CatDV 7.0 Reference Guide

The online help documentation is arranged in separate pages or topics. It is designed to be suitable both for reference or to be read from beginning to end.

Use the CatDV Help menu command to access online help:

The Topics button displays a table of contents, listing all the topics.
Click on the Next link to read all the topics in order.
Click on a blue link to display more information about a related topic. (Links which are underlined will launch in an external web browser.)
Use the back and forward buttons < and > to go back (or forward) through the history of pages you have visited after following a link.
Type in keywords to the search box and press Enter to display a list of matching pages.

The online help text is also available as a standalone Reference Guide which you can view or print out with your web browser.

Introduction

CatDV 7.0 is a cross-platform media cataloging and video logging tool. The CatDV product family has several members, all sharing the same basic user interface but with different features:

CatDV Standard Edition
CatDV Professional Edition
CatDV Professional Edition with Workgroup Server
CatDV Enterprise Edition with Enterprise Server

This reference guide describes all these versions. When there are differences these are indicated in the text.

Cataloging

CatDV will import and catalog media files and movies in most popular formats, including:

still images (JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, PSD, etc.)
audio formats (MP3, AIFF, AU, AAC, WAV, etc.)
video formats (QuickTime MOV, MP4, WMV, AVI, MPEG, DV, etc.)

Media files are indexed with thumbnails, not just for the whole file but for each scene. Unlike other cataloging applications CatDV is aware of timecode and knows about scenes within a movie file, so as well as media files it will also import:

video editing capture logs and projects (Final Cut Pro, Premiere, etc.)
interchange formats (CMX edit decision lists, tab-separated text, XML)

With the Professional Edition you can also import arbitrary files of any type into the catalog, not just media files but also related supporting files such spreadsheets, Word documents or project files.

CatDV helps you to keep track of which video clips are where on a tape (and which projects they are used in) by maintaining a catalog of clips, each with timecode in and out values and thumbnail previews. CatDV lets you organise digital camera images and MP3s as well as digital video, providing a common interface to locate and manage all your digital media.

Metadata

To make it easy to organise your media, each clip is annotated with metadata that can be used for searching and sorting the catalog. This includes both technical metadata (such as file path, audio sample rate, video format, date and time of recording, or camera exposure details) which are extracted automatically from the media file, and annotations explicitly entered by the user (such as clip name, description, project, or clip status). Once extracted, this metadata is cached in a CatDV catalog file (or a central database if using the workgroup server), and therefore provides a permanent and instantly accessible record even if the original file is offline (eg. on removable media).

Logging and scene detection

To simplify logging the contents of a tape and creating a first rough draft of an edited program, CatDV supports automatic scene detection of captured footage. You can review each clip and enter a name and keywords describing the scene, mark it as "good" or not, and enter "in" and "out" points to select portions of interest within the clip. Use the Verbatim Logger to type in spoken dialog (perhaps to create subtitles) or other comments while a clip is playing.

Proxy files

Full-resolution video files are very large and it is usually impractical to keep them all on-line at the same time. CatDV will create low-resolution preview movies to show the contents of clips when the original media files are off-line. To restore off-line media CatDV generates capture logs for use with the batch capture capability of your editing application.

Video editing

Although CatDV is not intended as a full editing application you can create a simple composition or sequence by trimming and concatenating together clips of interest. All editing is non-destructive as CatDV deals with references to your media files.

Movie export

You can export clips or sequences as either self-contained or QuickTime reference movies, or you can convert a movie using a different codec, for example to create a web movie, perhaps adding subtitles or a burnt-in timecode at the same time. You can batch convert multiple movies in one operation.

Tools

Several unique utility functions are provided, such as a convenient timecode calculator, or adding a burnt-in security camera-style date and time display. You can consolidate DV media files on disk based on an edit decision list by trimming and deleting unused material. CatDV will analyse most media files and display detailed technical information about the file, including the format of individual tracks, frame durations, sample counts, a dropped frame analysis, and more, helping you to diagnose capture and playback problems. You can also print catalogs, display them as HTML, and more.

Workgroup features

Using the optional CatDV Server and a relational SQL database you can store clip details in a central shared database accessible via a local area network, thereby allowing different members of a team to work together.

Installation and registration

System requirements

CatDV is available for both Macintosh and Windows. It requires Java and QuickTime, which you can download for free if they're not already provided on your system:

Java for Windows (Sun's JRE) is available from http://www.java.com.
QuickTime for both platforms is available from http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

Consult the release notes in the Read Me file for further details.

Updates

The latest version of CatDV is always available at http://www.squarebox.co.uk. You should check this site regularly for updates and bug fixes or subscribe to the CatDV announcements mailing list.

Normally minor bug fix updates are issued free of charge while a small upgrade fee is charged for major feature upgrades.

Purchasing CatDV

CatDV Pro works as a 30-day limited-functionality demo until you purchase a license, which you can do on-line. You will then be sent a registration code to unlock the full application. Enter the name and registration code in the Registration tab of Preferences. (The easiest way to do this is by copying both lines of your registration details and pressing the special Paste button.)

If required we can provide temporary license codes to give you full access to CatDV's features for your evaluation. For sales and registration enquiries please contact sales@squarebox.co.uk; for technical support please contact support@squarebox.co.uk. You can also use the web shortcuts in the CatDV Help menu.

Quick start guide

This page provides a quick overview of the main features of CatDV. Each feature is described in more detail by following the links. Use the "<" back button at the top of this window to return to this page.

Screen layout

The main window in CatDV shows all the clips in a catalog or database of clips. Each clip represents either a complete media file or a scene within a movie file or tape, and usually has a thumbnail image, as well as Name, Format, In and Out timecode values, and various other fields (also referred to as "attributes" or "properties").
The toolbar at the top of the main window provides commands to import media into the catalog and to view and organise the clips in the catalog in different ways.
The tree navigator lets you group clips in your catalog into virtual folders, and also provides shortcuts to key locations in your file system. The clip details panel is used to display and edit the selected clip. (Both the tree navigator and details panel can be turned on and off using the toolbar.)
Other windows may be displayed as required, for example to edit a sequence, play back a movie, or customise application settings.

Importing clips

The quickest way to get started with CatDV is to use Import Directory from the File menu (or the Import toolbar button) to import all the images and movies from a directory and build up a thumbnail catalog. You can also drag and drop files into the CatDV window. The files are analysed as they are imported and in the case of movie files a separate clip record for each scene within the movie is created.
CatDV can create and manage low-resolution preview movies to represent each clip in your catalog. Specify the location and quality settings for previews in Preferences, then use Build Preview Movies to create preview versions of all your video clips. CatDV previews are small enough to be kept permanently and are therefore available to show you the contents of your entire tape library even when the original media files are unavailble (perhaps they're on a removable FireWire drive, you're working on your laptop away from your server, or you had to delete them to make space for the next project).
CatDV has a large number of Preference settings that govern all aspects of its behaviour, such as the format for preview files, search paths to locate media files, what clip properties to display, the behaviour when you double click a clip, and much more. Take the time to look through all the different preference panels to get a feel for what features are available.

Viewing clips

You can view the catalog and organise your clips in many different ways, using commands in the View menu or toolbar buttons. For example, you can view clips as a spreadsheet-like list or as a grid of thumbnails only. You can also choose which particular columns (or clip properties) are shown by selecting a different view definition from the drop down.
If you have many clips in your catalog you can navigate your clips by automatically grouping related clips according to tape, subject, bin, etc. You can also sort or filter them as required.
Type text into the quick search field to filter the window and only show those clips whose name or comments include the text you enter. (You can also create more complex queries by using the Find command.)
The clip details panel provides full details of a clip and is used for logging your clips: you can enter a name or description, select a thumbnail frame, mark it as good or not, and enter other log notes. Under the movie tab you can play the clip and mark a selection within it, from which you can then create subclips.
The Clip Summary window displays all the properties of a clip in a convenient formatted view (this view is read-only; switch to Clip Details to edit the clip).
The Play Media command will play selected clip(s), individually or as a slide show.
Use the Media Information dialog to analyse a media file and display technical information about the format, such as a report of dropped frames or the codec used.
You can re-earrange the order of clips by dragging and dropping them within the main window, or assemble a rough cut program by creating a sequence from them.

Outputting clips

Use CatDV's searching and filtering tools to locate clips of interest, whether you have only just captured and logged them or from a library of old tapes and stock footage. Once you have selected the clips you want or created a rough sequence you can output them in various ways:

Export the clips as a movie, converting them using any QuickTime-compatible codec, including MPEG-4, H.264, DV, etc., and optionally add timecode or text tracks, such as burnt-in date/time display or subtitles
Export them as an EDL or batch list to import into your NLE video editing application. (If you use Final Cut Pro use the FCP XML format.)
Print the clips out (as a thumbnail "storyboard" or "contact sheet")
Export a standalone HTML index with thumbnails and a link to the media files. (You could use this to publish a storyboard of an edited program or to distribute a catalog of stock footage to clients, for example.)

Unlike some applications such as iTunes, which save their data automatically in a hidden internal database location, CatDV uses an explicit 'document' metaphor for its catalogs. Once you have logged your clips you need to save the catalog document to your computer's hard disk, but you can organise these documents how you want (for example, you might create one catalog for each tape or project you are working on).

Managing catalogs

CatDV stores clip details and their thumbnails in a catalog:

Use the New Catalog command to create an empty catalog.
Use the Open Catalog or Open Recent commands to open an existing catalog.
Catalogs may be saved as a normal catalog file, where clips refer to preview movies in the shared Preview directory, or as a self-contained preview archive (see below). Use Save As Catalog or Save As Archive to change the way the catalog is saved.
Use the Always create backup checkbox in Preferences to automatically make a backup copy of the catalog file when saving.
Use Catalog Details (in the Edit menu) to enter a short description of the catalog.

Catalogs are normally saved in a file with extension .cdv. You can open more than one catalog at the same time and copy and paste clips between them. Catalogs are portable between Macintosh and Windows.

The trial version of CatDV will not normally let you save catalogs (or export or print data).

With the optional CatDV Server, CatDV users can store clips in a central shared database rather than in files on the local file system. Even then, however, CatDV still uses the concept of catalogs as a logical grouping of related clips.

Regardless of whether you are using the single-user or the networked version of CatDV, to keep catalogs a manageable size it's a good idea to have a separate catalog for each tape, or perhaps each project, rather than storing all your clips in one huge catalog. See managing multiple catalogs for hints on how to manage a large clip library.

Self-contained archives

In a self-contained archive the catalog is combined with the preview files for that catalog in a single directory (Windows) or directory bundle (Mac OS X). The archive can be saved to an external drive or copied to CD/DVD and when the archive is opened the corresponding previews are immediately accessible. With self-contained archives it is not necessary to keep all the preview files in one place. Archives have the file extension .cdvp.

You can use the Manage Preview Movies command to check which preview files are contained in an archive.

Clips

All data within a CatDV catalog is held in the form of clips. There are different types of clip, such as still images, movie files, scenes within a movie, lines of an EDL or batch list, and so on.

Each clip has the following main properties (often referred to as fields when shown in a dialog, or as columns when the clips are shown in a table). Additional properties that provide full details of the media file format that a clip was imported from are listed separately.

Some of these properties are editable while others are filled in automatically at the time of import. Depending on the type of the clip, some of these properties may not be relevant and are left blank.

Name	Name of the clip
Notes	Description or other comments you enter about the clip
Bin	Project bin or directory on disk where the clip came from, used for grouping clips
Tape	Name of the tape or reel the clip is on
Import source	The file that details of this clip were imported from (eg. a movie file, EDL, or batch list)
Source media	the media file that holds the video data the clip refers to (not necessarily the same as the Import Source)
In & Out	Timecode values for the whole clip. The Out point of a clip is the timecode of the frame after the last frame of this clip (and normally equals the In point of the following clip). (Corresponds to Media Start and End in Final Cut.)
Duration	The corresponding clip length, i.e. the difference between In and Out points.
In2 & Out2	Timecode values for a selection made within the clip (corresponds to In and Out in Final Cut).
Start & End	Current clip bounds, either In/Out or In2/Out2 depending on the Export clips based on selection Preferences option
Type	Clip type, whether still, audio or movie file, and if so whether a master clip (correspond to entire file) or a sub-clip. The icon is crossed out with a red X if the file is offline or unplayable.
Underlying Type	More detailed type information that distinguishes QuickTime, OMF and WMV movies, for example. For DV clips the icon indicates whether a definite scene change at the start or end of the clip has been identified.
Format	A summary of the format of the movie (whether DV, other QuickTime movie, still, etc.). See the list of media-related properties for more details about the media file.
Poster	Each clip has a poster thumbnail, normally the first frame of the clip but a different poster can be set from the clip details movie tab
Mark	A general purpose check box to mark clips of interest or to save a selection
Hide	Clips may be flagged as hidden so they don't normally appear unless the Show hidden menu command is used (you could use this to hide rejected clips but without deleting the clip record, or hide master clips once they have been divided into subclips.)
Good	A general purpose status field to indicate whether the clip is usable or not
Exposure	A summary of the camera exposure details (available with some DV camcorders and digital cameras)
Record date	The original date/time of recording of the clip or image (available with some DV camcorders and digital cameras)
Date	Either the Record Date, or failing that the first modification time of the source media
User 1..N	General purpose user-defined text fields (in the Standard Edition you can have up to 3 user fields, in the Professional Edition you can have any number).
Clip ID	Several fields are used to uniquely identify clips in different ways
Transition	Available when importing EDLs (edit decision lists)
Seq. No.	Sequence number when importing more than one clip from a file, eg. an EDL or scenes within a movie
Online	Indicate whether the clip is currently online, or a preview or thumbnail is available
Used	How many sequences a clip appears in (this can indicate whether a clip is used in a project or not).

Making sense of property names

Some of these properties might appear more than once with similar names, for example where long and short forms of the same data are available. Or you might see two fields with the same name and quite different contents, or the same content in different fields!

There are several possible reasons for this apparent confusion. The important thing to remember is that the property name is just a label used to annotate the property on the screen, it doesn't necessarily have to be unique:

You can give user-defined fields any name you choose. These names could clash with a pre-defined property.
In OEM versions of CatDV it is possible to customise the name of any field, including built-in properties.
Certain metadata properties like Name or Date (read from iTunes metadata for example) might clash with a pre-defined property.
If you import a media file then Import Source, Source Media and Name will all show the same thing, ie. the media filename. On the other hand, if you import an EDL or Final Cut XML file these fields may all be different - Name is the name of a particular shot or scene, Source Media is the media filename for that clip, and Import Source is the name of the EDL or XML file you imported the data from.
Some special fields like "Name or Tape" show different data for different types of clips and are designed to make most efficient use of available space in icon grid views, for example showing the file name for stills and the tape name and timecode for movie clips.

Use tool tip text (hover the mouse pointer over a field name) to display a short explanation of the field if you are unsure which property you are viewing. (You can also set the Show attribute IDs option in Preferences to automatically display a unique identifier after each property.)

Importing clips and movies

You can import clip data into a catalog from many different types of file. For most files CatDV will determine the file type automatically when you use the Open/Import command or drag a file into the main window, but you can also use the Import As submenu to use a specific importer if required:

Import as QuickTime Media - any QuickTime-supported media type can be imported, including still images, sound clips, and movies (including AVI and MPEG). For visual media a poster thumbnail is created, typically the first frame of the movie. If you select the Scene analysis Preferences options the movie is scanned as it is imported and separate secondary clips are created automatically for each scene within the movie.
Import as Cinestream Project - you can import clips from the project window and from the program of an EditDV/Cinestream project into CatDV. Each program track (V1, etc.) appears as a separate clip sequence. Use the Preferences option to choose whether or not to import the Program bin (which contains rendered footage that may be necessary for a program but not otherwise be of interest).
Import as CMX 3600 EDL - import both source clip definitions and a sequence of program clips from an industry standard CMX edit decision list
Import Tab-Separated Text - import clips defined in a tab-separated text file, one per line, eg. if you have manually logged a tape using pencil and paper or a spreadsheet.
Import as Windows Media File - import a WMV, ASF or WMA file, extracting all the metadata from the file.
Various additional formats, such as Final Cut Pro batch files and OMF media files, are available in the Professional Edition.

Use Import Directory to import all the recognised media files in an entire directory. If the appropriate Preferences option is set it will recursively scan the contents of any subdirectories. You can also drag and drop files or folders from the Macintosh Finder or Windows Explorer directly into a CatDV window to import them. Use Scan For New Files to re-scan all the directories previously included in a catalog and import any new files that have been added since last time.

If you use the tree navigator you can navigate to a folder in your file system then right click on the node and choose Import Into Catalog, or drag the folder onto the catalog tree node, to import it.

Live Capture

For technical reasons, the old built-in Live Capture command is no longer available since CatDV 6. Instead, you can use the separate Live Capture Plus application, or capture a DV tape in an external application (such as your regular non-linear editing software or the free iMovie or Microsoft Movie Maker applications) then import the resulting files into CatDV to catalog them and create high-quality offline previews.

Exporting clips and movies

You can export clip definitions from a CatDV catalog in various formats for use in other applications. Some of these commands export the media itself, while others export references to the media including metadata.

Select the clips you want to export from the main window and use one of the Export As commands:

Export As Movie(s) - see below.
Export As Stills - create JPEG still images from the poster frame of each movie clip, or export scaled versions of still image clips. By default the exported images are restricted in size to make them suitable for emailing, and a whole set of images can be combined into a single convenient ZIP archive.
Export as Cinestream Capture Log, Premiere Batch Log, Canopus Batch List - you can export batch capture logs suitable for various popular video editing applications, including EditDV/Cinestream, Adobe Premiere and Canopus Raptor.
Export as Tab-Separated Text - export all the columns from the current view as a plain text file, suitable for importing into a word processor or spreadsheet.
Export as HTML - see below.
Export as CMX 3600 EDL - export a CMX-format edit decision list. (This command works on sequences, not ordinary clips, so you might need to use the Create Sequence command first).
Various additional formats are available in the Professional Edition.

Use the Export Clips Based On Selection checkbox in Preferences to select whether the whole clip (as defined by its "in" and "out" timecode values) or a selected portion within each clip (as defined by "in2" and "out2") is exported by default. (If a clip has no selection the whole clip is always used.)

Note that the trial version of CatDV will not normally let you export or print clip definitions.

