Rolf Howarth
Forum Replies Created
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But it does do that already! If you create a subclip it inherits user logging fields from the parent clip.
Or are you referring specifically to fields selected in the new subclip dialog? If so then I think you’re right and they default to blank if you don’t type anything in, whereas they could pick up the parent value. We’ll take a look at that.
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We might revisit the way these metadata fields are stored and displayed in future but that’s unlikely to be a short term solution.
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Normally the “read only” metadata fields are used to store metadata that is read from the file, such as EXIF or IPTC or ID3 or XMP metadata. When you reanalyse media they are therefore replaced, because analysing media is how they get set in the first place.
If you’re using these fields to store logging data (which you will be if you use the FCS migration tool, because it’s only these fields that support arbitrary metadata keys) then you need to check the “Allow editing of ‘read-only’ metadata” option in Preferences to tell CatDV not to overwrite them.
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Which feature is that, backing up the same file to multiple tapes, or directly mounting external volumes, or something else? We probably don’t support it but you’re probably best checking with JB&A or Cache-A.
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I’m not saying this is what you did but lets say you have a 10-second clip, which I’ll show as “0123456789”, and have a 3-second subclip in the middle, say “567”. The order in which you build your tape-based proxies is important.
Let’s say you build a proxy movie for that 3-second subclip first, and subsequently build a proxy for the original 10-second clip. To save on the amount of rendering that’s needed you’d end up with 3 files “01234”, “567” and “89” which get stitched together on the fly to form the 10-second cip.
All very clever no doubt but it can get a little confusing, so sticking to path-based proxies is a lot simpler on the whole!
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If it says Composite then it means there isn’t a single proxy file for that clip but it’s a composite of parts of several files. That’s fine within CatDV, it will automatically assemble and play the proxy correctly. It’s only a problem if you want a single proxy file for that clip for some reason, in which case you can do so by converting the tape-based to path-based proxies using the recipe I posted previously.
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How bizarre. You’re absolutely right, audio only files in the protected player stopped working between 9.0.1 and 9.0.2. We’ll try and work out what was changed and fix it for the next version. Thank you for such a clear and precise problem report!
As to whether the protected player is recommended, it’s not on by default as not everyone needs it, but if you do experience crashes for whatever reason then it will usually sort them out.
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If there is a single tape-based proxy file that exactly matches the clip it will show up in the Proxy File field, but that might not always be the case. Plus the clip doesn’t have an original media path, so there’s nothing to link the clip to the weird tape-based proxy file name thing (eg. 2997,25,436,64x.mov).
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“Composite” means the proxy consists of multiple files and so won’t go over to Final Cut. Or rather, the clip will go over but won’t be linked to the proxy, so you’d have to recapture it or otherwise manually patch things up.
Yes, the process as described will create new “original” media. It depends on what you’re trying to do and whether or how you’re going to use the fullres version whether that’s a problem and what to do about it. You could simply delete (or move) the tape-based proxies, or disable tape-based proxies in your preferences, then they won’t appear on the Proxy tab. If you want your exported proxies to appear on the Proxy tab, export them to one location called “Original” then rename that directory to “Proxy” and set up a path-based proxy mapping from “Original” to “Proxy”.
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One of CatDV’s cleverest but least well understood features is that it will automatically assemble tape-based proxies to create a playable clip, given the Tape name and In and Out timecode. This includes assembling portions of multiple files if necessary. When it sends clips over to FCP it only includes a link to a single file, so if some clips go over and others don’t it’s possible those that don’t don’t have a single proxy file behind them. Look at the Proxy File field in the Other tab and see if that has a filename or says “Composite”.
Here is a recipe we recently sent someone on how to convert tape-based to path-based proxies. In their case it was for use in the web client but it may still be helpful:
1. Download CatDV Pro 9.0.5 from https://www.squarebox.co.uk/download/CatDVPro9.0.5.dmg or https://www.squarebox.co.uk/download/CatDVPro9.0.5.exe (we’ve just fixed an issue where the duration of exported movies was rounded down and so could prevent the Attach Media command from working).
2. Create a folder called something like /Volumes/CatDV/Exported Tape Proxies
3. Open the catalog for one tape that you want to convert and make sure all the clip names are unique. Select all the clips and do File > Export As > Movie. Choose “Export proxy movies (no recompression)” and “Flatten (make self contained)”. On the options tab, make sure “Separate movie for each clip” and “Whole clip (in/out)” are selected, they should be by default. “Exact clip names” should be unchecked. If the tape name is Tape 1234, export all the clips to /Volumes/CatDV/Exported Tape Proxies/Tape 1234.
4. With the clips you exported still selected, choose Media > Attach Media. (You will reimport the files you just exported and give the clips new source media references that point to these files so they now have a Media Path stored against them, rather than just the tape name and timecode.), It will say they already have media descriptions, choose Replace. It will then ask if you want to treat them as subclips, choose No. In the file chooser, choose the file you just exported, eg. /CatDV/Exported Tape Proxies/Tape 1234/Clip 1.mov. Hopefully it should say the attach media command succeeded.
5. Publish your changes to the server. (I would suggest trying this process with one catalog first, and keeping a locally saved backup of the catalog just in case).
6. In the server control panel, open the server config page. Under proxy paths, click + and add a mapping with original full-res root and low-res proxy root both set to /Volumes/CatDV/Exported Tape Proxies. (Actually, original root should be set to the the path as seen by the machine on which you did the export, eg. a Mac, and the low-res proxy root dir should be set to the path as seen by the Tomcat web server, which may be different, eg. Windows)
7. Stop and restart the Tomcat web interface after making config changes.
8. Go to the Web Client and open up the catalog you just modified. The clips should now have playable media (triangular play icon over the thumbnail).
9. If you have problems, click on the blue CatDV logo and check the Media Map, Original Root and Proxy Root fields in the about box. Look at the Media tab for the clip and check the Media Path field.