Enterprise Specific Features

This section describes features that are only available in the Enterprise version of CatDV.

Setting the Production Group of an Existing Catalog

You can view the group any catalog belongs to, and change the group if you have permission, by bringing up the details of the catalog using the Get Info button on the “Browse Database” screen.

If you check the “Show all” box this screen lists all the catalogs in the database. Any which you don’t have permission to access are greyed out. The permission column summarises the access you have to a catalog using letters:

r – read (can open the catalog)

w – write (can publish changes)

d – delete.

The cataog details also shows information such as who initially created the catalog or when it was last modified.

Checking permissions

Use the Browse Database command to view the group and user that a catalog belongs to and whether you have permission to read, write or delete the catalog. The “Access” column summarises these permissions with the letters ‘r’, ‘w’ and ‘d’, while ‘-‘ indicates you don’t have access. If you use the tree navigator catalogs are arranged in folders according to the production group they belong to.

Use the Show Info button to display the catalog information panel where you can change the user or group the catalog belongs to (if you have permission to edit the catalog).

If you still don’t see the commands to publish catalogs or save changes, even though you think you should have permission to do so, there are several other things to check:

Check that the “Allow write access to server” option is checked in the “Server” Preferences page Make sure you are not using a Browse Only client license.

If the status line shows you are in a read-only view and the clips are shown with a distinctive red background this means you are quickly previewing the contents of a catalog on the server without having fully opened it. Right click on the catalog in the tree or use the Server menu and choose the Open For Editing command.

Production blog

It is possible to store simple documents, such as notes or to-do lists, on the server for communicating information among the team. The documents can contain links to specific catalogs or clips and appear under the “Production blog” tree node on the client. A ‘document’ consists of ‘entries’ so you can maintain a discussion thread as required.

Audit log

The audit log displays an audit history of significant events to the database, including when the server was started and stopped, when users logged on and off, and when catalogs were published or modified. Select the type of message or date range to filter messages, or type in text to search for in the description column.

Tape library management

The Library Management screen gives you a list of all the tape records in the CatDV database. You can store information against each particular tape, such as as a description, its shelf location, a barcode number. This information is linked to all the media clips that refer to that tape identifier. You can therefore use the library management screen as an alternative way to browse the contents of the database – you can browse clips either by catalog (using Browse Database) or by tape (using Library Management).

Shared clip lists

Using the “Server” tree you can create named clip lists on the server by right clicking on the Clip Lists node. A clip list is a collection of clips (like a playlist in iTunes). Clips are stored by reference, so you can include the same clip in more than one clip list. You can add clips by dragging them from another a remote catalog or query results to the clip list, and remove them by opening up the clip list for editing and then deleting the clip.

Shared smart folders

As well as shared clip lists (with an explicit list of clips), you can create smart clip lists (called smart folders) which are based on a query. When the user clicks on a smart folder the query is performed and the matching clips are shown. Users can create their own personalized smart folders which are saved locally on their machine but with the Enterprise edition of the server you can also create shared smart folders, where the query is stored on the server.

Automatic smart folders

Any clip property which is configured as a grouping field appears under the Automatic Smart Folders node so you can quickly perform queries based on that field.