Exporting Movies

You can export movies from CatDV in several formats, either from the original media (if currently online) or from CatDV's preview versions if you have created them.

The Movie Format tab has options that govern the format of the exported movie(s). You can export without recompression, either as a small reference movie for each clip (which depends on the original source media remaining on-line) or as a flattened self-contained movie (which makes a copy of the source media). Or you can recompress the movie with a new codec (convert the movie to different settings, for example to play it on an iPod or upload to a web site). You can use any QuickTime movie exporter for this, but the most useful formats are probably QuickTime, MPEG-4 (or MPEG-4 Hinted Movie), DV Stream, AVI, or 3G (for playback on mobile phones). Once you have chosen the basic format you can choose a codec, resolution, frame rate and quality settings by pressing the Settings button.
Under Batch Options you can choose whether all the selected clips are combined into a single movie or exported as separate files. Check the Exact clip names option to use the clip Name as it is for the filename without appending an extension such as .mov (this simplifies attaching the media in Final Cut Pro). You can export the whole of each clip or a selection within it. If you have gone through all your clips, reviewing them either by making a selection of the material you want to keep or marking the whole clip as good, then you can export a program containing the desired clips (similar to the Select Reviewed command).
Under the Extra Tracks tab you can add a timecode track, or a text track containing the date & time of recording (for DV material only). If you export a flattened or reference QuickTime movie without recompression these are saved as separate tracks that you can enable or disable in QuickTime Player, whereas if you recompress the movie the text is burnt in to the image. With the Professional Edition you can also add a custom text track containing specific text (such as a copyright notice), or containing one of the clip data fields, such as a title, scene number or subtitle text. This text can appear for a fixed duration or for the entire duration of the clip. You can choose the size for the text and timecode tracks and whether they should have a transparent or opaque background.

HTML Export

You can export selected clips and their poster thumbnails as a simple HTML catalog. There are two options:

In the simplest form, a single index page containing all the selected clips is output, to a file location that you specify.
Alternatively, you can create an HTML index specifically for preview movies. This index is written in the preview directory and allows you to access the preview movies from a web browser without requiring the CatDV application.

With both types of export you can choose which columns to list on an index page and whether to include a separate detail page for each clip or not. You can also add a custom footer to each page. (A separate feature to create an HTML index is also included with the Export As Stll command.)

Note that pages exported from within CatDV form a static snapshot of the catalog at the time of the export. With the CatDV Server and optional Live HTML Publisher component you can make similar information available as a dynamic view of the current contents of the central database. The Live HTML Publisher also provides dynamic searching capabilities.

Views

The main window displays a list of clips. These can be displayed in one of three main ways:

List view - a spreadsheet-like table, one row per clip, with a choice of which columns are displayed. You can resize or change the order of the columns.
Film strip view - where each movie clip is shown on one line as a sequence of thumbnails.
Grid view - a two-dimensional grid of clips, each shown with its poster thumbnail.

Main window

When using the main window you can:

Click on the List, Film Strip or Grid toolbar buttons to select the next view of that type, or select a particular pre-defined view from the drop down list.
Apply filtering or grouping to limit the display to particular clips of interest.
Have more than one window open on the same catalog with the New view command.
Select one or more clips with the mouse then right click (control-click on the Macintosh) to display a popup menu of operations applicable to the selected clip(s).
Display the clip details or media for a given clip using the relevant toolbar button or menu command or by double clicking on the clip. (To change the double click action either hold down the control key as you double click or choose a different double click action in Preferences.)
Open the media file by launching it in its default application.
Edit values directly in a list view by checking the Allow cell editing Preferences option.

Sorting clips

Clips have both a 'natural' order within the catalog (usually the order they were imported in) and a 'display' order within the current window.

Click on a column header (when in a list view) or use the Order By menu to change the order that clips are displayed in.
Use Random shuffle to randomize the display order (eg. for a slide show).
Use Reverse to reverse the display order of clips.
Use Make clip order permanent to rearrange clips in the catalog according to their current display order.
Drag and drop selected clips within the window to manually rearrange their order in the catalog.

Clip details panel

Use the clip details panel to view and edit all the properties of a selected clip. This window also shows the thumbnails and media for a clip and is the main way of logging clips. It is also used for sequence editing. (In older versions of CatDV the functionality of the details panel was provided by the clip details dialog. This is still available for compatibility, though in most cases the new clip details panel has greatly improved functionality.)

You can show or hide the clip details panel at the top of the main window by toggling the clip details toolbar button.

Viewing media

There are three tabs that show all the media representations available for a clip: thumbnail images, the original movie, or a low-resolution preview movie.

Under the Thumbnails tab you can select a different poster for the clip from among the available thumbnails or delete unwanted thumbnails.
Under the Movie tab you can play the media for the movie (if it's available online), mark In and Out points (or jump to previously set In and Out points), and create a new poster thumbnail from the current frame.
The timecode of the current frame is shown in red. The duration of the clip or selection is also shown (in blue) if there's enough room. Click on the timecode field to jump to a particular timecode value.
The Preview tab is similar to the Movie tab but plays the preview movie rather than original media.
If the clip represents an audio clip or still image the name of the tab changes accordingly.
If the movie or preview tab has keyboard focus the tab label is shown with a darker background and you can use the keyboard to control movie playback, mark in and out points, and more. Click on the tab label (or in the player window) to give it focus.

Viewing and editing clip details

The Summary, Log Notes and Technical tabs display the various properties of the clip selected in the main window.

Some fields may be read-only while others can be edited by clicking on them.
If the value of the field is too big to fit comfortably on the display try double clicking on the field label to display the value in a separate window.
Select multiple clips and edit a value to apply the change to many clips at a time. (Another way of doing this is with the Bulk Edit command.)
In the Professional Edition you can customise the layout of the details panel.
The Other tab provides an alphabetical listing of all available clip properties.

Logging menu

Use commands in the Logging menu to navigate within the clip details window, move to other clips, and perform logging.

Move up or down through the list of clips in the main window with a keyboard shortcut.
After marking In and Out points create a New Subclip from the selection.
Split the current clip in two at the current play head position with Split Clip.
Review the transition between the previous clip and this one (ie. play the last few seconds of one and the first few seconds of this clip). This allows you to check whether they should be two separate clips or one.
If you want to combine them into one you can merge this clip into the previous one.
Use Toggle Subclip Limits to expand a subclip so you can view the entire source media file. The old subclip limits are stored as a selection in In2/Out2, so you turn the clip back to a subclip again.

Timecode event markers

In the Professional Edition you can create markers to flag particular events of interest within a clip without having to create subclips for each event.

Use the 'flag' button (under the Movie or Preview tab) to create an event marker for the current timecode value. (You can also use the 'm' keyboard shortcut if the player has keyboard focus.)
The Event Markers table (under the Summary tab) lists all the markers for the clip. Click on one of the markers to jump to that point in the movie.
When you save a catalog, event markers are stored as text (the timecode value plus a description) within the clip Notes field.
You can import and export event markers from QuickTime movie chapter markers and Final Cut Pro projects (via FCP XML).
You can convert to and fro between subclips and event markers using the Logging > Convert To Subclips or Edit > Merge commands.

Tree navigator

The tree navigator is shown on the left of the main window and provides a convenient way to organise the clips in catalog, to browse files on the file system, and access other functions such as the contents of the CatDV server.

You can show or hide the tree navigator using the toolbar button or menu command.

Catalog node

The catalog node represents all the clips in the current catalog. If you have a large catalog you can organise the clips according to any clip property, for example grouping by date, by file format, by tape or bin. You can think of grouping as providing dynamic "virtual bins" or "smart folders".

Drill down into the Group by node to find the clip property by which you want to arrange your clips. Expand this node (for example, Date or Bin or Media Path) to list individual grouping values, then click on the value to show the corresponding clips.
Click on All clips to view all the clips in the catalog.
For editable properties you can drag clips onto another node to change the value.
Drag files or clips from another view onto the Catalog node to import them into the catalog.
The Sequences node provides a convenient way to access any sequences in your catalog.
Drag clips onto the Sequence node to create a new sequence.
You can combine the tree navigator with the grouping panel for two levels of grouping, for example by media path and then by format.

Server node

If you use the Workgroup or Enterprise Server use the Server node to quickly browse clips on the server without opening up a remote catalog in a new window.

You can browse the entire database by catalog or by tape.
Catalogs can be organised into folders. Right click on the tree node to add a new folder.
Quickly perform a custom query by defining named queries.
If you use the Enterprise server use the tree navigator to load preference settings according to which project or production you are working on, or to create and view shared group documents which are stored on the server (the "production blog").

File system node

The file system mode provides access to your file system from within CatDV without having to switch to the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer.

You can browse directory contents using CatDV's media analysis features without having to import them into a catalog. You can also perform common media file management operations straight from the tree navigator, for example drag and drop to move or import files.

Drives and network volumes, as well as your home directory and desktop are shown.
Create additional shortcuts to your favourite locations by dragging a directory onto the main File System node.
Double click a node to analyse the media files in the folder and display them as thumbnails or a filmstrip.
Choose whether clicking on a node performs a quick file listing or detailed media analysis via the Advanced User Interface tab of Preferences.
Directories which have already been analysed (and whose contents are therefore cached for quick access) are shown in bold.
Right click on a directory to show options such as delete or rename directory, import it into the catalog, and more.

Final Cut node

The Final Cut Projects node lists your recently used Final Cut Pro project files. If you have Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 or later you can drag and drop clips between CatDV and a Final Cut project using these project nodes.

To add an FCP project file to the list, drag it onto the Final Cut Projects node.
Double click a project to open it in Final Cut Pro and link to it.
Once opened the project is shown in bold. Clicking on it will export the clips in your browser via XML and list them in CatDV (this may take a few moments).
Drag selected clips or sequences that have come from FCP to a catalog window or the catalog node to add them to a CatDV catalog.
Conversely, if you have search results of clips you want to use for editing, or have created a rough-cut sequences within CatDV, then you can send these to Final Cut by dragging them to an open project node.

Note that if you drag a clip straight to the Final Cut application window, whether from CatDV or the Finder, it is sent over as a file reference to the complete media file. Using XML and the Final Cut tree node is much more powerful however, as you can send subclips, log notes and sequences from CatDV to Final Cut and all the metadata is preserved.

Temporary views

When you use the tree navigator to view the contents of the file system, a catalog on the server, or the contents of a Final Cut project you are temporarily replacing the window's view on the current catalog with temporary clips.

It is important to note that these temporary clips are not part of the current catalog and won't be saved when you save the catalog.

Because changes to a temporary view aren't saved in the catalog the clip details panel won't let you edit or add log notes to a temporary clip. Additionally, the background colour of the clips changes to a shade of pink to remind you when you are in a temporary view.

It is easy to add temporary clips to the current catalog however. Simply drag and drop them onto the catalog node (or right click and select Import To Catalog). Once you do this they become normal clips that you can edit and save with the rest of the catalog.

Scratch Pad

The clip Scratch Pad is a holding area where you can drag clips of interest to save them temporarily, for example to build up a result set of clips from multiple catalogs or queries. Drag clips to the Scratch Pad node to save them, or drag them into a normal catalog window (or onto the Catalogs node) to add them to a normal catalog. Clips are stored in memory in the Scratch Pad as long as the CatDV application is open, even if you have closed the catalalog they came from.

Use View > Scratch Pad to access the scratch pad via a new tab in the clip details panel rather than the tree navigator if you prefer.

Customising views

Use the Customise Views command to create your own view definitions, containing just those columns (or clip properties) that you are interested in:

Select an existing view to edit, or define a new view. (Views that you have customised are shown in italics.)
When editing a view select the basic type (film strip, list, grid, or icon only) and size for the view.
Add as many columns as you like (some views only show a limited number of columns - if you ask for too many columns those that don't fit are greyed out).
Rearrange their order by dragging and dropping columns in the right hand list or using the move up and down buttons.
If the same column name appears more than once, click on the name and use the description to distinguish them (eg. long and short versions of a file name).
Press 'Apply' to preview a view definition (without overwriting the previous saved definition).
Press 'Ok' to save the view definitions so they are available in other windows and when you next launch the application.
You may need to enable metadata columns via preferences if you don't see the values you want as separate fields.

Adjust column widths

Use the Adjust Column Widths command to automatically adjust the width of columns in a list view according to the data being displayed in them. You can also adjust column widths manually by dragging on the column divider line in the header row.

You can also rearrange the order of columns graphically by dragging the column header. However, you need to use the Customise Views command to add or remove columns.

If you make changes to the column widths then bring up the Customise Views dialog you are asked whether to import the current column widths into the view definition. You can then save the view definition including the column widths. Alternatively, use the Save Column Widths command. (If you do not save the column widths in this way then they will only apply as long as the current window is open.)

Customise details panel

In the Professional Edition you can customise which fields are shown in the clip details panel using the Logging > Customise Details Panel command. You can:

Create additional tab panels, either copies of existing ones or entirely new.
Choose which fields are included on each panel.
Choose whether long fields span both columns and whether fields are hidden if they are blank.
If you want a large, multi-line Notes field create a new tab containing just this field. (This also applies to the Event Markers field.)

You can define different panels and choose which ones are visible at any time by checking or unchecking the visible flag. For example, different panels may make sense depending on which kind of project you are working on.

Clip details dialog

Note: in most cases you will use the newer clip details panel within the main window to view and edit clip details. If you prefer you can bring up a separate clip details window however.

Select Clip Details to bring up a dialog where you can view and edit all the properties of a selected clip. This window also shows the thumbnails and media for a clip and can be used for logging clips.

You can bring up the clip details dialog from the main window in several ways: via the menu bar, via a toolbar button, via the context sensitive popup menu, or by double clicking a clip (or control double clicking, depending on how your Preferences are set up).

Viewing media

There are three tabs that show all the media representations available for a clip: thumbnail images, the original movie and a low-resolution preview movie (see Previews and thumbnails).
Press the Play Media button to show the movie (or still image) at full size.

Logging

Review the clip and make a selection of the portion you want to keep by marking "in2" and "out2" points using the buttons in the "movie" tab.
Review the selection by playing the selection, or playing the first or last few seconds of the selection.
Select a clip status of "good" or "no good" to indicate whether you want to use the clip or not.
Enter a name, notes, or user defined fields such as videographer or location, to describe the clip.
Select a new poster frame by pressing the Set poster button in the "movie" tab.
Select an existing tape or bin name from the combo boxes, or click in the box and type in a new name.
If you select multiple clips and then bring up the clip details dialog you can edit all the selected clips in one go.

Splitting and merging clips

Use the Split button (scissors icon) to cut a clip into two at the current point.
Use the Review Transition button to play the last few frames of the previous clip followed immediately by the start of the current clip. This will show whether the two clips belong to separate scenes or not.
If the two clips shouldn't be separate after all then use the Merge button to merge this clip into the previous one.

Viewing and editing clip details

The "Detail" table shows all the properties for the clip, and may include a longer form of the columns shown in the main window (for example, time of day as well as date of last modification of a file).
Double click any field label or row in the detail table to bring up a separate popup window showing the the value of the property (for example if it's too big to see on one line). For grouping fields a chooser listing all the valid values for that field is shown.
If you rename or delete a primary clip you are asked if you want to rename or delete the associated media file on disk at the same time. (Rename a clip by typing into the "name" field. Delete a clip from the catalog by pressing the Delete button.)
For DV clips and Exif still images the date and time of recording and camera exposure details are automatically extracted at the time of importing the movie and are displayed in the details dialog. (Availability of this feature depends on your camcorder and capture software).

Creating and navigating to other clips

secondary clip

duplicate

Use the up and down toolbar buttons to step through the catalog and show details for other clips
Press the Show related clips toolbar button to show other clips in the catalog related to this one, such as the parent clip (if this is a secondary clip), details of which projects or programs the clip is used in, any clips with overlapping timecode values, and so on. Double click on a related clip to navigate to its details.
Use the back and forward buttons to move through the history of related and secondary clips

Keyboard shortcuts

While the media panel is active you can use shortcuts like 'I' and 'O' to mark in and out points, 'P' to set the poster, and use JKL transport controls (Professional Edition only) to play the clip forwards or backwards at different speeds.
Use Space to switch to the movie tab and start playing the movie. Use '1', '2' or '3' to select a particular tab.
Use Control-Down or Control-Up to advance to the next or previous clip.
Use Control-P to play the media.
Use Control-J to toggle between the clip details dialog and the media dialog.

Clip summary dialog

The clip summary window is a formatted, read-only view of the properties of a clip. Unlike the clip details window, which has fixed size fields, text in the clip summary window flows so it's all visible.

The clip summary window is read-only. You can mark clips of interest, but you need to switch to the Clip Details window if you want to edit the clip.
If you have performed a query or applied a quick filter the clip summary window highlights where matching keywords occur within the text.
The clip is formatted using HTML. If desired, you can copy the HTML text to the clipboard via the Edit menu.
Use the Print button to print the clip details.

Previews and thumbnails

A clip can have different types of media representation: small thumbnail images, the original movie or media file, and a low-resolution preview movie. A clip contains a reference to its media, not the media itself, so all these types of media can be shared by more than one clip.

Thumbnails

Thumbnails are stored in the catalog along with the clips.
Thumbnail images are created when you import a movie or still image into a catalog, typically for the first, last and middle frame of each movie or scene, though there is a Preference option to control how many thumbnails are created (or even to turn off automatic thumbnail generation altogether).
You can select the size of thumbnails in Preferences. (Note that larger thumbnails increase the size of catalog files and the time to open them.)
All the thumbnails in a catalog with the same tape name and whose timecode lies between the "in" and "out" point of a clip are available for display with that clip.
If you have timecode resets or don't give each tape a unique name you might see incorrect or jumbled up thumbnails. To avoid this, either fix the tape name or turn off the Automatically link media based on tape name option in Preferences.
Use the Build Thumbnails command to rebuild the poster thumbnails of selected clips, after changing the thumbnail size for example. You can also create additional thumbnails, for example one every 10 seconds. (Again, please note that creating extra thumbnails increases memory requirements, and the time to save and load the catalog.)
You can create an additional thumbnail manually, and set that as the poster for a clip, by going to the frame you want in the "movie" tab and pressing the Set Poster button.
Conversely, you can delete an unwanted thumbnail using the Delete Thumbnail button. You can also switch to a thumbnail view and delete unwanted "thumbnail clips" there.

