BROWSE CATDV SUPPORT MANUALS

You can export clips 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 – see below
  • 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 Cinestream Capture LogPremiere Batch LogCanopus 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 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 create a sequence from your selected clips 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. (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 proxy 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 online) 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 include 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 Reviewedcommand).
  • 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 or scene number. This text can appear for a fixed duration or for the entire duration of the clip. If you choose the Event Marker field the text changes at each timecode event and you can use this to add subtitles. You can choose the size for the text and timecode tracks and whether they should have a transparent or opaque background. You can also burn in a watermark image such as a station logo by specifying a transpartent GIF or PNG image to overlay. The image you provide is scaled to fill the frame so would normally be mostly transparent with a logo in one corner.
  • Under the Annotations tab you can add QuickTime annotations such as title, author or copyright to the exported movie, assuming you are exporting a QuickTime reference or flattened movie. You can specify the name of a variable by using its field id, eg. @CREF for the Clip ID. (Professional Edition only)

Exporting stills

With the Export As Stills command you can create JPEG still images from the poster frame (or other specified frames) of each movie clip. In the case of still image clips you can export a scaled version of the image.

Normally the poster frame of each clip is exported but in the Professional edition you can choose additional frames to export, such as all thumbnail frames, all event markers, or all markers of a particular category. Use the “HTML Thumbnails” option to export high resolution versions of the thumbnails used when exporting an HTML page, named consistently with the way that the Export As HTML command does it. To simplify emailing images, by default the exported images are scaled down to smaller size, and a whole set of images can be combined into a single convenient ZIP archive.

When exporting a single image you can choose the filename yourself but when exporting multiple images you just specify the directory in which to place the images and the files will be named automatically.

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 tape-based proxy movies. This index is written in the proxy directory and allows you to access the proxy 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.

(The Export As Still command, described above, provides another way to create an HTML index of selected clips and images when you choose the ZIP archive option.)

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 CatDV Web Client component you can make similar information available as a dynamic view of the current contents of the central database. The Web Client web interface also provides dynamic searching capabilities.