This section provides a quick tutorial, covering the basic steps you need to go through to start using the worker node:
- Launch the CatDV Worker Node application. It should automatically bring up the Edit Configuration window, otherwise press the Edit Config button.
- Go to the “License” tab and enter your registration code. (To do this, select and copy the entire contents of the email message you were sent then simply press the Paste button.)
- If you use the CatDV Workgroup or Enterprise server, enter the server hostname and other details under the “CatDV Server” tab. (If you use the Enterprise edition of the server you should create a special user for the worker node to use and enter the username here.)
- If you want to send email notifications you need to enter details of the SMTP mail server you wish to use under the “Email Setup” tab.
- Go to the “Watch Actions” tab and click the “+” button to define a new watch action.
- First, define what files the action applies to. It can be triggered by a file occurring inside a particular watch folder or by dropping a file into the Worker Node application window, and it may be restricted so it only applies to files that meet certain filter conditions. For example, you could enter “*.mov” as a filename pattern, or “44.1” in the audio format field. (Alternatively, you can define a server query and clips that have been saved to the server will be processed instead, for example whose status is “Publish via FTP”.)
If you don’t want to check a particular condition just leave the fields you’re not interested in blank to indicate “don’t care”.
- Then, define what actions you want to apply to the matching files. Enter a job name to describe the action (eg. “Convert audio to 48 kHz”) and complete other fields under Job Details and Post-Processing as required. Many of the operations correspond to commands in the CatDV application. Analysing media corresponds to importing a media file and generating clips, movie conversions correspond to the Export As Movie and Build Preview Movies commands, and so on.
- Press the “+” button on the Job Details tab to define as many movie conversions as you want. A single input file might be processed to create multiple versions at different resolutions for example. For the format, choose New Conversion Preset, give it a descriptive name then select which exporter to use and press Customise to adjust its settings. You can also choose a preset you have previously defined.
- Repeat steps 6 through 9 as required to define as many different watch actions as required, or use the “Duplicate” button to use an existing watch action as a template and then edit the copy.
- When you are finished, press Apply to re-initialise the worker node with the new settings and start processing files.
If you specified one or more watch folders they will be scanned initially after a short delay, and then repeatedly after the period that you configured. Alternatively, if you enabled file dropping, then you can drag and drop files from the Mac OS X Finder or Windows File Explorer into the main Task Queue area to submit them for processing.