[Rolf Howarth]

[Peter Furseth] “The clips where dragged in, but because they are AVCHD files CatDv doesn’t get any metadata from them. Not until the Proxy is imported. So the duration according to CatDV is half of what the file really is. “

I’m not sure I quite follow – was the clip in CatDV created by importing the AVCHD .mts file or by importing a proxy? If the proxy, what format is the proxy in and how did you create it?

If you import an .mts file, CatDV should be able to scan the file and extract metadata, including the correct duration (though it won’t be able to play it natively unless you have Xuggle installed or create a proxy).

[Rolf Howarth]

I have no idea offhand what would be causing that but just to clarify, do you mean CatDV is playing EXACTLY half the file down to the nearest frame, or simply that it’s playing some of the file but stopping before the end?

How was the clip originally imported into CatDV? Is the duration that’s shown for the clip correct (and if you play the proxy the time cursor stops half way throught before it gets to the Out point) or is the out point short?

[Rolf Howarth]

Thanks for the log file. I think we found the cause of the problem. The movie file doesn’t have a timecode track, but you’ve got the “Default to time-of-day timecode” option on (Import section of Preferences). That means the clip has a start timecode of 13:14:58;00 but the scene detection code doesn’t see that and is creating subclips that start at 0:00:00;00, so they end up lying outside the master clip they refer to and so aren’t playable. It’s a bug, but as a workaround either turn off that option or ensure the clips have a timecode track before you do the scene detection.

-Rolf

[Rolf Howarth]

Not quite 🙂

The Record Date on the Summary tab is actually the date of recording, or rather the camera clock date, if it was set properly and is available in the file you imported. (Many formats, including DV, P2, XDCAM, Exif stlls etc. embed the camera date, and CatDV will try to extract that and populate the Record Date field, but of course if you transcode or rewrap the raw footage before importing into CatDV that information is likely to have been lost.). I think we were planning to change the field name to Camera Clock to make this clearer but I don’t think we got round to doing that yet.

If that field is filled in I don’t know why you can’t search on it. If you do an advanced query you can select Record Date (RD1) from the drop down and then search between two dates, within so many hours of a particular date and time, and so on. You can also search on the Date field (DT1) which is set to either the record date or the file modification date if no record date is set.

[Rolf Howarth]

The Out point being greyed out in a list view is nothing to worry about. That just tells you that you have contiguous clips (out point of one clip matches the in point of the next), so that’s a good thing.

I’m not sure what would be causing your problems but it’s possible the warning may have something to do with that. Please provide more details to support@squarebox.co.uk so we can investigate, eg. screen shots, copies of the CatDV Error Log (available via the help menu) and/or the catalog file, etc.

[Rolf Howarth]

The Movie and Proxy tabs will be greyed out if it can’t find the file (perhaps the media search path is wrong or a volume isn’t mounted) or it got an error when it tried to play it. If you hit the toolbar Play button it will try again though, and display an error message if there is an error. Also, the log file (accessible from the Help menu) may provide further information.

[Rolf Howarth]

Yes, we just whatever QuickTime codecs that are installed on that machine. It might be enough to install FCP Studio even if you don’t register it but I haven’t tried it, so I don’t know if that works or is sanctioned by Apple.

[Rolf Howarth]

Yes that’s correct, and if you backup first then you can always go back if necessary.

Although server releases are only guaranteed to work with the client version they’re designed for and usually one either side, in practice in most cases any client will work with pretty much any server, and even if it doesn’t fully work it should degrade gracefully so some features aren’t available but you can still access basic clip and catalog information. We can also provide an older copy of the server on request if you need it by the way.

[Rolf Howarth]

The problem is it might complicate the user interface… are you selecting clips or markers or a mix of both? The good news is there’s probably another way to highlight the results: use the clip summary toolbar button or HTML summary tab. This lists all your main metadata fields and event markers for the current clip and highlights the current search term wherever it occurs in the text.

[Rolf Howarth]

Thanks for the bug report, we’ll make sure we fix that for the next version.