Preview movies

CatDV pioneered the concept of storing preview movies in a catalog, as a logical extension to the use of thumbnails. Previews let you see the contents of a clip even when the full-quality version of that clip is offline. In many ways previews are similar to editing proxies, the difference is that preview files are small enough to be kept around permanently long after you've finished editing a project.

CatDV will automatically create and manage previews, either directly from a DV tape or from movie files that you import. You can choose the size and format of preview movies, which can be as small as 100 MB per hour, allowing you to easily keep your entire library online in preview form, even on a laptop.

If you try to play or export a clip and the full-quality master copy is not currently available, CatDV will automatically substitute the appropriate preview version.

Preview movies are referenced based on tape name and timecode. They can either be stored in a shared repository (so they are available to any catalog which refers to that tape), or they can be saved embedded with the catalog as a self-contained preview archive (making it easy to move catalogs and their corresponding preview files around, or back them up to CD-ROM for example).