Original media

The original movie or source media files can be played if they are on-line (i.e. accessible on the computer's hard drive or a mounted network volume). In the case of tape-based media, especially DV, the source media will often be deleted from disk at the end of one project to make space for the next one. Given the tape name and timecode values you should be able to use batch capture within your NLE software to recapture the original files, without any loss of quality, if they are ever needed again.
Use the Attach Media command if you have recaptured the source media, or to attach a media file to a clip that didn't previously have one (eg. because the clip definition was imported from an EDL or batch list).
Use Update Media Location if you have simply renamed or moved the source media files to a new location. Usually you only need to select the new location for the first file - other files in the same directory are reattached automatically if they still have the same name and file size.
Adding the original and new location as equivalent media directories (see below) allows CatDV to locate similarly moved media files automatically without asking you.

Previews

Use the Build Preview Movies command to build a low-resolution proxy or preview movie of the selected clips.
Preview movies are stored on disk in a common preview directory and are shared between catalogs. Once created they are available even when the original source movie is deleted.
Specify the directory for previews and choose their size and quality in CatDV's Preferences. Alternatively, rather than storing them in a central shared directory, previews can also be stored together with a catalog as a self-contained preview archive.
Preview files should be treated as 'private' to CatDV but can be exported with Export As Movies if you want to use them in another application.
Use Preview Manager to see which preview files are available, rename a tape, or delete unwanted previews. (This command is only available if you enable advanced menus via Preferences.)
You can use the original tape-based preview mechanism or newer path-based previews, or both (see below)
You can have more than one preview directory. The first directory is where new previews will be created but all the directories are searched when looking for a preview movie.

Locating media

CatDV can find the media for a clip in two distinct ways, by tape name or by file path.

Tape-based lookup:

If a clip originates from tape and the Tape field is correctly set then another clip can automatically use that same media if you use tape-based previews, even if it doesn't have a direct link to the media file. The tape name and timecode uniquely identify the media.
If you don't set a unique tape name or if you have timecode resets then you should disable tape-based media linking in Preferences otherwise you might see incorrect thumbnails or previews for a clip.

Path-based lookup (of original media or low-res previews):

For tapeless workflows, or if you are cataloging existing files on disk, then CatDV will locate media based on a file path. A media file may move, however, or it may have different paths depending on which machine you access the media from (eg. M:\ProjectX\File1.mov and /Volumes/Media/ProjectX/File1.mov may be the same file). CatDV therefore uses a search path with file mapping rules to look for any files which it can't find in their original location.
For example, if CatDV knows that M:\ is mapped to /Volumes/Media then CatDV on a Mac would be able to find the media file even if the catalog was saved on a Windows machine.
You can edit path mappings in the Media Search Paths section of Preferences. You should normally enter both the original and new location, though if you omit the original location CatDV will search every combination of paths for the file. This will generally work but is less efficient and may find erroneous matches. For example, if the file was originally at "/Capture Scratch/Project X/Good Clips/Clip1.mov" and you add "/Volumes/Archive" to the search path then it will search all the following locations in turn:
/Volumes/Archive/Capture Scratch/Project X/Good Clips/Clip1.mov
/Volumes/Archive/Project X/Good Clips/Clip1.mov
/Volumes/Archive/Good Clips/Clip1.mov
/Volumes/Archive/Clip1.mov
As well as searching for the original full-resolution media files which may have moved, you can also enable path-based preview movies. These use the same search path mechanism to map original location to preview location but unlike with full-quality media the proxies don't need to have the same size and filename as the original file. For example, you might set "/Volumes/Previews" as a path-based preview location and have a proxy file "/Volumes/Previews/Project X/Good Clips/Clip1.mp4".

Media dialog

CatDV uses the media dialog to play the media for a selected clip at full size:

Use the Play Media command (or toolbar button), from either the main window or clip details dialog, to play selected clips one at a time. (You can also use the keyboard shortcut Cmd/Ctrl-P, or define a double click action of Media Preview in Preferences and then double click a clip to play its media).
Use the Present Movie command to present the selected clips combined into a single sequence that plays smoothly as a whole (this is mainly intended for video clips).
Use the Run Slide Show command to present the selected clips as a slide show of individual clips (this is mainly intended for stills and audio clips).

All these options use the media dialog to show the media, either in a window or full screen. Double click or press Escape to close the media dialog. See below for various other keyboard shortcuts you can use to control the media as it's playing.

There are also a number of Preferences options that control how media is played, for example the slide show delay.

Keyboard shortcuts

The following keyboard shortcuts can be used to control the media presentation and mark the clip that is playing:

Space bar	play or pause a movie
Up, Down	move to previous or next clip in the catalog
Escape (or Cmd-W)	close the media dialog
F	toggle into full screen mode. Double click to return to normal mode.
Tab (or R)	start or pause slide show mode
Enter	close a slide show
+, -	increase or decrease the audio volume
[, ]	rotate image 90 degrees left or right
D	double the playback size of the movie or image
Shift-D	restore playback to normal size
Ctrl-R	refresh the display, re-centering the window on the screen
0-9	adjust speed of slide show
C	toggle showing/hiding the movie controller
J/K/L/;	jog-shuttle controls (see below)
Shift-L	toggle looping playback mode
M	set the mark flag for the clip
Shift-M	clear the mark flag for the clip
G/N/?	mark the clip as good/no good/maybe
I, O	set start/end of a selection (in2/out2)
P	play the selection from start to end (in2 to out2)
T, Y	move to start/end of a selection (in2/out2)
S, E	play start/end of a selection (in2/out2)
Ctrl-J (or Cmd-I)	display clip details dialog

JKL controls

The behaviour of the JKL jog-shuttle controls depends on the Preferences setting:

In shuttle mode 'J' plays in reverse and 'L' plays forward. Successive presses will speed up playback to 1x, 2x, 3x, 5x or 8x normal rate. Press 'K' to stop the movie, and hold down 'K' at the same time as pressing 'J' or 'L' to step one frame at a time. (Professional Edition only)
In jog mode 'J' and 'L' step backwards by 0.5s or one frame respectively, while 'L' and ';' step forwards by the corresponding amount.

These keys apply in the media dialog, in the Movie and Preview tab of the clip details dialog, and when playing movies full screen.

Sequences

The Professional Edition has support for creating and editing sequences. A "sequence" is a special type of clip that contains a sequence of clips in order. It corresponds to a simple timeline or cuts-only edited program.

A sequence is created:

when you import an EDL
when you import a Final Cut Pro XML file, OMFI file, or Cinestream project containing sequence information
when you select some clips and use the Create Sequence command
when you drag clips onto the Sequences node in the tree navigator.

A number of Preferences options control the creation of sequences when importing a file, for example whether to include audio tracks separately and what duration stills should have when added to a sequence.

The sequence window is also used when you use View Tape As Sequence or use the Create Real-Time Sequence command, which places clips on a timeline according to the time of day and can simplify lining up multicamera shoots if the camera clocks were set correctly.

Editing sequences

Double click a sequence clip to open it in a special sequence window. When you edit a sequence the clip details panel changes to show Source and Record playback windows with a timeline below.

The Source window (on the left) shows the current selected clip:

If you select a clip in the sequence you can trim its duration by adjusting the in and out points. The sequence will increase or decrease in length accordingly. The window is labelled Trim.
If you select a new source clip from the catalog that you want to add to the sequence (perhaps as the result of searching for more material to add) the window label changes to Source. You can set In and Out points and then cut it to the sequence.

The Record window (on the right) is labelled Sequence and shows the entire sequence:

You can scrub through the sequence and mark In and Out points to delete part of the sequence.
Switch to the Details tab to change the name or add a comment to the whole sequence.
Use the Clip List tab to list individual clips in the sequence, including their timecode and duration.

The timeline shows all the clips in the sequence as a continuous timeline, complete with thumbnails and clip name:

Click on a clip in the timeline to select the entire clip. You can then trim or remove the clip from the sequence.
Click just above the clip (where the timecode and tick markers are shown) to move the current play head (indicated by a vertical red line) to that point.
Drag the ends of the dark grey selection indicator to adjust the selection within the sequence (In and Out points).
Rearrange the order of clips by dragging and dropping them within the sequence.
The toolbar buttons below the timeline let you close the sequence window, select large or small thumbnails in the timeline, and zoom in and out.

The following commands appear in the Sequences menu:

Load Source Clip will display the clip you select in the timeline as a source clip, so you can change the In and Out points and use it again at another point in the sequence.
Toggle Subclip Limits affects source clips and is available whether you are editing a sequence or not. It turns a subclip into a master clip that refers to the whole media file, and back again (the original subclip limits are saved as a selection using In2/Out2).
Remove Subclip Limits is similar but applies when trimming clips in a sequence.
Normally a sequence has a single track representing both video and audio locked together. With the Edit Tracks command you can add extra tracks or change the type of existing tracks for multi-track editing.
The Sequence menu also has commands to zoom in and out of the timeline and to cycle through the tabs in the Source and Record windows.

An easy way to list the sequences in a catalog is using the Sequences node in the tree navigator.

Keyboard shortcuts

Many familiar keyboard shortcuts are available when editing sequences, including:

Del	delete selection from sequence and shift remainder up
Shift-Del	erase selection from sequence leaving a gap
Enter	append the clip in the source window to the end of the sequence
\	insert the source clip into the sequence at the current playhead position or replacing an existing selection, shifting the remainder up
/	overwrite the sequence, replacing an existing selection with the source clip. This performs a 3-point edit, ie. if you select in and out points in the sequence to be overwritten then the appropriate amount of material from the source clip will be used.
J, K and L	control playback
I and O	make a selection by marking In and Out points
Shift-I or O	clear the corresponding In or Out pont
X	select the current clip in the sequence (based on where the playhead is), ie. set In and Out points around the clip
Shift-X	clear the selection
F	Match frames, ie. jump to the frame in the trim window that corresponds to the current frame in the sequence window
Up and Down arrow	move to previous or next interesting time (edit point)
Ctrl/Cmd P	play the selection in a new window
Ctrl/Cmd + and -	zoom in and out of the timeline
Ctrl/Cmd \	automatically scale the timeline to fit window width
Ctrl/Cmd Z	undo the last edit

See the Sequence menu or hover the mouse over the buttons below the Source and Record windows for details of additional shortcuts (tool tips).

Some of these shortcuts apply to whichever one or other of the Source or Record windows has keyboard focus at the time. Click on the movie player or use Ctrl/Cmd-2 or Ctrl/Cmd-4 to switch between the two windows and observe which tab has a darker background.

Other functions that affect how the timeline is shown are available via the buttons below the timeline, including the size and number of thumbnails that are shown, and whether to use a static playhead when playing the sequence movie.

Printing sequences

There are two ways of printing the clips in a sequence, depening on whether you want to display the original source timecode or the timecode of the clip based on where it is placed within the sequence:

If you want to print the source timecode, open the tree navigator, choose the sequence you want (under the Sequences node), then right click and select View In New Window. You can then configure the type of view (List, Filmstrip or Grid, and which fields you want displayed) and use Print > Current View.
If you want to print the sequence timecode, again use the tree navigator but this time right click and choose View Clips before printing the current view.

Additional information

The In and Out point of a clip usage in a sequence refers to its timecode within the timeline. If you are interested in source timecode you can drag and drop (or copy and paste) a clip usage out from a sequence into a regular window and it will create a new secondary clip referring to the relevant source.

Once you have created a rough cut sequence in CatDV you can render it by exporting it as a movie. You can also export a sequence as an EDL or Final Cut Pro XML file for subsequent editing in your NLE editing application.

The original sequence editing dialog available in earlier versions of CatDV is still available if you right click on a sequence in the tree navigator and choose Edit In New Window.

Please note that the basic sequence editing provided in CatDV is not intended to replace a regular video editing application. CatDV provides cuts only editing, with no support for effects or transitions and only limited support for separate audio and video tracks, but in many cases this is all you need.

Marking and selecting clips

You can select clips in a catalog by clicking on them in the main window, holding down the shift or command/control keys to extend the selection, then copy and paste them as required.

Use Cut, Copy, Paste, Clear and Duplicate from the Edit menu to delete, move or copy selected clips (together with their thumbnails) between catalogs.
You can also delete selected clips by pressing the Delete key (Command-Backspace on some Mac keyboards).

If you want to copy or paste text within a text field you need to click and select within the text field then use Control-C/X/V (or Command-C/X/V on the Mac) from the keyboard.

Marking clips

Use the Mark check box to mark clips of interest or to save the state of a selection:

Unlike selections within a window (which are temporary), marks are saved in the catalog.
Use the Mark submenu to mark selected clips, toggle the mark for selected clips, and so on.
Use the Select submenu to select marked clips, invert a selection, and so on.

You can also mark clips as "good" or not ("no good", or as "maybe" if you are undecided) using the Good field:

From the main window you can use commands in the Mark submenu to mark selected clips as good or not.
When a clip is playing in the media dialog there are keyboard shortcuts you can use to mark it as good or not.
Use Select reviewed to select just those clips that are "good" or have otherwise been "reviewed", i.e. a selection (in2/out2) has been made.

Hiding clips

Clips may be flagged as being hidden so they don't normally appear in a catalog window. These clips are still part of the catalog, however, and are saved and loaded normally.

Hidden clips can be made visible temporarily by using the Show Hidden menu command (under the View menu).

You can change whether selected clips are hidden or not by using the Hide Selected or Unhide Selected menu commands, or by checking or unchecking the "Hidden" checkbox in the clip details.

When you import a DV movie with automatic scene detection selected, a master clip representing the movie file as a whole is created, as well as separate clips for each scene detected within that movie. In most cases you are likely to be interested in the scenes on a tape, rather than the capture files, so the clips representing the movie file are initially marked as hidden. You can also manually hide master clips after creating subclips from them.

Searching and filtering

There are a number of ways of searching and filtering clips.

Use the Quick Search field on the toolbar to filter the clips shown in the main window to those containing the keywords you type in. As you type more characters fewer clips are shown. (The Quick Search field works by searching the clip's name, notes, bin name, user columns, and metadata fields for each word you type in in turn.)

For more advanced searches you can use the Find command to search for clips based on one or more particular clip properties. You can either move to the next clip that matches the query or use it as a filter so that only those clips matching the filter condition are shown in a window.

A query or filter can have different types of conditions, all of which must be true for a clip to match:

Clip name, notes, etc. containing certain text
Date or timecode values before or after a particular value
Picklist properties (such as tape, bin, or format) matching one or more items from a list
Other conditions, such as testing whether a particular property is blank or not.

When searching you can move forward to the next clip matching the conditions, or search for all clips in one go (all clips that match will be selected). You can also create a new view containing just the matching clips.

When a filter is in effect only the clips that match the filter are shown. Press the filter button (or use the View > Filter... menu command) to toggle a filter on and off. You can also save named queries and then select a named filter to apply from the drop down list in the toolbar (Professional Edition only).

Grouping and Hiding clips are two other ways of excluding clips from being shown in a window, separate from and in addition to the regular filtering mechanism.

See the page on the enhanced query dialog for details of an alternative query dialog available in the Professional Edition.

Summary mode

In a normal view each row or thumbnail in the main window corresponds to precisely one clip in your catalog. In certain situations you might want a different view of your clips however. In a summary view the clips in your window are temporarily replaced by an alternative "consolidated" view.

There are three types of summary mode, which you can access via the View menu:

Clip Summaries
Source Media View
Thumbnail View

Switching to a summary view is just temporary and doesn't alter your original clips. You can toggle between a normal and summary view by pressing Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-S.

Clip summaries

Sometimes a catalog may contain overlapping or duplicated clip definitions, for example if you import logs from completed projects, or if you capture a tape in several segments.

Use a Clip Summaries view to temporarily combine clip segments and filter out duplicates (this is useful if you have imported clips from multiple sources, eg. as both movie files and projects)
Summary view usually provides a concise, non-overlapping summary of the contents of a tape.
You can Copy summary clips and then Paste them into a new catalog as normal clips.

If you capture a tape as a series of regular sized files (using Live Capture Plus or the Whole tape capture log for example) it's very unlikely that all the file boundaries will fall on an exact scene change boundary. Some scenes will end up spanning more than one imported clip therefore. There are different ways to combine these broken clip segments and join them into a single clip for each scene:

Display a Clip Summaries summary view.
Use the Auto-join DV clips if scenes are split across files Preference option to automatically join clip segments at the time of importing a DV movie
Use the Join DV Scene Fragments tool to clean up selected DV clips by automatically merging any start & end segments that come from separate media files but are known to belong to the same scene. This command also tidies the catalog by removing the original long capture clips from the catalog (leaving just the detected scenes).
Use the Merge command to manually merge two or more contiguous clips into one.

Some of these commands only work on DV clips because DV files contain the timecode encoded in each frame and also include start and end of scene boundary information.

How summary mode works

The changes made by summary mode only affect how clips are displayed and exported. The original clips in the catalog are not altered, so you can safely toggle in and out of summary view as required. Clip Summary mode displays a concise description of the scenes on a tape as follows:

If a catalog has several clips with the same in and out value (eg. from different projects) these are merged into one
If you captured several long clips, each of which contains several scenes, the long clips are hidden and only the scenes are listed
If a single scene is split in two because it was captured as two files these sections are joined up.

Other summary modes:

Source Media View shows precisely one clip for each source media file.
Each clip can have any number of thumbnails associated with it. Normally only one thumbnail, the poster thumbnail, is shown for each clip. In a Thumbnail View each thumbnail in the catalog is shown as a separate "clip".

Grouping mode

Use grouping mode to view all the clips in a catalog by tape, bin, or other picklist property. Select the property to group by from the drop down list at the left of the window, then select the particular item to view.

Press the grouping toolbar button to toggle grouping on and off (you can have one or two grouping columns, shown at the left of the window, or turn off grouping altogether).
Select the property to group by (eg. 'Date') from the drop down list. A list of all the distinct dates recording dates contained in the catalog is then shown.
Click on a value in that list. Only those clips from that date are shown.
Grouping is also available via the tree navigator.

More advanced operations are possible:

With two grouping columns you can quickly correlate two sets of grouping properties, for example find all the tapes which contain recordings at 32kHz, or see the range of dates covered by stills in a particular folder.
To rename an entire existing tape or bin name, click on that item in the grouping list and type in a new name.
As a convenient way of editing many clips in one go you can drag and drop selected clips onto another tape or bin name to change that value for all of them.
You can create your own user-defined grouping properties in the User Columns Preferences tab.
Similarly, you can select which metadata columns to group on in the Metadata Columns Preferences tab.

