Managing catalogs

CatDV stores clip details and their thumbnails in a catalog:

• Use the New Catalog command to create a new catalog.
• Use the Open Catalog or Open Recent commands to open an existing catalog.
• Use Save Catalog or Save Catalog As to save a catalog, either keeping the same name or making a copy with a new name.
• Use the Always create backup checkbox in Preferences to automatically make a backup copy of the catalog when saving.
• Use the Open/Import command (or toolbar button) to either open a catalog or import a movie or batch list into the current catalog, depending on the type of the file that is selected.
• Use Catalog Details to enter a short description of the catalog.

Catalogs are normally saved in a file with extension .cdv. You can open more than one catalog at the same time and copy and paste clips between them. Catalogs are portable between Macintosh and Windows.

The trial version of CatDV will not let you save catalogs (or export or print data).

With the optional Workgroup Server, CatDV users can store clips in a central shared database rather than in files in the local file system. Even then, however, CatDV still uses the concepts of catalogs as a logical grouping of related clips.

Regardless of whether you are using the single user standalone or the workgroup version of CatDV, to keep catalogs a manageable size you would normally have a separate catalog for each tape, or perhaps each project, rather than storing all your clips in one huge catalog. See managing multiple catalogs for hints on how to manage a large clip library.