To use the workgroup features of CatDV you need to purchase and install the separate CatDV Workgroup Server product, which is available for various server platforms and databases. You also need a Professional Edition license for each client that will be using the server.
Note that because most Internet firewalls block access to non-standard ports you normally need direct access to the server machine from each client machine via a local area network.
Use the Log On To Server command in the Workgroup menu and enter the hostname or IP address of the machine running the CatDV Server. When you press OK you will be logged on to the server and the other Workgroup menu commands will be enabled, or you may see a message that a connection failure occurred.
To check that you have established a connection with the server program use the Server Status command to display some statistics about the operation of the server, such as how many catalogs and clips are contained in the remote database.
If you have created catalogs and saved them locally on your hard disk you need to publish them to make them available to other users via the shared database. Once they are stored in the shared database you no longer need the local catalog files (though you may choose to keep these files somewhere as a backup or in case you need access to them when the server is unavailable). Once published to the database you should make all your changes there, however, rather than in the local files, as the local files will not be kept in sync with the database.
You publish a catalog by opening it and then using the Publish Catalog command. This will publish the catalog from the current window (even if you have just created it and it has never been saved to disk - if you don't require a local copy you can then close the window without saving changes).
You can also publish an entire directory full of catalog files directly from your local hard disk by using the Publish Folder command.
Use the Browse Database command to view a list of all the catalogs in the remote database, including a short summary of the contents of each catalog. You can open a catalog by double clicking its name in the list. From this window you can also delete catalogs, or search for all the catalogs containing a particular keyword (in either the catalog description or the clip details).
Use Perform Query to enter search criteria to search for matching clips across the entire remote database. A window is displayed containing the query results, combining all the clips that match, even if they are in different catalogs.
You can save the query results to a new local catalog file, print them out, export them as a batch list, or make changes to the clips returned, perhaps adding new logging annotations and then publishing the changes back to the remote database.
Although all the clips in the remote database are stored in the same place, for convenience they are still grouped into logical groupings called catalogs. You should normally create separate catalogs for each tape, or perhaps each shoot or each project, rather than trying to store all your clips in one large catalog. This will make it easier to manage your clips. For example, you can use the Delete Catalog command in Browse Database to delete a catalog from the database. You also minimise the risk of creating a catalog that is too large to open reliably if you only have limited memory available.
Once you have opened a remote catalog you have a local copy of the clips and thumbnails from that catalog in memory on your machine. If another user on your network edits these clips and publishes their changes to the database you can use Refresh Window to update your window with the latest version from the remote database. The time at which the contents of the window were last synchronised with the remote database is shown as part of the window title. If you have had a window open for a long time it's a good idea to refresh the window before starting to make any changes.
When you open a remote catalog or perform a query and are working with the query results you can edit the clips in your window exactly as if you were working on a normal local catalog file. However, rather than saving any changes to disk with Save Catalog, you normally want to update the clips in the remote database instead, for which you use the Publish Changes command.
You can add logging notes, change clip names, make selections, select new poster thumbnails, delete unwanted clips, split a clip into two or create new secondary clips, and all these changes will be saved when you publish the changes. You can also create brand new clips, eg. by importing a file or using New Log Entry, but only if you have opened a remote catalog, not if you are viewing query results, as in the latter case it is not defined which catalog the new clips belong to.
If two users try to make changes to the same catalog or clips at the same time then only the first set of changes that are published will be saved to the remote database. The second person who attempts to publish changes will receive a warning message stating there were conflicting edits (eg. trying to add a comment to a clip which the previous user has just deleted). All the changes which can be saved without conflict are saved, and the main window is refreshed to show the current contents as per the remote database. Any clips which weren't able to be saved are displayed in a new unsaved changes window. The second user then needs to manually re-apply those changes in the main window, deciding whether and how to resolve any conflicts before trying to publish the changes again.
If you publish a catalog with the same name and creation time as an existing catalog in the remote database (and your local catalog is newer than the one in the database) then you will overwrite that catalog in the database with the newer one. Normally you should always use Publish Changes, as this automatically merges your changes and attempts to resolve any conflicting edits.
There are two main situations, however, where you may want to overwrite a catalog by using Publish Catalog instead:
In both cases note that any change history associated with the old catalog will be lost, and if another user has the same catalog open they will be unable to publish their changes.