Multi-grouping attributes can also be configured for user-defined columns via Preferences. This feature is designed for things like keywords, where more than one keyword might apply to the same clip. When grouping all the distinct keywords are shown and the same clip might appear under more than one keyword.

Printing

You can print reports from a catalog consisting of all the clips in the current view:

Use Print > Current View to print the current window, whether in list, film strip or grid view.
Use Print > Single Page Index Sheet to print a single page "contact sheet" of a particular tape as a grid view. As many clips as will fit on one page are automatically chosen to be as representative as possible of the tape. (To select the tape to be printed use Group by tape and click on the tape you want.)
Use Print > Selected Images to print out the selected images or posters at the maximum available resolution. (The image is taken from thumbnails, previews or original media, depending on what is available). Print as many images as possible on each sheet of paper, and automatically switch individual images between landscape and portrait to maximise the print area.
Use Print > HTML Formatted to print the current window or selected clips as an HTML formatted page. This type of printout is particularly suited to printing long log notes as they will flow over multiple lines. The basic print layout is fixed but which fields are printed and whether to include the poster thumbnail or not is determined from the current view.

You can also print complete details of an individual clip by bringing up the Clip Summary window and pressing the Print toolbar button.

To adjust the appearance of printouts you can:

Choose a different type of view (list or grid).
Select a percentage reduction in your print settings dialog and then print a large grid view for higher resolution.
Use Page Setup to select a different page orientation or percentage reduction.
Adjust the font and inter-cell spacing in Preferences.
Enter a custom title in Preferences to be used as the main title or as a custom footer (eg. a copyright notice or contact details if you plan to give printouts to clients).
Suppress the printing of clip type and preview available icons when printing a list view by an advanced Preferences option.

You can also export clips as HTML or text and print them from an external application such as your web browser or a word processor (for example, if you have large amount of text and want it all to flow on the page rather than be truncated to fit in a fixed row height).

Preferences

Use the Preferences dialog to enter your registration details and change user preferences. There are a large number of settings, arranged in different pages or tabs for convenience. You can use the Next and Previous buttons to cycle through them, or Defaults to restore selected settings back to their recommended default values.

General tab: Whether to interpret timecode in a log file as PAL or NTSC; the format for displaying dates and times; whether to create a backup copy when saving catalogs; whether to hide less commonly used menu commands or show a simplified toolbar in the main window.
Import tab: Whether to recursively scan subdirectories when importing a directory; whether to combine clips with the same tape name, in and out values into a single clip reference; whether to perform scene detection based on changes in time stamp or image contents (check both for automatic operation); what naming scheme to use when automatically generating clips for each scene; whether to import clips based strictly on the DV timecode information embedded in the media (ie. whether to favour the DV or QuickTime timecode if they differ); whether to automatically combine start and end segments of a DV clip that spans more than one capture file.
Previews & Thumbnails tab: What size and quality settings to use when creating preview movies (use one of the presets, or customise your own in the Professional Edition); whether to use tape- or path-based previews; whether to display a preview instead if the original movie is unavailable; whether to generate thumbnails for imported media; what size thumbnails to create; whether to use the midpoint or start of clip as initial default poster; whether to create thumbnails on the first/last frame or inset by 5% (for shots that fade in from black).
Media Search Paths tab: The directory for creating tape-based previews and additional preview directories to search when locating preview movies for a tape (you can include the directory where self-contained archives are stored to search those also). Specify equivalent media directories for path-based previews and to automatically locate media files (define mappings from the path as stored in the catalog to where the files are physically located on the local machine).
Play Media tab: Whether to start playing a movie automatically; whether to automatically double the size of small movies or images; how fast should slide shows be shown; whether to use jog or shuttle keyboard controls (Professional Edition only).
User Columns tab: Specify names for user-defined columns or create additional columns (Professional Edition only). The FCP Preset button automatically sets user column names to match Final Cut Pro. Define whether the column is used for grouping or not.
Pick Lists tab: View or edit the values that appear in drop down lists when editing grouping columns. If an attribute is extensible you can type in new values, otherwise you are restricted to values in the list. Auto-populate means values you type in are automatically remembered.
Metadata Columns tab: Choose whether metadata fields such as copyright and author information (extracted from the original media file from QuickTime user data, Exif and ID3 tags, or WMV/ASF attributes) are displayed as normal columns. Control how individual fields are used, or press Cmd-Delete to delete a field altogether.
User Interface tab: Whether to open last catalog when launching CatDV; explicitly specify the default view and grouping when a window is first opened or whether these should automatically be the same as the previous window; define whether the media or details dialog is shown when double clicking on a clip; whether to use the advanced query dialog for searches within a catalog (Professional Edition).
Customise Views & Customise Details Panel tabs: Create or modify view definitions. In the Professional Edition you can customise fields shown in the clip details panel also.
Printing tab: What fonts and margins to use when printing (top, bottom, left and right); how much extra spacing to leave around cells; any custom title to be used.
Export tab: What line ending character to use when exporting batch logs; whether to use the whole clip or a selection within the clip when exporting clips; whether to prefix the name of exported movie files with the tape or bin name (or create subdirectories based on these names); what duration to apply to still images when exported as a movie or added to a sequence; the custom footer to include on each page when exporting HTML.
Advanced User Interface tab: Select the look and feel of the application; whether imports (and similar operations) can take place as a background activity; whether renaming a clip or changing its bin also renames or moves the media file; whether to keep the details dialog on top of the main window at all times; preferred units for displaying data rate; which import and export menu command should have a keyboard shortcut; whether to play WMV files using QuickTime/Flip4Mac or an external application; automatic save interval; whether to enable commands that publish data to the server; whether clicking on a directory in the tree navigator automatically analyses the files.
Advanced Functionality tab: Options that control how files are imported and other advanced functionality, including: whether debug messages are written to the log file; how much detail to use when importing OMFI and Cinestream files; whether to import a media file even if it gives a QuickTime error; whether to completely disregard timecode embedded in DV movies; how to decide the timecode format for imported formats; whether to import audio tracks from FCP XML files; whether to import unknown file types as 'generic' files; whether Build Preview Movies should automatically add a timecode track.
Registration tab: Enter the name and registration code you were sent to register CatDV, or clear an existing registration. It is easiest to copy both lines from your registration email and press the Paste button.

Tools

Various useful utility commands are provided in the Tools menu. (Some of these commands are only available in the Professional Edition, and only if you enable Advanced menus via Preferences.)

Use Bulk Edit as a flexible tool to copy one field to another or automatically renumber clips. Select the destination field whose value you want to set, then either type in a fixed value to use or select another property to copy or move to the destination. To use automatic numbering type in a value like "Scene 009" and the next line will automatically be incremented to "Scene 010" etc.
Use Search and Replace to correct errors in logging fields. With regular expressions you can apply complex transformations to the text. (Professional Edition only)
Use Apply Timecode Offset to adjust the timecode values of selected clips by a fixed amount (for example to recapture from a program tape after printing to video, as this will have different timecode assigned by the camcorder).
Use Timezone Adjustment to specify how the camera clock was set and what timezone was in effect at the shot location. These may be different (if you travel without changing the camera clock) and an adjustment is therefore necessary if you want to display the time correctly in GMT (GMT date) or in local time (Location date). It is also possible to apply a camera clock adjustment to allow shots taken by different cameras to be synchronized and accurately compared based on the record date. (Professional Edition only).
Use the Timecode Calculator to add or subtract timecode values, convert between hours, minutes, seconds and frames, or divide one time into another. A "paper tape" printout of all your calculations is displayed.
Use Find Similar to find duplicate clips.
Use Whole Tape Capture Log to create clip definitions of equal size spanning a tape. These can be exported as a capture log to capture an entire tape unattended if your NLE editing software has batch capture but no command to capture a whole tape.
Use Convert To Text to concatenate all the Name and Notes fields of selected clips, eg. to copy and paste the text into a word processor.
Use Detect Scenes to manually perform DV timestamp-based or analog (visual frame differencing) scene detection on selected clips after they have been imported into a catalog. New secondary clips are created for each scene within the first clip. The sensitivity of the the detection can be adjusted. (Professional Edition only).
Use Verbatim Logger to type in log notes and insert timecode markers while a clip is playing. Use this to prepare a transcript or to create subclips starting at each marker you enter. (Professional Edition only)
Re-Analyse Media analyses a media file as if you had just imported it but will preserve any metadata you have previously added to the clip.
Commands to create sequences and metaclips are described elsewhere.

Other features

Catalog Details shows who last modified the catalog and when. It also shows certain statistics about the current catalog, such as how much memory is being used by the application, mainly intended for diagnostic purposes.
New Log Entry will create a new empty clip for you to type in In and Out values manually.
The Help menu has shortcuts to display the table of contents and index in the online help, to display the license agreement and release notes for the application, and to jump to the CatDV web site in your default web browser to check for application updates.
To split a large DV capture file into separate files for each scene, or to trim unwanted material from the capture files, first create clips for each scene you want and make selections within them. Then select the clips you want to keep and use Consolidate Footage. This will write a separate self contained movie file for each clip before deleting the original capture files.
Utility commands that apply to media files are discussed in the next section.

Source media management

A clip in CatDV can represent either a complete media file on disk or a particular clip or scene within a movie or on a tape. This means that not all clips will refer to a media file, and sometimes you may have more than one clip referring to different parts of the same media file (if you have created subclips with the Detect Scenes command for example). You can switch to View>Summary Mode>Source Media View to temporarily consolidate your view and show precisely one clip for each source media file.

Locating media files

A source media file need not remain online on disk once it has been imported into a catalog (though obviously you won't be able to play the media file if it no longer exists or can't be found). CatDV stores the last known location of the media file. The following commands affect the media path:

Update Media Location is used when you have renamed or moved an existing media file on disk and need to tell CatDV the new location so it can play the media. If you have moved an entire directory you normally only need to locate the first file. Any other clips which have been similarly affected are updated automatically.
Attach Media, by contrast, is used to attach a clip to a completely new media file, after it's been re-digitised for example, or if the clip was never associated with a media file in the first place.

If a directory or volume has been renamed or moved then CatDV remembers this. It keeps a list of original and current locations (under the Media Search Paths tab in Preferences) which it can use in future to automatically locate a file that has moved. Knowing that two paths are equivalent is particular useful if you work in mixed environments, where S:\Media and /Volumes/Shared/Media for example might actually refer to same folder. This enables CatDV to automatically locate and play the media file even if the catalog stores the old location.

Managing media files

A number of commands in the Media menu can be used to manipulate the media file referred to by a clip:

Delete Media Files will delete the media files for selected clips from disk and then also delete the corresponding clips from the catalog.
With Move Media Files you can select a new directory and then move the selected media files there. (If you selected a single clip you can enter a new name to rename the media file.) You can also Copy Media Files.
By default the clip Name corresponds to the media file name and the Bin to the parent folder containing the media file. If you edit the clip Name or Bin you will be asked if you want to apply the corresponding move to the source media file (assuming the Auto rename files option is set in Preferences).
Use Consolidate Footage to trim unused material from the source media by saving a self-contained (flattened) movie of the selection (in2/out2) within each clip and then deleting the original source movies. (This only applies to DV movies. The assumption is that DV footage can always be batch recaptured based on the original timecode and it is therefore safe to delete the source media.)
Reveal In Finder (or Show Parent Directory under Windows) will show the location of the media file.
Launch In Default App will attempt to open the media file using whatever external application is associated with that file type. You can also drag a clip out of the CatDV main window onto an external application icon (exactly as if you were dragging a document icon in the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer).
With the tree navigator showing you can drag a clip onto a directory in the file system to move the media file (hold down the Alt/Option key to copy the file instead). You can also create, delete or rename folders by right clicking on nodes in the File System tree.

Previews and thumbnails

If a media file is not currently available CatDV normally falls back automatically to play a low-res preview version of the file instead.

Use Build Preview Movies to build preview movies for selected clips from the source movies using the current settings selected in Preferences.
Use Manage Preview Movies to see which preview files are available, or to delete or rename the previews for a tape.
Use Build Thumbnails to build new thumbnails for selected clips, eg. after changing the thumbnail size.

Manipulating QuickTime movies

While CatDV can catalog and play back many types of media file, including MPEG, AVI and MP4, some features are specific to QuickTime .MOV files.

Add Timecode Track will add (or replace) a timecode track to the movie based on the tape name and In timecode value of the clip. This simplifies using these movies in other QuickTime-aware applications. (Use the Manage Preview Movies command to add timecode to a preview movie, and see the section on exporting movies for details on how to add a text track.)
Adjust Frame Size allows you to adjust the playback size of one or more QuickTime movies. This can be useful if a movie plays at the wrong aspect ratio when imported into another application. Note that only the playback size is affected, it does not re-render the movie.

The commands above will directly modify the QuickTime movie itself to affect how they play in other applications (they don't re-render the media however, just change some movie settings).

You can also affect how media files are displayed within CatDV using the Rotate Left, Rotate Right and Toggle Widescreen commands, and by editing the Aspect ratio field for a clip. This information is stored in the CatDV catalog and doesn't alter the media file.

Media file metadata

CatDV provides detailed information about virtually any kind of media file that you import into a catalog, including stills, audio files, and other formats, not just DV movies.

All the metadata (ie. information about the file, as opposed to the media content of the file itself) that CatDV reads from a file is extracted at the time of import and stored in the CatDV catalog. It is displayed in special properties against each clip and is cached in the catalog so is available even if the media file is offline.

This information can be very useful when searching for clips, when grouping similar clips together, or when diagnosing problems with particular files. A wide variety of metadata fields are available, though which are shown depends on the type of file.

General metadata

The following properties are potentially applicable to any type of media file:

Video	A summary of the format of the visual track, including the codec, frame size and frame rate. (If there are several video tracks the overall frame size of the movie is shown.)
Audio	A summary of the format of the audio track, including codec and sample rate.
Importer	Details of which QuickTime importer is used to read the file, ie. whether it's a QuickTime .MOV file or another format that needs to be imported into QuickTime.
Format	A concise summary of the format, based on the Importer, Video and Audio fields.
QT Tracks	A list of all the tracks in the file, as reported by QuickTime. The 4 character type and subtype codes are shown, eg. "vide/jpeg" is a JPEG video track, while "soun/musi" is a MIDI music track. The size in pixels (Width x Height), the number of samples, and the duration of the track is shown. If a track has a name or is disabled this is indicated also.
Metadata	Any QuickTime user data or Windows Media metadata, such as movie title or copyright annotations, that might be stored in the file is shown here in concatenated form. This field also shows metadata such as JPEG comments, ID3 tags from MP3 files such as artist and track, and Exif tags. (See below).
Type	The clip type icon indicates whether a clip is a DV clip, a still, an audio clip, an interactive file (eg. Flash or QuickTime VR), or other movie.
Aspect Ratio	The aspect ratio of the visual frame. In the case of DV the intended display size (4:3 or 16:9) is shown, taking into account the non-square pixel size, even though this won't match the ratio of the frame size.
Frame rate	The frame rate of the visual track, if known, or an indication if this file is a still.
Frame size	The normal display size of the movie in pixels, after any transformation matrix has been applied. (By contrast, the unscaled size of each track is shown in QT Tracks.)
Audio Rate	The audio sample rate (this is extracted from the Audio column and made available separately so it can be used for grouping).
Import Notes	If anything unusual about the file is detected, such as audio and video tracks that differ in length or don't seem to relate correctly to the number of media samples, or if there are problems with the timecode, then a warning message may be displayed here.
Duration	The duration of the media file. The timecode format used depends on the file.
In (and Out)	If the file has a timecode track then the in and out points use this timecode information, otherwise each media file is assumed to start at 0:00:00
Media path	The last known location on disk of the source media file.
Media date	The modification time of the source media file (typically the time the file was captured or digitized, as opposed to the original record date.)
Media size	The physical size of the source media file in kilobytes or MB. (This is the size of the media file as a whole, not the size for a particular scene.)
Data rate	The average data rate of the media. You can choose which units are used for displaying data rates in Preferences.

DV metadata

The following fields have special meaning for DV clips:

Aux T/C	Additional user-settable or time of day timecode supported by some cameras. (Professional Edition only)
DV T/C	The timecode value at the start of each clip as stored in the DV data itself (this may be different from the QuickTime timecode track).
Exposure	Camera exposure details recorded in the DV data at the time of recording by some camera models.
Format	A summary of the format, such as whether PAL or NTSC, widescreen or normal, and locked or unlocked audio. In the case of DV this field is based on the DV data itself, not on what QuickTime reports. For example, if a captured movie file has been conformed by rendering a new audio track then the Format field might report that the original recording was at 32kHz even though the Audio field reports that the movie has a 48kHz audio track.
Record Date	The original date and time of recording, stored in the DV data (assuming the clock on the camera was set correctly at the time of recroding).

Exif metadata

The following fields have special meaning for JPEG and TIFF files with Exif metadata:

Exposure	A summary of the Exif exposure details (if present). The EV (exposure value) number combines the aperture and exposure times and gives an approximate indication of the overall light intensity in the scene, assuming the shot was exposed correctly and the camera has equivalent sensitivity to ISO100 film. (Typically EV0 would correspond to almost complete darkness, while EV18 might be a pure white object in very bright sunshine.)
Metadata	This lists all the Exif tags commonly recorded by a digital camera, such as camera make and model, exposure time, whether flash was used, etc.
Record Date	If the Exif data has a DateTimeOriginal or CreationDate tag then this value is extracted and stored in the Rec Date field.

Media Information dialog

All the metadata properties above are extracted at the time of import and stored in the catalog, whether or not the media file is still online. If the media file is available you can also call up the Media Information dialog to display slightly more detailed technical information about the file, including a summary of the duration of individual frames in time units. Some movie file formats have variable length frames, but if a DV file has variable durations this generally indicates that dropped frames occurred during capture.

Metadata columns

The 'Metadata' field shows all the QuickTime user data (and other textual annotations that's read from a file) together in concatenated form in one field. If you check the Enable metadata columns box in Preferences you can display each metadata tag as a separate column (this only affects how the columns are displayed, not how they're stored, so it's safe to change this option at any time).

