[Kevin Duggan]

Hi John
The Worker….our automation software already does this for you 🙂
It does many other things beside.

Check it out on our site. Basically a faceless CATDV that can automate most of your tasks . Think watch folder … pick up analyse and publish your clips to the server automatically . Build automated workflows make proxies automatically, submit and pick up from Episode, make H.264 clips and ftp them to clients. etc etc

Kevin

[Kevin Duggan]

Hi John
All the suggestions seem spot on ….. The DSLR movie workflow has taken CANON by unawares. Your suggestions go along way to making it a professional workflow.

Kevin Duggan
Catdv

[Kevin Duggan]

HI Bruce
the server is the correct way to go with so many clips. It is important to remember that the catalog is just a virtual folder if you like. When you query the Server it will search across all catalogs and produce a “View” This is a set of results that match the search criteria. So if you have a field called EPISODE NUMBER and you search that field in your query it will return all the “hits” for say EP1. This could be EP1 for many productions but it will give you them all. It will be very quick because by choosing to query on that field you are using the power of an SQL databases indexing features. Now this may not be what you want so you have a couple of options. You could now use the interfaces GROUPING option. Click on the Group icon on the top toolbar. You can then select another FILTER criteria. One of these fields could be PRODUCTION NAME. The drop down will show you all of the PRODUCTION NAMES it knows about. Click on the PRODUCTION NAME you are interested in and it will FILTER the view to show you only those clips for that PRODUCTION . SO the filter is EPISODE > EPISODE NAME.
You could of course have specified this in the query to begin with. In the server version click on the magnifying glass icon.. the Query panel appears . There are two views simple and advanced. Advanced has all of the funky geek boolean stuff.. SImple allows you to match you Query window to the Logging Schema . So if you have created drop down lists in the Details panel they are mirrored here.. So from the drop downs without typing you can select your search criteria.. So it could be YEAR > SEASON > PRODUCTION NAME > EPISODE NO
or whatever your original Schema provides for .
Why am I explaining all of this . Well you can see that as long as a clip has metadata associated with it you do not need a catalog to hold it. ( pause for effect )
I tend to think of catalogs as collections of related clips , so they can provide context around the results of a search.. ie CATALOG could contain a days shoot .. if you want to see what was shot before or after a particular clip then ask the QUERY to return the catalog that the clip is contained in.. Its best to experiment. So a catalog is analogous to your folders containing your media and I see a lot of people filing their clips this way. A named folder containing media. CatDv will pick up this information and write it into its BIN field so you could Query the BIN field for name of the folder. ie MY-Shoot-June-10-2010 or whatever.
Its best you start to understand how the DATABASE works so you can simplify your workflows bearing in mind CATDV will “harvest” a lot of metadata when you bring it in.. Check out the OTHER PANEL to see how much is gotten for “free” This is format dependant . If you type stuff into your P2 camera for instance we get that and write it into the tables.
The most important tip I can give you is to be efficient you have to think GOOGLE… This is the best model for handling billions of bits of data . Once you have a tricky Query defined you can save it as a SMART FOLDER … ie PRODUCTION NAME = CSI MIAMI EPISODE NUMBER = EP1 and call it CSI-Miami-EP1 . Clicking on this in the tree will get you all of the clips for that productions episode one. The upside of this approach is you do not have to move media and it auto updates its results as more clips come in and our tagged..

Thats a lot to take in for the moment ..

Kevin Duggan
CATDV

[Kevin Duggan]

Hi jason
not sure of protocols on list but you can get pricing from your local CatDV VAR or contact Matt Stamos at JB&A distribution for your nearest local dealer.

Regarding Path based previews CaTDV is intelligent when it comes to these paths. They can be updated .. Update Media Location or use what is termed MEDIA EQUIVALENCE . What this does is it shortens the long path names which may include another drive to the last significant part this is why CATDV asks you for the original location as it uses this to update its preview paths. I know this is often confusing but what counts is the last part of the file path… as CATDV can substitute the first part . It will also keep looking through paths it know about until it get a right answer.

Hope this helps

Kevin Duggan
CatDv

[Kevin Duggan]

Hi Jason
you raise many good points about modern workflows that give us all immense benefits and also some headaches and conundrums. The answers typically flow from what I regard as the “deliverables” ie for what marker segment or segments is the final product intended. We are in a what has been termed a “good enough ” world. By this it is generally meant our choice of formats to shoot in is determined by the budget and the end use of the media. So is a RED shoot at 4.5 K the right approach to deliver a U-Tube movie? Well it can be done but the lighting package to shoot a cinema style product could easily exceed the clients total budget for shoot, and post. So is XDCAM HD overkill for this work?

