Sales and Support FAQ

Question

Answer

The names of columns do not have to be unique as they are just labels for display purposes. While this may appear confusing at first, there are several reasons why you might have different columns or fields with the same name:

• A built-in field may appear in long and short versions, for example "Imported" can show when the clip was imported into the catalog either as a date or a date and time.
• You can create your own user-defined fields with any name you choose, including the same name as a built-in field.
• Some fields are derived from other fields and are intended for special purposes such as presenting information concisely when printing a grid view. For example, "Name or Length" shows either the name for still images or duration for movie clips and may be useful as a way of display the most important information when viewing a mixture of file types.
• Certain file formats include metadata in them (for example MP3 files can containt album and artist names). If you enable metadata columns in Preferences these appear as extra fields which you can add to a view. The names of these metadata columns might clash with existing field names.

One common example is the field called "Name". There is the built-in editable field showing the clip name. There is also a derived field called "Name", intended for when you export batch lists which might show a long version of the clip name by prepending the tape or bin name, and you could have a metadata column or user-defined field called "Name" as well.

If you are choosing a field in a drop down or elsewhere and aren't sure which is the one you want, just hover the mouse over the name for a moment and a short description of the field will be displayed.

14/11/05