The number of possible field names is almost infinite and depends on the files you import but can include:

Title, Album, Artist, AlbumArtist, Genre, Track and Year for MP3 and iTunes audio files.
Name, Copyright, Producer, Software and similar annotations for QuickTime movies
Make, Model, ExposureTime, ExposureProgram, FocalLength etc. for Exif images
Title, Copyright, Information, Language for WMV or WMA files

In the Metadata Columns section of Preferences you can choose whether particular columns are shown or not and whether they are used for grouping.

Supported file formats

CatDV supports the following media file formats:

QuickTime file formats

Natively, CatDV uses QuickTime for its media playback support. It will therefore play back and export files in any format supported by QuickTime 7, including:

QuickTime .MOV files, with various codecs (Animation, Cinepak, Sorenson Video 3, M-JPEG, OfflineRT, DV/DVCPro, H.263, amongst others).
Raw DV streams
AVI files, with certain codecs only (primarily Cinepak, JPEG, and DV)
MPEG-4 files, with various codecs (MPEG-4 Video, H.264, 3GP, etc)
MPEG-1 files (import only)
Still image formats (including JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG, JPEG2000 and PSD)
Audio formats (including MP3, WAV, AU, AIFF)
Other files such as Flash SWF, or PDF documents (Mac only)

Additional QuickTime codecs

The above formats are available as standard with QuickTime. It is possible to extend the formats available to QuickTime by installing additional codecs, for example:

Installing Apple Final Cut Pro adds the Pixlet, Apple Intermediate, HDV codecs (Mac)
Purchasing the Apple MPEG-2 component adds support for importing MPEG-2 program streams, including region free DVDs (Mac & PC)
Installing Roxio Toast adds support for exporting MPEG-1 VCDs (Mac)
Adding the DivX QuickTime component adds support for importing and exporting DivX AVIs
The Intel Indeo codec is often available if you install a multimedia CDROM that includes such content
Flip4Mac have QuickTime components to support WMV and Sony XDCAM MXF files (Mac)
mxf4mac is another component that provides MXF support, including for Panasonic P2 files (Mac)
Perian is a free QuickTime component that adds support for many additional formats (Mac)

OMF Files

With the Professional Edition you can use "Import As OMFI File" to import metadata from OMF media files. These files include both media and program information and may result in one or more clips and sequences being created. (In addition to the Name, Tape, Notes and Bin fields, several of the user fields are used when importing an OMF file: User 1 is set to the Project name, User 2 to the File name, User 3 to the Tracks, and User 4 to the UID identifier for the media object.)

There are two advanced Preferences options that affect how OMF files (and other files that contain sequence information) are imported: whether any sequence information is imported at all, and whether additional sequences are created for audio tracks, rather than just the main video track.

If the OMF file contains DV media (DV25) or Motion JPEG then a thumbnail image is extracted for the clip and the video can be played and exported from within CatDV.

WMV/ASF Windows Media files

CatDV will import WMV, ASF and WMA files if you use the "Import As Windows Media File" command. CatDV analyses these files and extracts metadata such as audio and video codec, author and copyright notices from the file. Under Windows, if a Thumbs.db file is present in the directory then CatDV will load a thumbnail for the clip.

Playback within CatDV is not directly supported, but double clicking a WMV file will normally launch an external application (such as Windows Media Player, VLC or MPlayer) to play the file.

If you install the Flip4Mac component, however, then you can play back WMV files within CatDV, and treat them like any other QuickTime-supported file, for example use the Export As Movie to convert them to another format. (Flip4Mac is available for Mac OS X only.)

The advanced preference option "Play WMV/ASF files" controls whether CatDV attempts to open such files in QuickTime or not.

Other file formats

CatDV understands several file formats that can contain clip information, such as batch logs, Final Cut Pro XML files and EDLs. When you import one of these recognised formats a clip is created for each entry in the file.

With the Professional Edition, you also have the option to import arbitrary non-media files, such as text files, Word documents, spreadsheets, project files, and so on:

To import non-media files you need to enable the Import all types of document option in Preferences.
A generic CatDV clip record is created for each such file. You can add your own comments and log notes to this record, and thus catalog all the supporting files needed for a project in the same way as your media files.
You can launch the file in its default application (as if you double clicked it in the Finder or Windows Explorer) with CatDV's Open With Default App command.
To help you search for non-media files in your catalog, any characters that look like meaningful text that is found near the start of the file is automatically extracted and stored in the Notes field. (Even though the file itself will often be in an inscrutable binary format it is common for useful text such as author or title of the document to appear in a header near the top of the document.)

Import warnings

When importing movies several consistency checks are applied and a warning message may be displayed in the Import Notes column under various circumstances. The most common messages and their meanings are shown below. (These warnings are fairly technical in nature and can usually be ignored.)

Timecode jump: This indicates that the DV timecode in the captured movie is not strictly continuous, either because the original source tape has a timecode discontinuity, because frames were dropped during capture, or possibly because data corruption occurred or the movie was edited or rendered by computer. If the 'strictly base clips on captured DV media' import option is on each continuous segment is processed separately during import into CatDV.
Dropped frame(s) between ? and ? Repeated frame(s) between ? and ?: These indicate shorter timecode errors of just a few frames. CatDV treats these differently and does not automatically create a new clip at each point.
Timecode differs (DV/QT=?): There are two ways to determine the timecode for a particular DV frame: either based on the QuickTime 'timecode' track or on the digital data stored in the DV stream itself. Usually these will give the same result but if you have dropped frames or other anomalies occurred during capture the results may be different and CatDV displays a warning during import. If you have set the 'strict' import option then CatDV will always try to use the DV timecode and generate new clips whenever it detects a jump, otherwise it uses QuickTime's concept of the timecode (which may agree more with what other applications use) and displays the DV timecode for reference in the DV T/C field.
Incorrect length (? short of ?): This means the length of the media in the movie does not match the overall length reported by QuickTime for the movie as a whole. This can occur if frames were dropped during capture but other frames are stretched out to maintain the overall movie length. Sometimes the movie is reported as being longer than it really is and the last frame appears as one long frozen still, stretching out to give the movie its overall length. In this case the length that QuickTime thinks the movie is is shown in the message but the clip in CatDV will be shorter and reflect the media that is actually present.
Audio sample rate mismatch: If a DV movie has a separate audio track this message indicates that the sample rate of the audio track doesn't agree with that originally recorded in the DV stream. This can happen if the audio was resampled during capture, or if you capture a clip where the audio sample rate changes mid way through, in which case QuickTime can sometimes get confused about the sample rate and create an unplayable audio track.
Unstable frame at start Skipping unstable frame(s) at ?: When the camcorder starts recording a new scene the tape may not have stabilised fully and the DV data in the first frame or two may not have a valid timecode or date/timestamp. Where possible, the unstable data is ignored and the first valid date or timecode is used instead.
Video and Audio differ by ? seconds: This means the audio track is shorter than the video track by the amount shown. This may indicate dropped frames or some other capture problem, but it could also mean that the movie was edited or rendered, or that the camcorder doesn't precisely lock audio and video samples.
? fps invalid for PAL/NTSC DV: This indicates that the frame rate is not exactly 25 or 29.97/30 fps for PAL or NTSC respectively, perhaps because the movie was rendered by computer rather than captured with a camera, or because frames were dropped during capture.
Average ? doesn't match nominal ? fps: The average frame rate (total number of frames divided by movie duration) doesn't match the typical frame rate (this could mean the movie has some dropped frames).

Many of these messages only apply to the clip representing the movie as a whole, which is hidden by default. You should therefore show hidden clips if you are trying to diagnose capture or import problems. You can also use the Media Information dialog to display more details about a media file.

Controlling how movies are imported

Use the 'Strictly base clips on captured DV media' preferences option (which is on by default) to:

produce a log that precisely matches the DV data, even if there are dropped frames or timecode discontinuities which might mean there are gaps in the captured media;
ignore any QuickTime timecode track and read the timecode from the DV stream instead;
ignore the movie length as reported by QuickTime and use the length of the media itself instead (bypassing an issue affecting some capture applications where the movie may be reported as being longer than it really is).

Turn off the 'strict' option:

if you are unlikely to batch recapture the material from DV tape and it's more important to reflect the file in its currently captured state;
for improved compatibility with other applications which are likely just to use the QuickTime information;
if you don't want each timecode sequence to result in a separate clip.

If you get a warning about average and nominal fps not matching and the clip appears to have wrong timecode format try toggling the "Timecode format" advanced preference option. For DV files CatDV can determine the correct format easily but for other files it can base it on the average frame rate or the nominal frame rate (time scale / nominal frame duration).

You should not normally use the "Ignore DV timecode" option but if you do then CatDV will treat DV files as ordinary QuickTime files.

Preview presets

When you use the Build Preview Movies command low resolution preview movies are created from your source movies to use even when the original source media is offline.

The following compression presets are available. The approximate file size for one hour of preview footage at 160x120 resolution is shown in each case. (In the Professional Edition you also have a full frame rate Offline RT preset, and can create your own customised preview settings using any available QuickTime compressor.)

Balanced: Video: Sorenson 3, 8 fps, medium quality. Audio: Qualcomm PureVoice 22kHz. (110 MB/hr)
Speed: Video: Motion JPEG, 6 fps, low quality. Audio: IMA 4:1 11kHz. (110 MB/hr)
Quality: Video: Sorenson, 12.5 fps, medium quality. Audio: QDesign Music 22KHz. (140 MB/hr)
Speed + Quality: Video: Motion JPEG, 8 fps, medium quality. Audio: IMA 4:1 22kHz. (250 MB/hr)
File Size: Video: Sorenson, 6 fps, low quality. Audio: QDesign Music 22kHz. (30 MB/hr)
Speed + File Size: Video: Motion JPEG, 5 fps, least quality. Audio: IMA 4:1 11kHz. (80 MB/hr)
Quality + File Size: Video: Sorenson, 8 fps, medium/low quality. Audio: QDesign Music 22kHz. (75 MB/hr)
Balanced (fast): Video: Motion JPEG, 8 fps, low quality. Audio: QDesign Music 11kHz. (125 MB/hr)
MPEG-4: Full frame rate ISMA MP4 (at 550 or 300 MB/hr)

The difference in time to compress between the speed optimised and normal presets can be a factor of five or more, but with a corresponding difference in the resulting file size and quality.

Note that you should not access the preview files from the preview directory directly. They are private to CatDV - this is why they have obscure names like "25,123,4210,64x.mov". Instead, use the Export As Movie(s) command, where you can choose to export existing previews as either reference or self contained movies without recompressing them.

Managing multiple catalogs

If you have a large number of clips you may find it convenient to create several separate catalog files, for example one per tape or per project. When you open a catalog all the clips from that catalog are loaded into memory so performance may degrade if you have excessively large catalogs, especially if you use large thumbnails.

Use the Browse Catalogs command to list all the catalog files in a directory, together with a summary of their contents:

Press the Choose button to select the directory where your catalogs are saved.
All the catalog files are listed, together with the total number of clips in each catalog.
Other fields show the catalog descriptions, the tape names used in each catalog, and what range of dates they cover. Both the original date of recording (if known) and the last modification time of the imported files are shown (the latter might indicate when the media was captured or the project was worked on).
Double click a line or use the Open Catalog button to open the desired catalog.

When a catalog is open you can use the Catalog Details command to enter a brief descriptive comment about the catalog. This description is listed in the Browse Catalogs window to help you determine the correct catalog to open.

Searching catalogs

You can search all the catalogs in a directory looking for particular keywords:

Type in some keywords and press the Search button to show which catalogs contain particular logging keywords. The clip name, bin, notes and user defined fields of all the clips are searched, as well as the catalog description.
The total number of clips in the catalog is shown, together with the number that match your chosen keywords.

With the optional CatDV Workgroup Server you can also publish catalogs into a relational database and perform much more sophisticated queries, at the granularity of individual clips rather than entire catalogs.

Memory management

If you have very large catalogs open you might occasionally run out of memory. There are several things you can do:

Switch to a view with smaller thumbnails, or the 'Concise' view with no thumbnails shown at all. Displaying and caching thumbnails at different sizes is the main thing that uses up memory.
Double click on the memory indicator in the bottom right of the main window. This will flush memory and display statistics on how much memory is being used.
Edit your preferences to create fewer and/or smaller thumbnails.
Split your catalog into smaller catalogs as detailed above.
Increase the memory allocation via Advanced preferences and restart the application (Mac only).

Identifying clips

CatDV can deal with clip records that come from a variety of sources, for example importing a media file or batch log, and you might do things like export a clip to another application then re-import it. The question then arises of when are two clips the "same" or not?

A number of different fields in CatDV can be used to identify a clip:

Clip ID: This is a new general purpose clip reference field. You can choose to have clip IDs assigned automatically (it will get a random number calculated from the clip name and the time the clip was first imported) or assign them manually if you have an existing library system or want to refer to external catalog of assets. You don't have to use this field, you can leave it blank and you can have multiple clips with the same clip reference if that makes sense in your system.
File Hash: Whenever you import a file into CatDV a checksum is calculated based on the file contents. Although not guaranteed to be unique, it is unlikely that two files will have the same file hash unless they have the same contents. If a file has been renamed or moved, or there are 2 copies in different places, the file hash indicates they are really the same. (If you open an older catalog which doesn't include the file hash you can calculate it using the Tools > Re-Analyse Media command.)
Media Signature: This is always calculated automatically and is based on the media that the clip refers to. In the case of movies with a timecode track or clips that refer to a tape it will be based on the tape name and timecode, in the case of other media files it will be based on the file name and file length. In most cases, if you have two clips that refer to the same piece of media they will have the media signature, even if the clips themselves are named differently or the media file has been moved or is offline.
Remote Object ID: Finally, when a clip is saved to the CatDV server it is assigned a unique numeric id in the database. This number is not displayed on the client application but may appear if you use the Live HTML Publisher, for example.

Find Duplicate Clips

The Tools > Find Similar command will find duplicate clips which are similar to the selected clips based on a particular attribute. It will either search all the open catalogs in memory or compare the current catalog with the CatDV server. For example, you might compare on File Hash or Media Signature to see if anyone has already imported a particular media file.

Image sequences and metaclips

The Professional Edition has automatic support for image sequences, where folders of consecutively numbered still images (such as might be produced by animation software) are treated as a movie.

An image sequence is a special type of clip that has references to all the images within it. An image sequence is created automatically when you import a directory if all the files within it appear to be numbered consecutively starting from zero. You can also create an image sequence manually using the Import As Image Sequence command, available in the File menu or by right clicking on a folder in the file system tree.

Several settings in the advanced tab of Preferences relate to image sequences:

The Image sequence file filter is a filename pattern that must occur in a directory for it to be automatically treated as an image sequence. (If you leave it blank the files must be numbered starting from 0 or 1. If you set it to '.jpg' any folder containing 4 or more consecutively numbered JPEGs will be accepted, and so on.) Set this option to 'disable' to turn off automatic image sequence detection altogether.
The Image seqence frame rate is the default frame rate. You can edit it subsequently by editing the Frame Rate value of the image sequence metaclip.
If you set the Create reference movies option then CatDV will attempt to create a QuickTime reference movie representing the entire image sequence whenever you import an image sequence into the catalog. The reference movie has the name of the sequence followed by '#Ref.mov' and is placed alongside the image files. Although CatDV can play the image sequence without needing this file, it is useful to have a reference movie if you want to use the image sequence in another application.

If image files are added (or removed from) the directory then the image sequence is updated automatically.

Metaclips

Image sequences are a special type of metaclip. To reduce "clutter" in a catalog, or group clips or files together which should always be treated as one, you can "collapse" or "stack" a number of clips into a single metaclip.

Do this by selecting the clips you want to combine and using the Convert To Metaclip command. The clips then appear as a single metaclip. You can view the individual clips within a metaclip by selecting it in the Metaclips folder in the tree navigator, and can remove a metaclip and detach all the clips so they reappear in the catalog again by right clicking on the metaclip in the tree. You can also rearrange the order of clips in a metaclip, move new clips to it, or detach individual clips by dragging and dropping clips and using the tree navigator.

Using the tree navigator (right click on the project node) you can import a Final Cut project as a metaclip containing the project file and all the clips and sequences within the project.

New features in CatDV 7

New pro-look appearance (dark grey background) to make prolonged working more comfortable (choose between 'classic' and 'pro' colour schemes in the User Interface tab of Preferences)
The main clip type icon now indicates whether a movie is a master or sub-clip and whether it is online or not.
The Reset View command removes filters and temporary clip views to quickly restore the view to a known state where you can see all the clips in a catalog.
A new preferences option lets you preserve pitch when playing movies at different speeds (for example using JKL jog-shuttle controls or in the new verbatim logger)
Improved sequence editing, including a new static playhead option. Sequences now respect the aspect ratio of the first clip within them. A new Match Frame command (f key) will locate the current sequence frame within the corresponding source clip. Sequences can now support multiple tracks.
Support for Image sequences and metaclips (Pro version only)
New clip ID field and Find Similar command
Tree navigator now shows a Recently Added node to quickly identify the last clips to be imported or the scenes created when you use the Detect Scenes command
Other improvements to the tree navigator, such as listing which Final Cut projects are currently open (Mac only), improved handling of file system tree nodes, ability to create new bins and customise which 'Group By' attributes are shown
A new clip Scratch Pad allows you to build up a temporary collection of clips of interest. These clips can come from different catalogs, as a result of querying the server, from browsing the file system, and so on. Simply drag clips to the Scratch Pad node in the tree navigator or use the Scratch Pad tab of the Clip Details panel to add them to the scratch pad.
It is possible to move media files across file systems by dragging them to another node in the file system tree. To copy them, hold down the Alt key while you drag.
Greater flexibility in locating preview movies (they can now be based on the full file path, as well as on tape name and timecode).
When playing a movie in the clip details panel a new movie slider lets you mark In and Out points and displays the location of any timecode event markers. A new button lets you loop movie playback.
The old Map Tape Offsets command has been renamed to Apply Timecode Offset and now adjusts internal pointers correctly so the clip continues to play normally. (This command only affects clip references within CatDV, it doesn't alter media files themselves. To adjust the timecode of a QuickTime movie use the Add Timecode Track command.)
You can now use the Bulk Edit command to rename or renumber a batch of files in one go (enable the 'Auto rename files when setting Name or Bin' preference option and edit the clip 'Name' field)
New Toggle Subclip Limits command which will turn a subclip into a master clip with a selection in it representing the original subclip (and back again).
The contents of drop down pick lists for clip fields can now be maintained explicitly via the Preferences dialog. Choose whether a field is restricted to only contain values from the list or is extensibe (ie. new values can be typed in), and, if so, whether these values are automatically remembered to populate the pick list in future.
New option to add burnt-in timecode and/or tape name when creating preview movies
Metadata fields can be made editable via an advanced Preferences option
Improved keyboard shortcuts when playing movies (for example, Home and End to move to beginning or end of the movie)
The Export As Movie command now gives access to the new high-res, multi-channel audio options available in QuickTime 7.2
Minor rearrangement of items in the Tools menu and Preferences dialog.
Live Capture Plus and the CatDV Worker Node can automatically open up and append clips to a CatDV catalog
You can import additional metadata by providing an XML file alongside a media file (with the same name but extension '.xml'). The following standard tags are supported: NAME, NOTES, BIN, TAPE, MTIME, ORIENTATION, USER1, USER2 etc. Other tags and attributes will be placed in metadata columns of the same name.
Exif metadata improvements (preserve Exif tags when exporting stills, added support for GPS geotagging of images)
Numerous bug fixes and minor enhancements, including grey squares when printing thumbnails, copy and paste keyboard shortcuts not always working, preventing multiple instances of the CatDV application running under Windows, and more.
Under Windows the location of CatDV's preference files and log files are now based on %USERPROFILE% and %APPDATA% (or %LOCALAPPDATA%).