Well the iron law of compression is that the better the source the better the compressed result , so maybe these high end cameras are a good choice. However as you know in the real world our choices of camera and format are dependant on the cameras we own, the type of shoot it is and what we are going to do with in post with it as well as the clients wishes and budget . And boy do we have choices now..and this is reflected in what you say about using XDCAM ,5D EX-1 ,P2 etc etc. So at present you opt for LOG and TRANSFER and in FCP this means typically PRORES. So we get the dilemma that this process generates new media which is often larger …for no gain in quality than the original. Also as you are well aware it poses the problem of which do I archive. It seems a no brainer that you archive the source until you realise that this is not the media that FCP is tracking. Now this is easily resolved if you build native workflows ie using Qtime extenders like CALIBRATED SOFTWARE or MXF4Mac as CATDV can play,track and create proxies from these mxf native codecs and with our ARCHIVE option can send these directly to a CACHE-A device. Typically the proxy is kept online and is fully editable and the high res purged off the drive or SAN . RESTORE at a later stage is either achieved by bringing the FCP timline of proxies back into CATDV and selecting these clips and right clicking the batch and selecting RESTORE which brings the high res clips back from TAPE. Following best practice the proxies and the high res have identical names and it is trivial in FCP to relink the proxy timeline to the newly restored High Res clips .

WIthout a LTO device your best practice would be going to any RAIDED device to backup your rushes.. Again CATDV can help you move files to another disk from within its interface. You note that CATDV cannot help you with the choice which is the ARCHIVE footage, this is your choice. We can also do some good things like mapping descriptions of shots into FCP clip names so you get man readable clip names inside FCP not the ” 123qwrt3i453lki.mxf ” camera generated ones without changing or destroying the original filenames that FCP tracks in its database.

Sadly with these types of questions I cannot give you definitive answers only qualified ones.
I am happy to offer further advice once you have determined in your own mind what is “good enough ” within your workflow but be aware that there may not be an “economic” , again a relative term , solution to all of your archiving needs though in the long term my vote goes to LTO , but it has an upfront cost which in these times of shrinking budgets can seem daunting. However you have to weigh this up against the cost of re-shooting and the relative intrinsic value of the subject matter of the footage.
In short the equation is something like Go with PRORES ..bigger files need more disk space or LTO tapes. Problem of one stage of removal from source media.

2. Get CALIBRATED or MXF4mac shoot edit natively . Smaller files , less disk space or LTO tapes I can ARCHIVE the original . Quicker workflow no waiting for LOG AND TRANSFER . Problems ;- need a Calibrated Mxf3mac licence for each machine and format

3. Some hybrid approach which smoothes the majority of you work with the understanding of the up`s and down`s of both.

CatDv can help you with all of them , workflows is what I do, however CATDV can`t make these decisions for you. 🙂

Hope this helps a little

Kevin Duggan
CatDv

[Kevin Duggan]

HI Vince
I believe that you are testing the standalone version of CATDV and yes for this product the position is exactly as you describe. However our Server versions are specifically tailored to give you the functionality that you want.

Kevin Duggan
CatDv

[Kevin Duggan]

HI John
it lights them all up ..but still plays “nicely”

Kevin Duggan
CatDv

[Kevin Duggan]

Hi Jeff
I would suggest you goto Applications>Utilities>java Prefernces> General Tab.. and drag the number 32 above the number 64 in both panels and re-boot . Catdv is a 32 bit app

hope this helps

Kevin Duggan
CatDv

[Kevin Duggan]

Hi Swami
no. it does not make any difference when migrating and it could help.you can actually bulk publish a large number of catalogs to the server version. The concept of a catalog still exists but it gets a little “blurred” due to the fact that a server query is global across all catalogs within a Production Group or Groups. I usually explain it as a type of folder , it can also give context to a single clip because the catalog defines it as belonging to a group of a certain type. You can choose to search such that the query will return the whole catalog of clips. This can be useful for instance if you want to see what happened before or after a specific event if other clips have been grouped into a catalog the search engine can bring them all back. In short it can be yet another way of defining metadata that is common for a large number of clips. Finally if you use CATDV on set or location you can email the “catalog” file back to the main facility to await the arrival of the media.

Kevin Duggan
CatDv

[Kevin Duggan]

Hi Geir

you can if you wish use the copy text button on the left of the interface and paste into the notes field.

Kevin Duggan
CatDv