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 change the timecode of a clip. You can use this to adjust the timecode values of multiple clips by the same amount (for example to update subclips after re-ingesting a tape with different timecode).
- 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 Apply Log File to create subclips from a movie clip based on an ALE or tab-separated log file or an SRT subtitle file. First import the media, then select the clip and apply a log file to it. Any events within the log file whose timecode lies within the clip you selected will result in subclips of that master clip (or timecode event markers in the case of an SRT file). (Professional Edition only).
- 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 the Verbatim Logger to type in log notes and insert timecode markers while a clip is playing. (Professional Edition only).
- Use Assign To Event to automatically assign clips to events based on their record date (or manually create events, as required). Import Event Log can be used to import an XML event from the CatDV Field Logger iPhone app.
- 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.
- Utility commands that apply to media files are discussed in the next section.
Spell checker
A built-in cross-platform spell checker (licensed from i-net software) provides spell checking within the Verbatim Logger, and within the Notes field and other multi-line text fields in the clip details panel.
If a word is misspelled and underlined in red, right-click on it to view suggested corrections. You can also change the language by right-clicking on the text. To add words to your own dictionary click on the Spelling… button in the Verbatim Logger (Professional Edition only) or press F7 from the main CatDV interface.
By default, only an English dictionary is included. You can add new languages by downloading the appropriate dictionary from SourceForge and editing the dictionaries.txt file in the program folder to add the new language code. For example, to support English and German change dictionaries.txt so it says “languages = en,de”. On Windows the dictionaries.txt and dictionary file(s) go in the ‘lib’ subfdolder, on Mac OS X you need to right click on the application to show the package contents and place the dictionary in the Contents/Resources/Java subfolder.