There are a number of improvements when using the CatDV Server:

Enterprise server permission 'groups' have been renamed to 'productions', reflecting the fact that many organisations are likely to work on multiple productions concurrently.
Preference settings such as pick list values, user column names, view definitions, preview settings or file system shortcuts are now stored on the server so all users on the network will have the same settings. Group settings are stored against a particular production, so if you are a member of more than one production it will load different settings when you switch to another production. Administrators can save preference settings to the server using the Productions node in the tree navigator.
The Productions node in the tree navigator is also used to create and view group documents. Group documents relate to a particular production and can be used as a powerful communications tool in many different ways, for example as a shared "to do list", a repository of team information such as telephone lists, a discussion forum, or a production "blog". A group document consists of a series of entries which can be made by different people, and can contain web URLs and links to specific clips as well as text.
The Connect To Server dialog remembers a list of recent server addresses. Connecting to the server will warn you if the clocks aren't set correctly or if you are connecting in 'safe' mode (with write access disabled).
There is new option to poll the server periodically and display a message if someone else has modified a catalog which the user is working on.
Catalogs on the server can be organised into folders.
The Find Similar command has an option to search the server for duplicate clips similar to those selected.
Greatly enhanced tape library management screen, including better barcode support, additional tape fields, support for printing, and a new command to search tapes.

Some of these features, in particular group documents and network preference settings, are only available in the Enterprise edition and when using version 6 of the server.

New features in CatDV 6

HTML-based, multi-line multi-clip printing
The new tree navigator provides a convenient way to group clips in the catalog by any field. Fields like date and media path are displayed hierarchically. (The tree navigator replaces the old grouping panel and is better in almost every respect, though the old interface is still available for users who prefer it.)
With the tree navigator it is possible to open a temporary view to quickly browse directories on the file system, catalogs on the server, etc. The main window changes to show the temporary clips. Click on the All Clips node to go back to viewing your catalog. You can drag clips from a temporary view onto the catalog node to import them.
The Server node lets you quickly browse catalogs or tapes on the server, or perform saved queries, with a single click without having to open up the catalog in a new window. (Workgroup and Enterprise edition only)
Right clicking (or control-clicking on the Mac) a tree node displays options related to that node, for example to add or remove a directory as a short cut under the File System node.
The Final Cut Projects node lists known FCP projects. Double clicking a node opens the project in Final Cut and shows the contents of the project in a temporary view. Dragging clips or sequences onto the node exports the clips to Final Cut using AppleEvents. (Macinosh, Professional edition only)
A new Film strip view is available that provides a visual overview or 'skim' of a clip. The number of thumbnails shown indicates the length of the clip, for example 2 thumbnails may be shown if it's just a few seconds long up to 8 or 10 thumbnails for a 5 minute clip. The new 'automatic' thumbnail preference option creates the appropriate number of thumbnails for a clip based on its duration.
The new Clip Details panel at the top of the main window (accessible via the Details toolbar button) replaces the old clip details dialog (though this is still available if required). This avoids the need for separate overlapping windows and conveniently organises all the available clip properties into different tabs. Toolbar commands from the clip details dialog are now available via the Logging menu.
It is possible to customise which fields are shown in the details panel via Preferences (Professional edition only).
The movie player in the clip details panel and when editing sequences is now resizable to any size and displays the duration of the selection as well as the current timecode value.
Greatly enhanced sequence editing. This now uses a two window (source and record) metaphor, making it easy to browse clips (via the tree navigator and main window), mark IN and OUT points in the source movie, then append or insert it to the sequence.
Support for 3-point edits using the overwrite button. Mark IN and OUT points in either the sequence or the source clip to define the duration of the edit.
Support for timecode event markers to indicate poisitions of interest within a clip without having to create subclips (Pro version only). This features is accessed via the Clip Details panel.
Drag and drop clips on to the Sequences node to create a new sequence. Double click a sequence to open it. Use 'Close Sequence Window' from the Sequences menu to close it.
Support for new timecode formats 15.0, 23.98, 59.94 and 60.0 fps (in addition to existing formats 1.0, 10.0, 24.0, 25.0, 29.97, 30.0 and 100.0 fps) so timecode is displayed correctly when using 720p60 and other field based formats.
You can edit the Aspect Ratio field for a clip to adjust its playback size.
Many other fixes and improvements, such as fixes when exporting sequences to Final Cut Pro, improved drag and drop reordering of clips, large file sizes are displayed in GB, stability improvements, able to delete items from pick list choosers, internal changes to add compatibility with QuickTime 7.2, improved OMF support, support for scrubbing audio when using JKL keys, etc.

New features in CatDV 5

New Server Shortcuts window with buttons to log on to the server and perform queries. This is intended for use as an application launch action (via Appearance tab of Preferences). Renamed the Workgroup menu to the Server menu.
The new Clip Summary dialog provides a nicely formatted view of a clip's details. Fields are colour-coded according to whether they are logging fields, technical metadata (such as codec details), or other metadata (such as Exif or ID3 annotations). This view is read-only; use the Clip Details dialog if you want to edit the clip.
When you perform a query against the server (Pro version only) or apply a quick filter then bring up the Clip Summary window all the matching keywords are automatically highlighted.
You can no longer edit cells in a list view by default unless you enable cell editing via Preferences (this prevents you from accidentally selecting the contents of a cell when you want to double click a clip).
The new Build Thumbnails command lets you create additional thumbnails for a clip, for example one every 5 seconds. The View Thumbnails command (and an associated new thumbnail summary mode) will display all the thumbnails for selected clips. Together these let you visualise a clip as a sequence of thumbnails. (This view also provides a convenient way to delete unwanted thumbnails.) Note that creating a large number of extra thumbnails will increase the size of catalogs and the time to publish and load catalogs from the server!
Improved OMF support (Pro version only), including playback of motion JPEG encoded files and better metadata extraction.
Ability to trim clips in the sequence editor. Double click a clip in the sequence to bring up the clip details where you can adjust the In and Out points.
The quick filter search field now accepts double quotes to search for an exact phrase containing spaces.
Added support for reading timecode markers from Final Cut Pro XML files (Pro version only). These appear as comments in the Notes field.
The Verbatim Logger has a new option to save entered text in the Notes field rather than always creating subclips (Pro version only).
Many bug fixes, including no longer keeping files locked after importing or playing a movie, fix occasional grey rectangles under menus (Windows), fix crash when leaving fullscreen mode (Mac), fix occasional corrupt thumbnails, fix application sometimes quitting when you use the quick filter field, fixes related to preview creation and exporting movies, etc.
Tidied movie importer so it reports frame rate more accurately and doesn't report so many "broken movie" false alarms
Zooming in the sequence editor timeline no longer loses your position
New Movie preload timeout advanced option to support playback of MXF movies using Flip4Mac (Mac only)
New advanced Preferences option to show attribute IDs alongside field names in drop down lists to disambiguate properties with similar names.
When exporting stills you can now choose the compression quality
Added Save Column Widths command to remember manually adjusted widths (which you can do by dragging column headers) in the current view definition
New option to recycle query results window to avoid explosion of new windows when performing queries against the server
Support for optional plug-in API and renaming of built-in properties (for use by OEM manufacturers and systems integrators)
Many other minor improvements, such as increasing the duration of tool tips, adding a "customise" option to the the View drop down in the toolbar, Verbatim Logger subclips include the name of the parent clip, and a new Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-S keyboard shortcut to toggle in and out of summary mode.
Ability to edit simple sequences by dragging and dropping clips in a timeline view
Universal Binary support for Intel-based Macintoshes
Online help is now searchable, with keywords highlighted in the search results
New command to Adjust Frame Size of QuickTime movies
You can now import and catalog arbitrary non-media file types, such as text documents, project files, spreadsheets, Word documents, and so on. (This feature is disabled by default and needs to be enabled via Advanced preferences.) (Professional Edition only)
New metadata columns, including FileExtension, MacType, MacCreator
Improved handling of OMF media files (better metadata extraction; DV OMF files of any length can now be played, exported or converted to previews) (Professional Edition only)
Improved importing of Final Cut Pro XML files, including support for nested sequences (Professional Edition only)
More reliable launching of Live Capture Plus from within CatDV.
Stability fixes when playing media from details dialog
The tape drop down in the clip details dialog has been disabled to prevent accidental changes (use Bulk Edit or drag and drop to correct the tape if necessary)
If a media file has moved you are prompted to locate it when you try to play it
Many other fixes, such as better handling of zero duration clips and "huge" thumbnails

Server changes

The following features are relevant to the client-server version of CatDV, in particular the new Enterprise Edition of the workgroup client:

CatDV now supports access control (when used with the Enterprise server).
There is a new Server Admin Panel with tabs for viewing status information and creating users and groups
There is a new Log In Details dialog, to support connecting to the Workgroup Server and logging on to the Enterprise Server
A new Catalog Information dialog, available via the Browse Database command, allows the group and user that a catalog belongs to to be changed
New columns Group and User, for grouping clips and when performing remote queries
You can now save sequences to the database
New Tape Details dialog
New Library Management window with view of all tapes and clips on them
Support for an optional barcode scanner
Some Server menu commands have been renamed (or moved to the Server Admin Panel) to make them clearer

For further details please read about the new Enterprise features or consult the documentation that comes with the server.

New features in CatDV 4

Support for importing and exporting as Final Cut Pro XML file (providing much greater compatibility with FCP than via batch lists). Includes full support for transferring bins, sequences and subclips both in and out of CatDV, complete with links to the media file (with no need to manually attach media). Export As Final Cut Pro XML File saves to the specified file, while Send to Final Cut Pro is similar but saves the data to a temporary file and automatically imports that file into Final Cut Pro. (Professional edition only)
Quick Filter search field added to main window. Keywords that you type in are looked for in any logging field. Only those clips that match what you type in are shown. (To reset the filter just delete the contents of the field. To search for an exact phrase enclose it in double quotes.)
Import As Avid ALE Log File command added. (Professional edition only)
Support for new Multi-grouping fields (accessible via the User Columns tab of Preferences) which can contain multiple keywords chosen from a pick list.
Pick list drop downs (such as for Bin, Tape, or user-defined fields) now display a special chooser dialog if you select "Other...". You can either type in a new value or use the filter field to narrow down the number of items which are shown (useful in cases where you have a very large list of values to choose from).
Double clicking any field label in the Clip Details window will bring up a resizable viewer or chooser window on that field, allowing you to see and enter long field values.
By default the Server menu doesn't show commands that will modify the database unless you enable them via Advanced preferences.
Preview files now have a timecode track by default, allowing them to be used in other editing applications. Use the Add Timecode Track command in the Preview Manager to add a timecode track to existing movies.
Bulk Edit has new option to move values from one column to another, and a safe copy option that won't overwrite any existing data in the destination.
A new advanced preferences option lets you assign the keyboard shortcuts Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-O and Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-X to your preferred import and export menu command (to best match the editing application you use).
New command Add Timecode Track in the Tools menu
Clicking on the timecode field in the clip details media panel lets you type in a timecode value and jump straight to that position in the file.
Fixes to Verbatim Logger window.
Various improvements in the Mac OS X version to make the application more "Mac-like" (such as changing the layout of buttons and adding a proxy icon to the window title bar).
An easier to use toolbar with labels is shown by default, though the original icon-only toolbar can be selected via preferences if desired.
Exporting movies gives you a new title safe area option to position text and timecode tracks slightly further in from the edge of the frame.
With Preview search paths, you can define multiple root directories (eg. on a file server, on other machines in the workgroup, on removable media) that will be searched for preview versions of a tape's contents.
Ability to save self-contained archives, which combine the catalog for a tape with its preview movies (in a form suitable for archiving to CDROM, for example)
New Manage Preview Movies window allows you to see which preview files are on the preview path and to rename or delete them if necessary.
Support for importing WMV, WMA and ASF files and extracting metadata from them.
New Media Information window displays technical data for any media or preview file, including detailed track information and an analysis of dropped frames
Much improved HTML export, with option to create either a standalone page or an index in the preview directory that links to preview files, plus better control over the page(s) that are generated.
Improved QuickTime movie export, with control over size and position of text and timecode tracks and the ability to add burnt-in text (such as a copyright message or subtitles)
Restructured and enhanced Preferences dialog
Support for generating and playing MPEG-4 preview movies
New undo support (with multiple levels) and autosaving of catalogs
Option to use external Live Capture Plus application instead of Live Capture (Mac only)
Support for equivalent media directories (allowing media files to be located automatically, for example if they were ingested on one machine and are now accessible via a network path)
Improved handling of media metadata tags (such as author, title, copyright etc.) that are stored in QuickTime, Exif, MP3, or WMV files. These now dynamically appear as new columns under full user control and can be used for grouping.
Larger clip details dialog with full size display of 320x240 preview movies
Simple bulk editing of clips by selecting multiple clips then bringing up the clip details window
Support for Java 1.4 on the Mac, giving improvements such as a brushed metal look and feel and scroll wheel mouse support
The OMF import option is now included in CatDV Pro
Extract metadata from protected AAC iTunes files, including cover art
New command to automatically adjust column widths to fit the data
Customise views has buttons to move colums to top and bottom
Improvements to the Final Cut Pro batch list parser (better handling of timecode format, source media path, sequences, master comment fields, etc.)
It's easier to update an incorrect Media Path
New preferences option to always play back previews, in preference to full resolution media files
New preferences option to display data rate in kbits/s or kBytes/s
New keyboard shortcut to toggle grouping on and off
New keyboard shortcuts within clip details dialog
New preferences option to hide less commonly used menu commands
Support for YYYY-MM-DD date format and 24 fps timecode
New preferences option to disable automatic thumbnail generation on import
Option to manually override aspect ratio for DV files (toggle between 16:9 and 4:3)
Option to re-open last catalog or display catalog browser when launching the application
Control over duration of still images when included in a sequence
Option to ignore embedded DV timecode when importing DV media
Option to quit automatically when last window closed (Mac only)
Configurable double click actions, including opening any file in its default (external) application or display Media Information
New Preview File column so you can see which clips have previews
New Media Folder column that shows current file location
Suppress irrelevant attributes that add clutter to the clip details dialog table
Context menu no longer goes off the bottom of the screen
Keyboard shortcut for help
Can copy and paste from the Browse Catalogs summary table
New memory indicator in the status bar
Numeric keypad keys work in timecode calculator
Bug fixes related to sequences (eg. saving comments or thumbnails)
More responsive scrolling by creating thumbnails in a separate thread
Verbatim Logger has configurable keys and a new command to insert timecode directly into text if desired, rather than start a new clip. It also works with audio files.
Remember preferred view of each type (list or grid), not just last view shown
Fixes to Avid ALE export
Rationalised various keyboard shortcuts
Display current clip selection with a dark gray background inside movie controller in details dialog and media dialog
Improved tab navigation within clip details window
Performance improvements and reduced memory footprint
Support for DVCPro HD format
List view uses row striping
Updated media tab panel in clip details window, including new button to delete unwanted thumbnails
Format column now shows basic file format of stills, with a new Megapixels column showing a summary of the image size.
New Preferences command to set the amount of application memory used by CatDV (Mac only)

Points to note

Less commonly used menu commands are hidden by default unless you enable Advanced menus in preferences.
The built-in Live Capture command is no longer available. Instead, you might want to look at the new Live Capture Plus application, which runs as a separate application.
Fading to black between slides in a slide show is no longer available under Mac OS X unless you switch to use Java 1.3.1 in preferences.
You need to upgrade to Workgroup Server 3.5.0 or later to use CatDV Pro 4.1 as a client.

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.

Professional Edition Features

The Professional Edition has several features over and above the Standard Edition:

Networked operation: The Professional Edition has an additional Server menu that contains commands to share catalogs with other users and search for clips across catalogs in a central clip database when used with the optional Workgroup or Enterprise Server.
Enhanced searching and filtering: The Professional Edition features a powerful, completely new query dialog, used for both searching within a catalog and when performing remote queries against the workgroup database. Queries can contain any number of terms, be combined with logical OR and AND operations, and include regular expressions. Queries can also be named and saved for future use. There is a new toolbar Filter drop down that can be used to apply a named clip filter to the window. The Professional Edition also features a powerful Search and Replace tool that allows textual replacements to be made across any logging field, including regular expression pattern matching.
Sequence editing: The Professional Edition has support for creating and editing simple sequences, allowing a producer to make a rough cut pre-edit of shots to use and then send an EDL over to the edit suite for finishing, for example.
Unlimited user defined fields: The Professional Edition allows you to create an unlimited number of user-defined fields, compared with the standard number of three. These can be used to record details such as videographer, producer, project, location, and so on. Each field can store up to 64K of text and is fully searchable. The clip details window provides immediate access to user fields 1 to 6, and access via a scrolling list to the other fields.
Final Cut Pro integration: The Professional Edition lets you send clips and sequences to and from Final Cut projects complete with metadata and subclip information.
Improved importers and exporters: The Professional Edition supports several additional file formats, including Final Cut Pro, Avid, dpsVelocity, OMFI media files, and XML. You can create image sequences and metaclips, and catalog arbitrary file types such as Word documents or project files as well as media files.
Analog scene detection: The Professional Edition lets you perform automatic scene detection on clips subsequent to them being imported, via a separate Detect Scenes command, and also lets you tune the sensitivity for this operation. This is useful if too many false scene changes are detected, or if scene changes are missed with the default setting.
Timezone adjustments: To allow footage from different cameras, perhaps shot at different locations around the world, to be accurately correlated by date the Professional Edition has a Timezone Adjustment command allows the date to be adjusted based on timezone and camera clock differences.
JKL jog-shuttle keys: The Professional Edition supports the use of standard JKL keys to play media backwards or forwards at different speeds in both the clip details dialog, in the media dialog and when playing full screen.
Additional clip fields: To support these features and more, the Professional Edition supports several additional columns. These include Aux T/C (which displays the user-settable timecode field supported by some DV cameras), GMT Date, Location Date, Location Timezone, Clock Adjustment, Catalog and Catalog Notes.
Customisable preview settings: In Preferences you can customise the size of previews and the compression setting used in addition to using one of the presets.
Customisable clip details panel: You can customise which fields are shown in the clip details panel and define new tabs.

