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).