-inserted the tape and called for a restore of all files and they all came back without error.

So, Rolf, with some caveats, it does appear that the system can recall files from a multiple session write without issue. So I am left to wonder why this isn’t working when we do it with CatDV. Have any thoughts on it?

Thanks,
Jeff

[Jeff Schaap]

[Rolf Howarth] “Normally adding individual files returns very quickly, so there’s a timeout of 5sec”

So, if there is small delay on the transmission of each file then it wouldn’t be abnormal for it to take five or more minutes to transmit 650 “file restore requests” right? We thought maybe something was wrong when we were getting such long pauses. It would be great to have a progress bar or something to show that it’s working.

Can you say when the next version will be available?

Thanks for your help,
Jeff

[Jeff Schaap]

Hey All,

We did more testing this past week. Rolf, we do seem plagued by the time out problem you mentioned. Here’s what we did:

1) We wrote 650 files, about a terabyte’s worth, to LTO through CatDV without any issue.

2) We ejected the tape and deleted the vtape then reinserted it. We called for a restore of all 650 files. We got a time out error (after about 2 minutes). We tried to restore one file and that came back fine. Left for the weekend.

3) Monday, we call for a restore of the 650 files. After about a ten minute pause it took off with the restore without issue. However, it only restored 251 of the 650 files and CatDV said it was “unable to restore” the rest. They were also not on the vtape.

4) We call for another restore. It skips the ones it already has done and recalls the rest from tape without issue. So it works, sorta.

There seems to be some sort of issue with CatDV timing out when there is a large amount of files to be restored. Rolf, what exactly is happening at this stage that is causing the system to pause so long? Is it building and transmitting a list of files to restore to the Cache-A?

We are performing the multiple write to the same tape tests right now (without using CatDV) and we’ll let you know what happens there.

Jeff