Veerle's blog

Last year in December we talked about Digital Asset Management tools and none of all the tested apps were really perfect. The best one was Portfolio from Extensis but that tool is more suited for photographers or image file formats. It is not created to be an archive tool for DVD or CD’s that contain a wide range of different formats.

My main complain back then was that a lot of the apps tested didn’t have a Mac OS X worthy interface. We only needed an application that could automatically index our archive of CD’s and DVD’s. From the applications that serve only that purpose CDFinder was the most professional one. But since I am a designer I wasn’t too found about the interface. In all those months not much have changed interface wise for CDFinder. Luckily for me there is a new kid in town that makes a pretty decent start for a 1.0 app.

Meet Neometric Software makers of Catalog. First thing you’ll notice is that it isn’t just a Mac OS 9 port or program that looks like it was designed for Windows. This is how I want my OS X applications, taking full advantage of the interface elements of OS X.

It’s in the little details for me, like for example the little triangles on CDFinder that show that the program has its roots from OS 9, I hate that. For me it has to be smooth and not those hard edges from the old days. The fonts in CDFinder of the columns aren’t also anti-aliased as in the finder of OS X, as you can see in the shot below.

Like I said Catalog is a true Cocoa-Lucious app. When you select small icons in the prefs of Catalog you see a live effect in action. Cool! I’m a sucker for that stuff ;-) It is there in the system (Quartz 2D and Quartz Extreme) so why not use it! Even the help system is so much nicer and uses the one that Apple recommends something that can’t be said from CDFinder. See for yourself in these screen-dumps.

It is the simplicity that makes me love Catalog. It functions more natural then CDFinder. To give a quick example: In CDFinder you have to double click the icon to see the catalog of the disk you want in a new window. I didn’t found a way to stay in the same window. In Catalog you only have to select the disk you want in the volumes list drawer and you see the content immediately in main window. Browsing Catalog feels just like browsing in the Finder. If you need that file just pop in the CD and you’re off.

We used the batch index feature which essentially does nothing more then indexing a CD or DVD and when that is done spit it out for you to place a new one in the tray ready to be indexed also.

Searching for something is lightening fast and a huge difference with CDFinder. Searching in a catalog of 50 CD’s and DVD’s for “gif” resulted in a blink of the eye with 39.281 results. That’s probably the reason why it takes a bit until the program is ready to be used when you start it. Our catalog consists of 20 DVD’s and around 30 CD’s and it takes about 23 seconds for the index to load on a Dual 1GHz G4 with 1.5 GB RAM and on a Dual G5 2.7GHz with 2.5 GB RAM 11 seconds. I personally don’t find that a drawback since searching is so fast even in a big index. If you need more advanced searching capabilities, just open up the more advanced find dialog if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for.

It is not 100% perfect yet because while using it we discovered a flaw when using the batch index feature. The flaw is that the application only saves the index of disk(s) when you close the program. We lost an index of 15 DVD’s when the program unexpectedly quitted. They had to be indexed again. It should be saved when it is done with indexing a CD or DVD so you don’t loose anything if the apps stops unexpected. Also every time you quit the app it saves the index even if nothing is changed. Don’t know why, but it would be good if in a future version it would only save if you actually changed something. I’m sure this can be dealt with in a revison.

Yes CDFinder has more features but as I said this is 1.0 application and the developers have laid out a solid foundation for the future. I’m sure that they will add more features in upcoming releases. I am already using it and if you’re looking for a true Mac OS X tool to help you out sorting all sorts of volumes you’ll love Catalog. You can test drive it here. Always save the best for last and that’s the price it costs only $20.