[John Vaudin]

Thank you for taking the time to test 6.9 beta and thank you for reposting this bug. It has been fixed and that fix will be incorporated into the next release.
– John

[John Vaudin]

That is odd. What version of the server are you using? Might be worth raising a support ticket at support@squarebox.com and we’ll take a closer look.

There aren’t any time-out settings, but generally if you are seeing time-outs it’s because the proxies are not encoded as Fast Start (QuickTime) or Streamable (MP4). This means the browser will be loading up the entire movie before it starts to play. With Fast Start/Streamable movies the browser can start playing as soon as it gets the first frame, so you should never see time-outs.

[John Vaudin]

The good news is that it can in theory be made to work using an Alternative URL for the proxy path mapping. The bad news is that currently there are some limitations. To give you a little background, the original intention of the alternative URL feature was that you might want to use something like Apache to serve the proxies from your server, as opposed to using the built-in CatDV Web Server. The Apache server could even be running on a separate machine but, crucially, the assumption was that it was still serving the same files that would be visible to both CatDV Server and Apache.

Because of that there is an assumption that the file part of the mapping will resolve correctly. That is how the server knows that that rule is the one to apply. Only once it has found a matching rule will it substitute the alternative URL.

Clearly your scenario is somewhat different, in that your wanting to serve the proxies from a completely separate server with a completely separate set of files. So, while this is possible, I’m afraid that currently you’d need to have another copy of the proxies on the CatDV Server, otherwise the mapping rules won’t get applied.

Also the HTTP proxies must have a .mp4 extension.

We will be looking to improve this in future versions.

[John Vaudin]

The full-screen feature wasn’t actually a feature of the Web Client itself, it was a built-in feature of the browser’s media player on the Mac. The new Web Client has its own timeline, so hides the built-in one, and so the full-screen feature is not longer accessible. We will look into adding the feature back in.

The delete button cannot currently be hidden. Again we’ll think about adding that as a feature.

Thanks for the feedback.

[John Vaudin]

Yes. Once you purchase the software just enter the license key into the software you already have installed and everything else will remain exactly as it is.

[John Vaudin]

Our primary motivation for introducing the built-in database (based, as you say, on H2) was to simplify installation and set-up, since it’s all built in to CatDV Server itself there is nothing additional to download or install. It would be particularly suitable for people just getting started with CatDV.

However, it has to be said, that we have been very impressed by the performance of H2. It generally holds its own very well against MySQL and in many cases out-performs it.

The main advantage, at this point, of MySQL is that it more mature command line support, so it is easier to do things like set up automated backups and there is more accumulated wisdom floating about on the interwebs.

Another contender that is worth considering is MariaDB, which is a fork of MySQL but without the problematic Oracle associations. We are in the process of evaluating it, and we are seriously thinking about switching over to using it. You may notice that the MySQL driver that ships with newer versions of CatDV is actually the MariaDB one, so the process is already under-way to some extent. I understand that Google, the largest user of MySQL, has switched over to MariaDB too.

One thing I should say is that it is very easy to switch from any of the supported databases to any other. There is support built-in to the CatDV Control Panel to migrate data from one database to another, so it’s fine to start out using H2, and then if you feel you want to move to MySQL or MariaDB (or SQL Server for that matter) just migrate the data and away you go.

[John Vaudin]

Sadly – it is a common confusion – and it something we’re looking at making clearer in the near future, but the short answer is that, assuming the path mappings are all in place it should work fine.

One of the things that often catches people out, setting up the path mappings, is that the ‘original folder’ refers to the folder where the media was when it was ingested into CatDV, and will be the value stored in the database and displayed in CatDV as ‘Media Path’. This path may well not be a valid path on the Worker machine – so you need a mapping that goes from the media path stored in the database to the real path on the worker machine.

Also, if you ingest on both Macs and PCs then you may need to double up on the mappings – i.e. from Mac path to Worker machine path and from Windows path to Worker Machine path.

Hope that helps. To be any more specific we’d need to know what you’re media paths are, and what your rules are.

[John Vaudin]

Yes – CatDV will assemble the separate MXF track files into a single multi-track meta-clip based on UMID and then send that as a single clip to Avid via AAF. But, like Avid, it does use the UMIDs to associate the files, so it won’t solve your problem if the UMIDs are wrong.

[John Vaudin]

I’m sceptical to be honest. Generally, with multi-file MXF formats, all the files in the asset need to have the same UMID. If you’ve generated separate media files, with different UMIDs, I doubt there is any way to convince Avid they are one asset. But I haven’t actually tried it. You can always download the trial copy of Pegasus and give it a go.

[John Vaudin]

If you are sure there is no way to route traffic from internal users via the public IP address then that probably is the only option. I would suggest putting the database server separately inside the firewall and then opening just the MySQL port for just the CatDV Server machine. The only port CatDV Server needs open is 1099 for the RMI and 80 if you are using the Web Client or web services. Of course, the web server aspect doesn’t suffer the same problems as the Java RMI services, so you can host those in a separate Tomcat installation inside you firewall if that’s relevant.

Other than that it’s just a question of following usual best-practice. Turn off everything you don’t need and close down every port that you aren’t specifically using and make sure it’s up to date.