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August 2014

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www.postmagazine.com 47 POST AUGUST 2014 ent approach that avoids the check-in/ check-out concept (which confuses a lot of people) altogether. However, it does ensure that conflicting edits do not result in a corrupted database. When two users are making chang- es to the same clip (or catalog), both have a local "copy" of the clip open in their desktop CatDV application. The first user who publishes changes to the remote database has priority in CatDV's conflict solving concept. The second person trying to publish changes will re- ceive a warning with the conflict, and his remote window will refresh. However, all non-conflicting changes will be saved, while clips that couldn't be saved at all are listed in a separate window. In order to apply these changes, the second user will have to re-apply the changes on the clip explicitly. This gives him the opportunity to decide whether they are still needed. A user who has the necessary per- missions can force his changes to a catalog by re-publishing the catalogue. This action will over-write the entire remote catalog. CatDV Pegasus has a lovely design and all features, clip properties, metada- ta, etc., are easily accessed and changed if necessary. Even better, you can create your own metadata panels using an editing interface that largely works with selections and value lists. The tailored screens can be organized as desired, with check boxes, radio buttons, text fields, etc. Supported video clips run in the main window in CatDV's own player and allow access to markers, I/O points and even voiceovers. Rough edits are possible, whereby you create simple sequences out of multiple clips. Such rough edits, including all markers, can be exported to new media as well as a Final Cut Pro X XML file. In my tests this worked great. CatDV Pegasus supports direct export to Avid's AAF files, has the Archive and Archive Library options and the MXF option, reads metadata from .R3D files and creates Red metaclips, enables you to configure and print out a clip using a custom label layout and server-side plug-ins. CatDV Pro and Pegasus Clients also support ingestion of all types of files, including, for example, spreadsheets with scene descriptions. Images are also supported (RAW as well as JPEG, PNG, etc.). However, if you want to use CatDV for images only or mainly, you'll only find EXIF metadata support. You can create fields for IPTC, but I found doing the same with the Extensis Portfolio DAM a couple of years ago a daunting task. CONCLUSION The CatDV Pegasus Client and En- terprise Server is a highly-scalable DAM system. It's user-friendly, easy to configure and flexible. It has all of the functionality a large production house expects from a production digital asset management solution. In addition, the CatDV API makes it possible to integrate the CatDV DAM system with other systems, such as distri- bution tools (FTP, Aspera, File Catalyst), spoken dialog search (Nexidia), storage (Facilis, SGL, BRU/DAX), archival (Sony Optical Disk Archive, Archiware, Xen- data, Quantum Stornext, Cache-A) and transcoding solutions (Compressor, Epi- sode, Vantage, Redline, Digital Rapids). CatDV, from Square Box Systems, is a DAM solution that's optimized for video production and post production. REVIEW

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