Workgroup Features

Requirements

To use the workgroup features of CatDV you need to purchase and install the separate CatDV Workgroup Server (or Enterprise Server) product. This is available for various server platforms and databases. You also need a Professional Edition license for each client that will be using the server.

Because most Internet firewalls block access to non-standard ports you normally need direct access to the server machine from each client machine via a local area network.

Initially the Server menu is configured in a safe mode to allow querying only. Commands which can write data to the server are disabled by default but you can enable these via Preferences if required.

Connecting to the server

Use the Log On To Server command in the Server menu and enter the hostname or IP address of the machine running the CatDV Server. When you press OK you will be logged on to the server and the other Server menu commands will be enabled, or you may see a message that a connection failure occurred.

If you use the Enterprise Server you will also need to log on by typing in your CatDV user name and password. (You can connect without logging on but will only have limited access to the server.)

To check that you have established a connection with the server program view the Server Status under the Server Admin Panel to display some statistics about the operation of the server, such as how many catalogs and clips are contained in the remote database.

If you predominantly use CatDV connected to the server rather than standalone then you can configure it so the Server Shortcuts window is displayed on startup, providing convenient shortcuts for connecting to the server, performing queries and so on.

Publishing catalogs

If you have created catalogs and saved them locally on your hard disk you need to publish them to make them available to other users via the shared database. Once they are stored in the shared database you no longer need the local catalog files (though you may choose to keep these files somewhere as a backup or in case you need access to them when the server is unavailable). Once published to the database you should make all your changes there, however, rather than in the local files, as the local files will not be kept in sync with the database.

You publish a catalog by opening it and then using the Publish Catalog command. This will publish the catalog from the current window (even if you have just created it and it has never been saved to disk - if you don't require a local copy you can then close the window without saving changes).

You can also publish an entire directory full of catalog files directly from your local hard disk by using the Bulk Publish Catalogs command.

Opening a remote catalog

Use the Browse Database command to view a list of all the catalogs in the remote database, including a short summary of the contents of each catalog. You can open a catalog by double clicking its name in the list. From this window you can also delete catalogs, or search for all the catalogs containing a particular keyword (in either the catalog description or the clip details).

Querying the remote database

Use Perform Query to enter search criteria to search for matching clips across the entire remote database. A window is displayed containing the query results, combining all the clips that match, even if they come from different catalogs.

You can save the query results to a new local catalog file, print them out, export them as a batch list, or make changes to the clips returned, perhaps adding new logging annotations and then publishing the changes back to the remote database.

Managing catalogs

Although all the clips in the remote database are stored in the same place, for convenience they are still grouped into logical groupings called catalogs. You should normally create separate catalogs for each tape, or perhaps each shoot or each project, rather than trying to store all your clips in one large catalog. This will make it easier to manage your clips. For example, you can use the Delete Catalog command in Browse Catalogs to delete a catalog from the database. You also minimise the risk of creating a catalog that is too large to open reliably if you only have limited memory available.

Once you have opened a remote catalog you have a local copy of the clips and thumbnails from that catalog in memory on your machine. If another user on your network edits these clips and publishes their changes to the database you can use Refresh Window to update your window with the latest version from the remote database. The time at which the contents of the window were last synchronised with the remote database is shown as part of the window title. If you have had a window open for a long time it's a good idea to refresh the window before starting to make any changes.

Publishing changes

When you open a remote catalog or perform a query and are working with the query results you can edit the clips in your window exactly as if you were working on a normal local catalog file. However, rather than saving any changes to disk with Save Catalog, you normally want to update the clips in the remote database instead, for which you use the Publish Changes command.

You can add logging notes, change clip names, make selections, select new poster thumbnails, delete unwanted clips, split a clip into two or create new secondary clips, and all these changes will be saved when you publish the changes. You can also create brand new clips, eg. by importing a file or using New Log Entry, but only if you have opened a remote catalog, not if you are viewing query results, as in the latter case it is not defined which catalog the new clips belong to.

Resolving conflicts

If two users try to make changes to the same catalog or clips at the same time then only the first set of changes that are published will be saved to the remote database. The second person who attempts to publish changes will receive a warning message stating there were conflicting edits (eg. trying to add a comment to a clip which the previous user has just deleted). All the changes which can be saved without conflict are saved, and the main window is refreshed to show the current contents as per the remote database. Any clips which weren't able to be saved are displayed in a new unsaved changes window. The second user then needs to manually re-apply those changes in the main window, deciding whether and how to resolve any conflicts before trying to publish the changes again.

When to re-publish a catalog

If you publish a catalog with the same name and creation time as an existing catalog in the remote database (and your local catalog is newer than the one in the database) then you will overwrite that catalog in the database with the newer one. Normally you should always use Publish Changes, as this automatically merges your changes and attempts to resolve any conflicting edits.

There are two main situations, however, where you may want to overwrite a catalog by using Publish Catalog instead:

If you need to rearrange the order of clips in a catalog. (Publish Changes will insert, delete or update clips in the database but not change their order.)
If you saved a remote catalog locally for offline working and now want to publish changes that you made to the local files.

In both cases note that any change history associated with the old catalog will be lost, and if another user has the same catalog open they will be unable to publish their changes.

Enterprise Features

The networked features of CatDV are provided in one of two editions of the CatDV Server. The features described below extend those of the regular Workgroup Server and are only available if you use the CatDV Enterprise Edition client with the CatDV Enterprise server.

Access control

The "Enterprise" version of CatDV supports access control. When using the Workgroup Server you do not need any special privileges to connect to the workgroup server and only the system user name (as used when logging on to the Mac OS X or Windows) is recorded in log files. With the Enterprise server, however, you can define your own CatDV users and groups and give them different permissions within the CatDV database.

First, an administrator will define different production groups (these might correspond to different projects or departments, for example "Drama", "Documentaries", and "Childrens"). The administrator can then create users, and assign these to any number of groups.

Each catalog is owned by a particular user and group, which governs what access you have, depending on what permissions you have in that group.

The following permissions are available:

Read other users' catalogs (this lets you open all catalogs belonging to the group, not just those you own)
Create new catalogs in this group
Edit own catalogs (if you don't have this permission catalogs become locked once they have been published to the server)
Edit other users' catalogs (this lets you edit any catalog belonging to the group)
Delete catalogs (with the addition of this permission you can also delete any catalog that you can edit)
Tape management (allows you to create and edit tape information)
User administration (allows you to create new users and change their permissions within this group)
System administration (allows you to create new groups and edit any permission, effectively the "super user")

These permissions all apply to one particular group or "production". A user can have different permissions in different groups, giving you great flexibility in setting up access control if you need it. You can also make users members of the special System Group; any permission they have in this group will apply to the entire database, regardless of which production the catalog belongs to.

Use the Browse Database command to view the group and user that a catalog belongs to and whether you have permission to read, write or delete the catalog. The "Access" column summarises these permissions with the letters 'r', 'w' and 'd', while '-' indicates you don't have access.

Use the Show Info button to display the catalog information panel where you can change the user or group the catalog belongs to (if you have permission to edit the catalog).

Log In Details

Use the Log In Details dialog to connect to the server. If you use the Workgroup Edition you just use this dialog to configure the host name and port of the server, but if you use the Enterprise Edition you can also:

log on to the server, by entering your CatDV user name and password
change your CatDV password
change your default group (when catalogs are saved to the server this is the group they will belong to unless it's subsequently changed).

Server Admin Panel

The Server Admin Panel has four tabs:

Server Status, displays version information and statistics about the server, including size of the database
User Admin, allows you to create groups and users and set their permissions (access control)
Audit Log, displays a log of messages recording significant events on the server (including errors, when users log on and off, and of major changes to data held in the database)
Connections, displays a list of currently connected clients.

When editing users, first select or create the production group you are interested in, then select a user in that group to edit their permissions. To add an existing user of another group to your group check the "Show all" box then select the user and click "Assign to group". (If you don't check "Show all" only users who are members of the selected group are shown.)

In the audit log there may be two names shown in the "User" column. One is the Mac OS X or NT logon of the user who was running the CatDV application, the other is the CatDV user (if any) that they logged on to the server as at the time. Each object in the CatDV database (primarily users, groups, tapes and catalogs, but also individual clips and thumbnails) has a unique object id which is shown in the "Obj ID" column and can be used for searching the audit log for events relating to that object.

(In the Workgroup Edition client only the Server Status and Connections panels are available.)

Tape Library Management

The Library Management window displays a list of all the tapes in the database. Each tape has information such as tape format, shelf location and a description which is stored against the tape record itself, not a particular clip or catalog record in the database.

While the Browse Database commmand lets you browse the contents of the database by catalog, with the Library Management window you can also browse the database by tape. Use the Find command to search for and list tapes, then use the Tape Details command to view or edit the tape information for a selected tape, such as its format or shelf location. Press View Clips to display all the clips belonging to that tape (or selected tapes). You can also print tape information from the library management screen (see the File and Edit menus for commands relating to tapes).

With the optional wireless barcode scanner you can simplify data entry, for example doing a stock take of which tapes are on which shelf:

If your tapes all have a unique barcode you can scan the barcode on a tape and press the Send button to send the barcode to the computer and bring up the details for that tape.
If you scan a special barcode and then the tape you can indicate that that tape has been checked out.
Finally, if you first scan a shelf label and then the barcodes of all the tapes on that shelf, you can easily update the location information for all your tapes in one operation.

You don't need to enter the library management screen to view a tape's details. You can also do Edit > Tape Details (or press Cmd/Ctrl-T) from the main window to view the tape details for a particular clip.

(Library Management and Tape Details are not available with the Workgroup Edition client.)

Enhanced query dialog

With the enhanced query dialog (Professional Edition only) you can build up complex queries and save them for use later. Use the same query dialog when searching for clips in the catalog locally or querying the remote database (with the optional Workgroup Server).

First, select the clip property to search on. This will display a list of operations based on the column type (text, timecode, date, or boolean).
Then, select the comparison operation, enter any parameters (such as the text to search for) and options (such as case sensitive comparison).
If you want to search on additional clip properties at the same time press Add term to add a new row. You can add as many terms as you want (though with more terms the query may take longer to execute).
Normally all the terms must match for a clip to be found (ie. the terms are combined by a logical 'AND' operation). If you check the 'OR' box then one (or more) of the 'OR' terms must match, as well as all the 'AND' terms.
Check the 'NOT' box to exclude clips matching that term.

Named queries

Press the Create button, then enter a name and press Save to save a named query.
Named queries are stored in the local preferences file and are available in later sessions. Select a previously saved named query from the drop down list to use it.
Check the Show in toolbar option to turn the query into a named filter that can be used to filter the clips shown in the main window.

Remote searches

When querying the remote database (with optional Workgroup Server only) you have the following options:

Return additional clips similar to the ones matched by the query.
Return all the thumbnails associated with a clip or just the poster thumbnail.
Press Find Clips to create a new query results window showing all the matching clips, regardless of which catalog they are in.
Press Find Catalogs to display a list of matching catalogs within the database, including a count of how many clips in each catalog match the query.

Local searches

When searching for clips locally within a catalog you can either move to the next matching clip or create a new window showing all the matches. See searching and filtering.
When doing local searches within a catalog you can set a Preferences option to use the simpler, Standard Edition query dialog instead if you prefer.
The Browse Catalogs command is provided to search across multiple catalogs locally on disk. Because the catalogs are not stored in a relational database, as they are with remote searches, the search capability provided is much less sophisticated however.

Regular expressions

In regular expressions many characters have special meaning to match particular groups of characters. For example, '^' and '$' match the start and end of a line respectively, '.' matches any character, '[A-Za-z]' matches any upper case or lower case letter, '\s' or '[:space:]' means any white space character, '\d' or '[0-9]' or '[:digit:]' means any digit, '\S' means any visible (non-space) character, and '\b' matches a word boundary. '*' means the previous character can match any number of times (0 or more), '?' means it's optional (matches 0 or 1 times), and '+' means matches 1 or more times. To prevent one of these characters from having its special meaning precede it with a '\'. For example, 'h[ea]llo' or '(hello|hallo)' will match 'hello' or 'hallo', while '$.*$' will search for pairs of parentheses.

Using the Search and Replace tool you can search for a regular expression and use the results of that expression in the replacement. Any text that matches a sub-expression in the search term inside parentheses '(' and ')' can be inserted into the replacement text using '\1' for the first term and so on. For example, you could search for '^(\S+) (\S+)' and replace it with '\2 \1' to swap the first two words of each line, or search for '.*XXX.*' and replace it with nothing to delete all comments tagged with the text 'XXX'.

Additional Importers and Exporters

The Professional Edition (and Workgroup Edition) features the following additional file formats.

Batch lists

You can export clip lists in the following additional batch file formats. Use Export As and one of the following:

Avid ALE Log File (to export an Avid ALE batch log)
dpsVelocity batch List (to export a DPS BRT file)
Final Cut Pro batch List
Final Cut Pro XML File

It supports the following additional importers, use Import As then:

Avid ALE Log File
Final Cut Pro Batch List
Final Cut Pro XML File

Final Cut Pro

When importing and exporting Final Cut Pro batch lists and XML files, CatDV uses the user-defined fields in particular ways: User 1 maps to Description, User 2 to Scene, User 3 to Shot/Take, User 4/5 to Comment A/B, User 6 to Label, User 7 to Label 2, User 8 to Capture, and User 9-12 map to Master Comment 1 to 4. The FCP Preset button in Preferences automatically sets up these definitions.

If possible, you should normally use FCP XML files in preference to batch lists as they have a number of advantages. Most importantly, when you use FCP XML files the media links will be preserved, but they also support the transfer of bins, subclips and sequence information to and from your browser window, and work with localized (non-English) versions of Final Cut Pro.

The Send to Final Cut Pro command provides an easy way to send clips or sequences straight to Final Cut Pro. It is similar to exporting an XML file but saves it in a temporary directory and automatically opens the file in Final Cut Pro. You can also drag sequences and clips onto a Final Cut project node in the tree navigator to send them to Final Cut using Apple Events.

XML

As well as Final Cut Pro XML files the Professional Edition supports another CatDV-specific XML format:

The Export as CatDV XML command exports details about the selected clips as an XML document. XML is useful as an interchange format if you need to import clip data (including metadata) into an external application such as a database.

The Export CatDV XML Index(es) command saves XML file(s) containing any log notes or other information that you have entered for the selected clips. These file(s) are called index.xml and are stored in the directory with the media files.

(The purpose of these files is to store any data that you enter such as the description of a media file or orientation of a still directly with the media files, in case the files are later moved or the catalog file is lost. When you import a media file any index.xml file in the same directory is checked and the information from it is automatically added to the clip as it is imported.)

Finally, if you import a media file and there's an XML file with the same name alongside (eg. MyFile.mov and MyFile.xml) then CatDV will attempt to read additional metadata from the XML file and associate it with the movie.

OMF Files

The Professional Edition also adds support for importing OMF media files.

I have many tapes, how do I know what's on them?

This is the first of a series of How-To notes, describing how to perform various common logging tasks.

CatDV is designed to help you pull together all the information you have about what's on a tape to make it easier to manage your tape library and find scenes again. It will also manage low resolution previews to show you the contents of a tape even when it's not currently captured to disk.

First you need to load the information into CatDV:
- If you have previously edited any projects containing material from your tapes then you can import those projects into CatDV (perhaps via a batch list or similar intermediate file) to avoid retyping previously logged clip names.
- If you have logged your tapes by hand (or using another application) you can import text files or EDLs.
- If you have already captured the contents of your tape to disk you can simply import the media files.
- If your DV tapes have not been captured or logged yet, use the Live Capture Plus application to scan a tape, detecting scenes and capturing previews in one operation (alternatively, capture the tape to disk in your editing application and import the media files).
To find clips on a tape it's important that the correct tape identifier is entered for all your clips. Use the editing commands within CatDV to correct any mistakes or missing data. (For example, you could use the Search dialog to find all the clips from a particular project, then group by tape and drag the selected clips onto the correct tape name or use the Bulk Edit command.)
Once your clips are in a CatDV catalog there are lots of things you can do to help you find those of interest. For example, you could:
- group clips according to the tape they are on,
- search for a keyword in the notes field,
- print out a single page index print to file with each tape,
- display the DV date & time of recording of each scene,
- create preview versions of your movies to use even when the media is offline,
- share a catalog containing thumbnails with clients or friends, even if they don't have access to the original movies.
To build previews for a tape that is currently online (i.e. that has been captured to disk), select all the clips for that tape, ensuring they have the correct tape name, then use Build Preview Movies. Use the Preferences options to determine the size and quality of previews.

(If your main interest is in cataloging physical tapes on a library shelf, rather than logging media down to the clip level, then please refer to tape library management features provided by the Enterprise Server.)

How do I automatically log a DV tape with an external capture application?

Assume you are about to start editing from a DV tape and want to log the start and end of each scene. The traditional way to do this involves wearing out your tape and camcorder by painstakingly logging each scene by cueing and reviewing the tape itself. Instead, a better approach is to capture the whole tape to disk first and then log the scenes from disk.

