New features in CatDV 3 and earlier
- Drag and drop of files into main window, and copying thumbnail images to the system clipboard
- New Create Real-Time Sequence command to create an EDL based on time of day record date, simplifying the synching of multi-camera shoots (Professional Edition only)
- Compatibility with Final Cut Pro's OfflineRT codec (Professional Edition only)
- New Timecode Calculator command.
- Changes made in the clip details window are applied immediately without needing to press a 'Save' button. The detail table and the rest of the window are always kept in synch now.
- Improved handling of media file formats other than DV. Improved reporting of metadata indicating the media file format (eg. Exif exposure details, new Importer column, changes to the Format column).
- Various new columns: Date, Aspect Ratio, Audio Rate, Frame Size, Frame Rate, Importer, Name or Tape, Size or Length. Some of these show existing information in a different form and are useful when grouping, or when a concise display of different types of clip in a grid view is desired.
- The main window now supports two levels of grouping.
- Multi line text shows more of your logging notes in wide list views (eg. 'Full' view).
- Values for picklists such as Tape, Bin and user defined grouping fields are remembered across catalogs. Allow them to be selected from drop down lists in list views and within the details table of the clip details dialog.
- New buttons in the clip details dialog to split a clip at the given cursor point, to review the transition from one clip to another, and to merge two clips together if they were split incorrectly.
- The Rec. Date field is now editable.
- Export as FCP batch list now substracts one from Out points and honours the base clips on selection flag. (Professional Edition only)
- Scan For New Files now searches back to a common root directory and finds all new files anywhere in that tree (if the include sub-directories flag is set).
- New Merge menu command merges two or more selected clips into one. New commands to Clear (delete) and Duplicate selected clips.
- Keyboard shortcuts now work in the clip details dialog, eg. control-up or down to step through the catalog, I and O to mark in and out points, JKL jog shuttle keys (Professional Edition only), etc.
- New command in Order By menu to Reverse the current clip order.
- New Page Setup command.
- New Print Selected Images command.
- New Preferences option to set a custom title on printouts.
- New Source Media Summary View
- New menu commands to simplify marking selected clips as good or not.
- New option when Exporting Movies to disable square pixel aspect ratio correction.
- Improvements to slide show, eg. speed is configurable in Preferences, new option whether to autodouble small images, option to fade between slides (Mac only), the selection in the main window is updated to your location in the slide show, etc.
- New menu command to Attach Media to a clip which hasn't previously had media (as opposed to Update Media Location, which is used when an existing media file has been moved).
- New command to Move Media Files. This will also update the Bin if the bin is currently showing the parent directory. Conversely, editing the Bin name will ask if you want to move the media file.
- Improvements to Live Capture previews generation: new Preferences options to select JPEG preview quality and to control compensation for dropped frames.
- Sorting on the Poster field sorts clips according to overall thumbnail brightness. (If you have several copies of the same image at different resolutions this function will bring all the related images together.)
- Automatically remember the last selected window size and view and use that for new windows.
- Timecodes can now be entered without a colon.
- Tool tips displaying basic details of a clip when viewing catalogs in a thumbnail only grid view.
- Correctly extract the date recorded by JVC DV camcorders.
- Numerous cosmetic improvements, such as reordering some menu and toolbar commands to make them more obvious, especially the Media and Tools menus, displaying a Mac OS X 'needs save' indicator, making it clearer which column header a table is being sorted on, and making it clearer which cell in a table has keyboard focus.
- The Help menu now has links to the CatDV web site, to display the License Agreement and Release Notes, and shortcuts to specific help pages.
- Improved stability in low memory situations (by suppressing display of thumbnails).
- Countless other bug fixes and 'under the hood' improvements.
There are now two different editions of the CatDV client application, the Standard Edition and Professional Edition, each with different feature sets. Unless otherwise noted, the changes above are applicable to both editions of the application. Various additional improvements are specific to the Professional Edition only:
- The Professional Edition can be used as a client to the optional CatDV Workgroup Server to provide access to major new workgroup features.
- Other features specific to the Professional Edition are detailed here, including named filters, regular expressions, timezone adjustments, additional importers and exporters, and customisable preview settings.
- New columns specific to the Professional Edition include GMT Date, Clock Adjustment, Location Timezone, and Aux T/C.
