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 roles, and give them access to different groups as required.
See Roles and Permissions for more information.
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 production group (when catalogs are saved to the server this is the group they will belong to unless it’s subsequently changed).
Storing settings on the server
If you work on several productions it is likely that you will be using different user-defined fields, pick list values, and view layouts for each production. An administrator can set up their Preferences for a particular production and then save these settings to the server by right clicking on the production name in the Server tree. When a user logs on to a production group they can load the settings relevant to that group so they have the right values for the group they are working on.
Field definition sets
Normally, user-defined field names and pick list values are stored with the production group settings. You can save a set of these field definitions separately from the other production group settings, however, as a named field definition set, and then apply the same field definitions to multiple production groups. This is useful if you have a standard, enterprise-wide set of custom fields you want to enforce but still want to use different production groups (to manage permissions as part of a complex workflow, for example).
To edit and manage field sets use the Field Definitions tab of Preferences.
A field definition set consists of user-defined field names, metadata field settings (ie.whether Exif and QuickTime metadata fields are used for grouping or not), and pick list values for all these fields, as well as predefined categories for timecode event markers and field mappings used when importing and exporting data to Final Cut Pro.
To save the current field settings as a new named field definition set, click on Manage and then Save As. To link those field settings to another production group, edit the preference settings for the other group (by right clicking on that group in the tree) then click Manage and Load the field set you want to use. From then on the two production groups will share the same field settings.
Normally, only an administrator can edit the settings for a production group. You can allow other users to add new pick list values however (as these may be needed on a day by day basis) by giving them the “Edit pick lists” permission.
Production blog
Using the tree navigator you can create shared group documents on the server.
Group documents relate to a particular production and can be used as a powerful communications tool in a variety of 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.
- To create a group document, right click on the production group and choose New group document, then enter a title and the initial message.
- Click on an existing group document in the tree to see the message in the clip details panel.
- Reply to an existing message or add a new message to the document using the buttons within the message. You can also add special links to clips or catalogs of interest by dragging them onto the document node, for example to tell other team members when a sequence is finished, or to tell them that a clip needs more work.
- Each entry in the document is tagged by date and the person making the change. You can view the document by date or as a threaded conversation, just like a discussion forum or web blog.
Clip lists and smart folders
The tree navigator provides other mechanisms to select and mark clips of interest:
- Clip Lists are folders of clips, similar to play lists. You can drag remote clips (from a catalog or query results) onto a clip list to add them to the list. When you do this you add a reference to the clip. A clip can be in more than one list, and deleting a clip from a clip list only deletes it from that list, it doesn’t delete the clip from the server.
- Smart folders are named queries. When you click on a smart folder in the tree all the matching clips are shown as a temporary read-only view. Just as with catalogs, you need to right click and Open for editing to open the clips properly so you can edit them. You can have local smart folders (saved in local preferences on your machine) or shared smart folders which are stored on the server and accessible to everyone in the production group. If you have a large number of smart folders you can organise them into folders by using a ‘/’ character in the name.
- Automatic grouping folders, or automatic smart folders, are an extension of grouping mode to the server and provide a convenient way to browse clips on the central database by keyword, format or other any other grouping field.
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, roles and users and edit their access permissions
- 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.
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 remote 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.)
Broadcasting Messages
From the connections tab you can send a short message (for example, telling users that the server is about to be shut down) to other CatDV users. If you select specific users from the list you can send them a private message. If you don’t make a selection you can broadcast a message to all users. Note that users may not receive the message immediately, depending on the server poll frequency they have set in Preferences.
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.
Advanced Workflows
For help designing advanced automated workflows, including the CatDV Worker Node and the Live HTML Publisher or Web Client web interfaces, please refer to the release notes included with the CatDV Server and the Worker Node or consult with your systems integrator or solution provider.