BROWSE CATDV SUPPORT MANUALS

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, however, you can enable the old-style details dialog in your Preferences and bring up a separate clip details window.

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 proxy movie (see Proxies 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

  • Using the toolbar buttons you can create a new secondary clip (consisting of just the selection), or create a duplicate of this one (a copy of the entire clip).
  • 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.