BROWSE CATDV SUPPORT MANUALS

With the Verbatim Logger you can type in text while a movie plays and link text to the current time in the movie by inserting event markers. You can use the Verbatim Logger in different ways:

  • As a logging tool, to create subclips by inserting subclip markers at specified points
  • To prepare a transcript of a movie
  • As a quick way to create simple subtitles.

To use the Verbatim Logger, select a master clip in your catalog and then open the Verbatim Logger window. A movie player is shown to the left of the window, with a text area to the right. While the movie is playing you can type text in to the text area and use special keyboard shortcuts to play or pause the movie or insert the current timecode value into the text.

Movie control

As well as shortcuts to play and pause the movie you can also define keys to back up or advance the movie by a few seconds, to increase or decrease the playback speed, or to provide JKL controls. If you click on a marker in the text area the movie will jump to that point.

Inserting markers

You can define keyboard shortcuts or use the Subclip and Event buttons to insert a marker with the current timecode value into the text. When you close the Verbatim Logger window by pressing the Apply button, subclip markers will create a new subclip at that point, while event markers will create a timecode event marker. In each case the text following the marker relates to that timecode. You can also insert the timecode into the text itself.

Saving as text

Instead of creating subclips or timecode event markers you can save the text you type in as plain text in the clip’s Notes field by pressing the Save Text button. The Copy Text is similar but will copy the entire text to the clip (for example, if you need to paste a transcript into a Word document).

Conversely, if you have already created a transcript with timeecode markers in it in this format using another application, you can paste it into the Verbatim Logger window using the Paste Special button.

When saving or pasting text in the Verbatim Logger, a special format is used for markers. Subclip markers appear as a line containing the timecode in square brackets, while event markers contain the timecode on a line on its own. The clip name can be set if you have a line beginning “:Name: “, followed by the name. You can set other fields in a similar way, for example :Bin:, :Notes:, :User1:

Keyboard macros

You can define up to ten keyboard shortcuts for common keywords (such as the name of a character) and map these to ten consecutive keys, such as the numeric keypad digits, F1 through F10, or a two key combination such as Ctrl-A followed by the digits 0 through 9. When you press the key (or key combination) the macro text is inserted into the text area.

If you precede the macro text with an asterisk ‘*’ then an event marker is created at that point. For example, you could define F1 as “*Penalty” and F2 as “*Goal” and use these to quickly log events in a football match.

Defining shortcuts

You can configure the keyboard shortcuts to control the movie and insert timecode markers using the Settings button. In general you need to use special keys (for example function keys, the Tab key, or a modifier combination such as Ctrl-J/K/L) for these functions because the normal keys are used to type descriptive text into the text area.

When defining shortcut keystrokes (or key combinations) you need to enter the name of the key according to a special scheme. The following examples illustrate the names you can use:

“F1”, “alt SPACE” (ie. Alt key and space bar), “NUMPAD0” (numeric keypad 0), “CAPS_LOCK”, “TAB”, “shift TAB”, “ctrl A”, “ctrl PERIOD” (ie. Control key and full stop), “alt COMMA”, “ENTER”, “BACK_SLASH”, etc.

The following modifiers are supported: “shift”, “alt”, “ctrl” and “meta” (the Cmd key on Mac OS X, not available on Windows).

Time of day logging

If you open the Verbatim Logger without selecting a movie then a free running time of day timecode clock is shown, allowing you to type text and insert markers linked to the current time. You can also enter your own start timecode, or ‘0’ to start a free-running clock from 0:00:00:00.