If your editing application has the facility to capture an entire tape unattended, use that. Otherwise, you may need to capture the tape manually, but if you have batch capture one way to do this is as follows:

Cue to the end of your tape and note down the last timecode value recorded on it.
Use the Whole Tape Capture Log command within CatDV and enter the tape name and final timecode value to generate a series of equal length clips that cover the whole tape. Some capture applications have a limit of 2GB per file, others even 1GB (about 9 minutes or 4-1/2 minutes respectively), but apart from that the size you enter doesn't matter.
Select, then export these clips as a batch list suitable for your particular editing application using the Export as submenu.
Create a new temporary project within your editing application and import the whole tape capture log, then use your batch capture command to capture the entire tape to disk. You don't need to capture any additional trim handles. After you have successfully captured the long clips to disk you can delete the temporary project.

Once you have captured the tape to disk:

Import all the long captured movie file(s) into CatDV using either the Import as QuickTime Media or Import Directory command, or by dragging the files into a CatDV window. This will scan the movies to identify each scene and extract thumbnails for them.
If you had to perform the capture in several smaller files it's likely the scene boundaries won't exactly fall on capture boundaries. Check the Auto-join DV clips Preference option to merge such clip fragments automatically during import. (Alternatively, use Summary mode or the Join DV Scene Fragments command.)
Open up the Clip Details dialog for the first clip and view the thumbnail or the movie and give each scene a meaningful Name, or description in the Notes field. Mark the clips you want to use with the mark checkbox, or by setting them as "good".
Select all the scenes you want to use in your project then either do Export As Movie(s), saving normally allowing references (if you want to keep the original capture files on disk without modifying them) or use Consolidate Footage (if you want to chop the original files into separate scenes, without recompression, and trim any unused material).
Create (or open) the editing project in your NLE, then import all the movies you have just generated. Start editing!

As described, this will trim hard up to each automatically detected scene boundary, giving you the maximum available material while eliminating any risk of inadvertently including rogue frames from an adjacent scene during a dissolve. You can also set In and Out points within the Clip Details window and export just the selection if you prefer.

How do I automatically log non-DV material?

If you want to perform automatic scene detection on material that was not originally recorded in DV format, whether digital or analogue in origin (including BetaSP, DigiBeta, footage captured via a DV converter, or analogue footage dubbed to DV), you should proceed broadly as described in How to log with an external capture application then use CatDV's visual scene detection capability.

Capture the whole tape to disk, using whatever format and capture application you would normally use for editing.
Enable Visual Frame Differencing and disable the DV info based Scene analysis options in Preferences and import the captured media file(s) into CatDV.
Unlike DV-based scene analysis, the visual (image based) scene detection can never be totally frame accurate and in addition to entering a meaningful name and comments, you will need to review and correct the scene boundaries within the Clip Details window:
Press the Review transition button to check that two adjacent clips really are from different scenes. If the scene detection was too sensitive and both clips relate to the same scene, press the Merge into previous button to merge the two clips into one.
Conversely, if the scene detection was not sensitive enough and a clip ought to be split into two separate scenes, move the timeline (in the Movie or Preview tab) to the first frame of the new clip and press the Split clip button.
The Consolidate Footage command is only available for DV clips but you can achieve the same results (reducing disk usage by trimming unwanted material) by exporting those clips that you want to keep as self-contained movies and then deleting the original files.
If you have the Professional Edition you can tune the sensitivity of the scene detection. Uncheck both options at step 2 to disable automatic scene detection, then import the file, select the resulting clip and apply the Detect Scenes command where you can set the sensitivity.

How do I add subtitles to a movie?

If you have Professional Edition you can easily add simple subtitles to a movie as follows:

Import the movie you want to add the subtitles to (with the scene analysis options turned off in Preferences).
Select the resulting clip and open the Verbatim Logger.
Play the clip, then press the Mark button (or use the configurable keyboard shortcut) at the point you want the subtitle text to appear. Type in the text you want for the subtitle.
When you close the Verbatim Logger, new sub-clips are created in your window starting at each point you marked. The text you entered appears in the Notes field.
Select all the sub-clips that were created then bring up the Export As Movie(s) dialog. Under Batch Options select "Single movie combining all clips". Under Extra Tracks check the "Add text" box and select the Notes field from the drop down. Select the size, position and duration for the subtitles then press OK to export the movie with a text track added containing your subtitle text.

Convert To Text is the "opposite" of Verbatim Logger. With this command you can convert the name, notes and timecode values of selected clips to a textual list which you can copy and paste into a word processor, for example, to create a transcript or for further editing. When you are finished in your word processor, you can copy and paste this text back into the Verbatim Logger to create separate clips again.

How do I use CatDV Pro with Final Cut Pro?

If you have Professional Edition you can easily use CatDV with Final Cut Pro.

Before you start, go to the User Columns tab in Preferences and press the FCP Preset button to set your user-defined column names to match Final Cut Pro. Also, if you want to use CatDV preview movies as OfflineRT previews in Final Cut Pro, then you should use the OfflineRT preset in Preferences to configure previews as follows: 320x240, Normal Quality, Maximum Frame Rate, Uncompressed Audio.

You can then use CatDV for logging and cataloging your clips, including features such as automatic scene detection, Verbatim Logger, and the building of previews, and export the data to Final Cut Pro for editing. If you use DV tapes you can proceed as follows:

If you have Live Capture Plus, configure this to use Offline RT format, and to capture CatDV previews and create a CatDV catalog. Capture a DV tape, then open the CatDV catalog that's created for that tape.
Review each clip in CatDV Pro, entering clip names and descriptions, creating subclips using the buttons in the Clip Details window, etc.
Select the clips you want to use in your editing project and Export As Final Cut Pro XML File.
Create a Final Cut Pro project using the appropriate OfflineRT easy setup preset (PAL or NTSC). Use Import | XML File to import the log you exported in step 3 into Final Cut Pro.

Alternatively, if you're bringing clips into an existing Final Cut project you can simply drag them onto the Final Cut project node in CatDV's tree navigator at step 3.

You have now imported your CatDV clip definitions into your Final Cut Pro project, including both metadata and logging fields from CatDV and OfflineRT editing proxies. You can edit with these low-resolution proxies and then batch capture the full-resolution versions in the normal way (using the "Create offline" option in Media Manager to convert your sequence from OfflineRT to DV).

If you are ingesting formats other than DV, such as Beta SP, HDV, or Digi Beta, which are not supported in Live Capture Plus, you can do the following instead:

In Final Cut Pro, enter the tape identifier and use the Capture Now command to capture the tape to your capture scratch area.
Select the media file(s) you captured using the Finder and drag them into the CatDV window to import them.
Use CatDV's Detect Scenes command to create subclips automatically based on visual scene changes. You can review these scene changes and adjust them if required.
Continue as above, entering clip names, selecting the clips you want, and exporting an FCP XML file to transfer this information to Final Cut Pro, complete with subclips and links to the media.

The converse is also possible. If you do your logging within Final Cut Pro you can export the clips from your browser window as an XML file and import these clips into CatDV, to build up a permanent searchable database of all your tapes and clips. (An easy way to export the file to CatDV is to save the XML file on the desktop and then drag it into the CatDV window.)

Note that the Final Cut Pro "Mark Good" checkbox corresponds to the "Mark" property in CatDV Pro (not the "Good" property), and that "Log notes" maps to "Notes" in CatDV, and "Reel" to "Tape". If you use the Label field then it's down to you to make sure you only choose valid labels in CatDV, otherwise you will get errors when you export a batch list and try to load it into Final Cut Pro.

How do I use CatDV with other, unsupported applications?

CatDV will import and export clip data to a variety of non-linear video editing systems and other applications.

Many project and batch file formats are directly supported. For example, CatDV will read and write Avid or Final Cut Pro batch lists. It will directly read EditDV/Cinestream project files, and can export an EditDV/Cinestream capture log. It will export clips as a Premiere batch capture log, and import them from Premiere if you first export them as a CMX EDL or tab-separated text file.

Most other NLEs can also export and import clip lists in a form that is compatible with CatDV, as both CMX EDLs and tab-separated text are fairly universal file formats. If necessary you can use a text editor to adjust the file format slightly.

Finally, you can import and export clips between CatDV and other applications in any QuickTime-supported media file format, including .MOV and .AVI files.

Tab-separated text

Use tab-separated text to exchange data with a wide variety of other applications, including spreadsheets, databases or other logging applications, or even a "pencil and paper" log that you typed in to a word processor or text editor.

To export clips:

Select a list view with the columns you want to export (use Customise Views if necessary), select the clips you want, and use Export as tab-separated text.
Alternatively, try selecting some clips from your catalog then copying and pasting them directly into an Excel spreadsheet. (Note: if you just select a single clip then its thumbnail image will be copied instead.)

When importing tab-separated text, CatDV uses a smart algorithm that tries to guess the format of the file used and extract as much information as possible:

There must be one clip entry per line, and each field must be separated by a single tab character.
A line on its own is taken to be a tape name.
The first two fields on a line that look like timecode are taken to be In and Out points respectively (unless any of the supposed "out" points are less than the in points, in which case they are all taken to mean duration instead).
Fields that do not contain timecode are interpreted as text, in the order: clip name, bin, tape name and comments. Any additional fields are ignored, as are blank lines or lines that CatDV is unable to process.

How can I edit and present a program within CatDV?

After recording and capturing a whole tape of material you will almost certainly need to edit it to produce a program containing selected highlights or telling a particular story.

To create a proper finished program, perhaps applying effects, transitions, titles, adjusting audio levels and so on, then you would of course use fully featured video editing software. If all you want is a simple "cuts only" selection of the highlights, however, then you can use the capabilities built directly in to CatDV as a quick and effective alternative.

(Note: The tip below describes the older mechanism of using the notion of "good" and "reviewed" clips to select clips of interest to include in a sequence. Since CatDV 5 you can also edit sequences directly by dragging and dropping clips into a sequence window and rearranging their order as required.)

Capture the material you want to use to disk and import the media files into CatDV. (Alternatively, if disk space is limited and 'preview' quality is sufficient for your needs at this stage, use the Scan & Build Previews command in Live Capture.)
If you choose the scene analysis options in Preferences CatDV will automatically detect and produce a clip for each scene. Alternatively, use the Detect Scenes command (Professional Edition only).
Use the Clip details window to review each scene in turn. Play the clip (in the Movie or Preview tab as appropriate) and mark In and Out points around the section you want to keep.
If you don't want to include that scene in your highlights, select "No Good" from the Good drop down list.
If you want to include a scene in its entirety select "Good" from the drop down list. (If you have already made a selection you can leave the Good value blank as making a selection implies that you have "reviewed" the clip and want to use it.)
If you want to include two separate sections from the same scene you can either duplicate the clip or create a new secondary clip for the current selection from within the Clip Details dialog.
As an alternative to using the Clip Details dialog you can use the Media dialog to review the clips. Use the keyboard shortcuts 'I' and 'O' to mark selection in and out points as a clip is playing, 'G' or 'N' to mark the clip as good or not, and 'P' to play the selection from start to end. Use the up and down arrows to move to the next clip.
Once you have reviewed your clips and decided which material should be included in the highlights program, select all the clips in the catalog with Control-A (or Command-A). Notice that the status line shows how long your "good selection" is.
Use the Present Movie command, choosing the options "Good clips only" (as mentioned previously, by default this also includes those with a selection) and "Selection (in2/out2)", to show your edited program.
Alternatively, use Export As Movie(s) to export the clips in as a reference movie or recompressed in a form suitable for publishing on the web. Under Batch Options select "Single movie combining all clips" and "Good clips only". If you want to, you can import the reference movie into your DVD authoring software to burn it to DVD.
You can set up a filter so your view only shows the good clips (for example to display a storyboard view and rearrange the clip order by dragging and dropping clips). Press the Filter button, select Pick List field "Status", and then select the values "G" and "S" (hold down the command or control keys to select multiple items).
At this stage your edited program is defined by the status of each clip and can still be edited. To make it more permanent use the Select Reviewed command to select just the good clips and then do Create Sequence. This will create a new clip called a sequence that holds your program selections. You can then export this sequence as an EDL or play it in the media dialog at any time.

How can CatDV help me organise my digital photos?

You can use CatDV to catalog and present digital photos and other image files stored on your computer:

If the images are stored on your digital camera first copy the files to your pictures folder on your hard drive (using the Apple Finder or Windows Explorer, or your digital camera software).
In CatDV Preferences make sure that the Include sub-directories Import option is set.
Open a new or existing catalog and use Import Directory to choose your pictures folder and import all the pictures (and other media files) within that folder.
If you are have added files to an existing directory and want to update your existing catalog use the Scan For New Files command. Alternatively, you can use Import Directory and select the root picture folder again. Any files that are already in the catalog won't be added a second time.
View the catalog with a grid view so you can see thumbnails for the images you have imported.
If any images have the wrong orientation select them and use the Rotate Left or Rotate Right command. This rotates the thumbnail and sets a rotation flag but does not lose any image quality by recompressing or overwriting the original image file.
Use the regular features of CatDV (grouping and sorting, details dialog, bulk edit command, user-defined fields, etc.) to enter keywords or names as required to identify the files.
If you type in a new value for the clip Name you will have the option of renaming the file on disk as well.
If you group on the Media Path property you can see which folder on disk the images are in. Drag and drop clips onto another path name to move the files to another folder.
If you want to suppress a particular image from a catalog without deleting it permanently bring up the clip details for that image and tick the Hide checkbox.
To delete an image file permanently use the Delete Media Files command (or button) and confirm the file deletion.
To present a full screen slide show of selected images use the Run Slide Show command. You can control the speed of the show with the keys 1-9, press Escape or double click to stop the slide show, and use various other keyboard shortcuts to control the presentation.
Use the Randomize Clip Order button, if desired, to temporarily shuffle the clips prior to starting the slide show.
Some digital cameras will also record short MPEG video clips. CatDV will play these as well, and will automatically double the size during playback if the image size is small.
To share pictures with friends use the Export As Still(s) command to export selected pictures scaled down to a small enough size to email efficiently as an attachment. For convenience you can bundle up a set of images to send as a single ZIP archive.
CatDV will display any Exif or Flashpix information it finds in the image in the Metadata column. (Many digital cameras record details such as the date, or whether flash was used.) Try switching to a List view and sorting on the Exposure column to order clips according to their EV value.
You can include still images in a sequence or exported movie. Adjust the duration of still images from the default value of 3 seconds under the Export tab of Preferences.

How should I deal with timecode resets on a DV tape?

If at all possible you should try to avoid timecode resets or breaks from the outset. Timecode discontinuities arise when you play or fast forward past the end of a recording and the camcorder either picks up an incorrect timecode value from an old recording "underneath" or encounters blank tape. You should therefore get in the habit of always using your camcorder's End Search facility every time you Play or Cue a tape, unless you know you have finished and will never record any more on it.

(Ideally, you should also avoid pre-striping tapes or reusing them. While pre-striping does indeed stop the timecode resetting back to zero, it does nothing to stop timecode discontinuities. It does nothing to avoid the underlying problem and you will still get capture errors, but it makes timecode breaks much more difficult to detect.)

There are two possible strategies for dealing with timecode resets once they occur on a tape:

Leave them, and treat each segment as a separate "virtual tape".
Make a copy of the tape with new continuous timecode.

Actually, there's a third option which is to ignore timecode altogether. This is fine if all you do is play tapes from beginning to end, but will fail if you ever plan to edit, batch capture or catalog your tapes properly, as having a unique tape name and timecode value to identify each frame of video is an essential pre-requisite for any of these operations.

Copying a tape is the best solution in the long term, and is straightforward if you have two decks connected by a FireWire cable. The copy will be identical to the original except for having new clean timecode. (You can also make a copy via the computer using a single deck or camcorder, by first capturing and concatenating the segments in your editing application and then printing these to tape. The end result is the same though the process is more cumbersome.)

The other approach is to think of each timecode segment as a separate "virtual" tape and name them accordingly, for example "Tape 12 #1" and "Tape 12 #2". The fact that the timecode starts from zero in each segment does not matter in this case, because the timecode is unique within each virtual tape. During batch capture, if your editing application asks for "Tape 12 #2" you need to fast forward into the second segment of "Tape 12" and capture from there.

If you use Live Capture to scan a tape and build up a catalog then if CatDV detects a timecode reset it will automatically create a new virtual tape name for each timecode segment.

Alternatively, if you have already captured a tape containing timecode resets to disk and want to import the movies to CatDV then you should proceed as follows:

Select the "Strictly base clips on captured DV media" Preference option.
Import the movie file(s).
Show hidden clips, to make sure you correct all the clips including any that are hidden automatically.
Ensure that you are not sorting the view based on Tape or In point, otherwise clips from both timecode segments will be intermingled. Instead, either sort on DV Record Date or leave the view unsorted (ie. in the order the clips were imported to the catalog).
Look at the In (and DV T/C) columns and select all those clips that occur after the timecode reset. Use the Bulk Edit command to give these a new virtual tape name to distinguish them from the first timecode segment.

It is very important that you set a new virtual tape name like this before building preview movies otherwise the previews will refer to the wrong clips.

CatDV 7.0 Reference Guide

Table of Contents

Getting started

Clips and catalogs

Basic operation

Viewing media

Advanced operation

Miscellaneous

Professional Edition

How to...

How to use help

Other sources of documentation

Introduction

Cataloging

Metadata

Logging and scene detection

Proxy files

Video editing

Movie export

Tools

Workgroup features

Installation and registration

System requirements

Updates

Purchasing CatDV

Quick start guide

Screen layout

Importing clips

Viewing clips

Outputting clips

Managing catalogs

Self-contained archives

Clips

Making sense of property names

Importing clips and movies

Live Capture

Exporting clips and movies

Exporting Movies

HTML Export

Views

Main window

Sorting clips

Clip details panel

Viewing media

Viewing and editing clip details

Logging menu

Timecode event markers

Tree navigator

Catalog node

Server node

File system node

Final Cut node

Temporary views

Scratch Pad

Customising views

Adjust column widths

Customise details panel

Clip details dialog

Viewing media

Logging

Splitting and merging clips

Viewing and editing clip details

Creating and navigating to other clips

Keyboard shortcuts

Clip summary dialog

Previews and thumbnails

Thumbnails

Original media

Previews

Locating media

Media dialog

Keyboard shortcuts

JKL controls

Sequences

Editing sequences

Keyboard shortcuts

Printing sequences

Additional information

Marking and selecting clips

Marking clips