- Added online help.
- New Bulk Edit command
- New Browse Catalogs command
- More flexible view configuration: ability to display small clip status icon within thumbnail; new 'text below thumbnail' view type; ability to configure widths of columns as well as their order.
- New Export As Still(s) command (full resolution or limited size suitable for emailing, archived as a zip file).
- Export Movie command allows export as AVI and other formats
- New Metadata column displays any QuickTime metadata that may be present in the media (such as copyright notices in movies, ID3 artist and album tags in MP3 tracks, or Exif exposure data in digital camera JPEG and TIFF files).
- Printing improvements (fully takes into account current view settings)
- Rotate thumbnails to match orientation of the image.
- Re-written movie importer to cope with and accurately report timecode discontinuities and incorrect movie lengths
- Ability to mark clips as hidden
- Improvements to the clip details dialog: the window is now resizable, provides immediate access to the User 1 to User 3 fields, and double clicking a value in the details table pops up a window to show long fields.
- Sorting columns now applies a numeric order (so "Clip 10" comes after "Clip 9" rather than before "Clip 2").
- Catalogs now store when they were created and last modified and by whom and have a catalog description field.
- Incorporated memory usage display within new Catalog Details command.
- New Detect Scenes command allowing movies to be imported first and then analysed and split into scenes later.
- New Make Clip Order Permanent command to rearrange clips in a catalog according to the current display order.
- Ability to move media files by editing the Path field.
- Added New Log Entry command.
- File choosers remember the last selected directory of each type.
- Other cosmetic and performance fixes (abbreviated column labels so they fit; moved the Preferences menu item to where it belongs under OS X; improved speed of grid view; clicking outside a selection now drops the selection; automatically select clips that have been added to catalog; reduced memory footprint of thumbnails; etc.)
- Improvements to clip details dialog, with a new toolbar and Preview tab panel, and improved navigation to other clips.
- Improved support for non-DV media formats (still images, MPEG, audio files, etc.)
- New media dialog to present movies, including full screen display. CatDV handles non-square pixels and both 4:3 and 16:9 DV movies are shown at the correct aspect ratio.
- New slide show mode (and related functionality, eg. randomizing clip order, rotating stills).
- Generation and display of low resolution preview movies (with choice of size and quality)
- Choice of thumbnail sizes; ability to rebuild thumbnails; ability to select new poster frame from Movie tab of details dialog; new Preferences option to specify midpoint rather than first frame as default poster.
- Improved file management (renaming or deleting a clip gives you option to do the same to the media file; new command to update media file location).
- New properties including "Good", "Status code", "Date", "Month", "Orientation", "QT Tracks", "Folder" and "Data rate".
- Much improved search and filter dialogs.
- Enhanced Export as movie(s) command, adding the ability to convert movies using a different codec and to add a date/time text track. There is also an explicit Consolidate footage command now for creating flattened movies from each clip.
- Program clips have been replaced by clip usages within a sequence. This is more flexible and allows EDLs to be exported as well as imported. Removed EDL import Preferences options as EDLs are always imported as a sequence now.
- New sequence view dialog and command to create sequences and allow simple cuts only editing.
- New icon-only grid view (at different sizes), allowing more clips to be visible within a window.
- New dialog to define custom view types and labels for the user-defined columns. Added a fourth user-defined property.
- Whole tape capture log now creates clips that can be exported in any of the supported batch file formats.
- All long-running operations such as imports now display a progress bar, with a Preferences option whether processing should take place in background or not.
- Preferences dialog has new tabs and a Default button to set factory defaults for many options.
- Rewrote portions of the EditDV project import handling, eg. to make handling of file names more robust and cross platform.
- Various other new menu commands, such as View marked clips, Scan for new files and Merge clips.
- More extensive use of tool tip text, eg. on table column headers.
- Renamed and rearranged several menu items to make them more consistent.
- Various performance improvements, eg. improved speed of thumbnail creation.
- Added export to Canopus file format
- New Preferences options to configure the default view when opening a window, appearance of toolbar and status line, and so on.
- Numerous other minor improvements and fixes, for example the name of an audio format, rather than just a code, is now displayed, thumbnails are always shown at the correct aspect ratio, new look toolbar, etc.