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September, 2008

In this issue:

• Blog Intro
• Canto Power Tips
• Canto News
• Term of the Month
• Events

Cumulus Power Tips

Creating Generic Filters for Any File Format Creating Generic Filters for Any File Format
Customize the icons Cumulus uses to represent your files.

The Next Best Thing to Thumbnails

Cumulus can automatically generate thumbnails for many file formats. So, even if a file you catalog doesn’t have an embedded thumbnail, you might still see one inside Cumulus. This is a great feature, but it isn’t possible for all file formats. Plus, for non-visual formats, like audio files, thumbnails rarely even make sense.

When a file doesn’t provide its own thumbnail (and Cumulus cannot generate one), Cumulus uses the icon the operating system uses to represent the file type. But, if the file format is one for which your computer doesn’t have a special icon, a generic icon is used instead. Ick!

Or, maybe you just don’t like the standard application-provided icons, and you’d rather see your asset records appear using icons you choose.

Another benefit is consistency: If your preferred Web browser is Firefox, the HTML files you catalog will use the Firefox icon. But if a colleague prefers Internet Explorer, the HTML files he catalogs will use that program’s icon. The result is that you have files of the same type in your catalogs that are represented by different icons. That’s confusing!

The solution to all these issues is to tell Cumulus about these file formats in advance, so when a file comes in, Cumulus will use the image you supply for the asset’s thumbnail.

Setting this up is an easy two-step process:

• Prepare the images you want used, and
• Configure a Cumulus asset handling set to use them.

NOTE: Though this tip is useful for all organizations, it’s of particular value to those using Internet Client Pro, because Cumulus cannot communicate with the cataloging computer in order to acquire file icons. So, it’s not uncommon for files cataloged via Internet Client Pro to be shown using generic icons.

Preparing the Image

The images you use must be in JPEG format, but they can be virtually any size you want. (But be reasonable!) Some images that might work well for your custom icons are:

• The file icons Mac OS X or Windows Vista provides,
• A logo or other graphic that would represent the file format, or
• Custom icons from commercial or free Internet resources.

PREPARATION SUGGESTIONS

Aspect ratio
Use an aspect ratio for your images that approximates the square thumbnail area Cumulus uses. Images that are short and wide, or tall and thin, make less sense, because they won’t take advantage of as much of the visible area.

Image sizes
Prepare and save the images at the largest size you want them displayed in your catalogs. But remember, the actual size of thumbnail images stored in your catalogs is determined by the asset handling set used during cataloging. So, if you make your custom thumbnail images big, and the asset handling set used for cataloging captures thumbnails at a smaller size, your custom thumbnails will be stored at that smaller size too. Finally, remember that the actual display size of thumbnails is a user setting.

Content considerations
Make sure the custom thumbnails you use are suitable for all files of that format, and not a representation of any particular asset. If your custom thumbnails appear too much like actual assets, users might be confused by seeing so many copies of what appears to be the same asset.

Configuring Cumulus

What you need to do in Cumulus is create a new “generic” filter for the file format you wish to “iconify.” (To perform the following steps, your permissions must enable you to manage asset handling sets.)

It’s a good idea to work with a copy of an asset handling set while testing, so that’s where we’ll begin:

1. (Figure 1) Open the Preferences window for one of your catalogs and create a copy of the Standard set. We’ll use this set for the remainder of this exercise.

FIGURE 1 Create and use a copy of the Standard asset handling set for this exercise. Share it only if you want others to see it. Edit your production sets only after you’ve tested your changes and confirmed they are what you want.

NOTE Make sure your user settings are configured to either use this set by default, or permit you to choose the set when cataloging. Otherwise, the changes you make will not take effect.

2. (Figure 2) Next, click on the Modules tab and click the Filters icon. Highlight Generic Filter in the list and click the Properties button.

3. (Figure 2) In the window that appears, type the file extension for the file format, and give it a descriptive name.

FIGURE 2 From the Properties page of the Generic Filter module, you can create new, custom filters that include the images you want used for thumbnails. Each time you open the Generic Filter module properties, you are creating a new filter. When you click OK, the filter is saved.

NOTE You can enter the 4-character Mac OS file type if you know it, but it offers no benefit unless you’re cataloging Mac files that have no file name extensions, and your Cumulus Server runs on Mac OS X.

4. (Figure 2) Next, click the Static Thumbnail option and then click again on the Browse button. Choose the image you want to use for the format’s thumbnails, and click the appropriate buttons to dismiss the Open File and Properties windows.

At this point, you’ve created a new filter for the file format (extension) you defined. Do the previous few steps for as many formats as you want to affect.

5. (Figure 3) Click on the Asset Formats tab to see the list of filters in use by this asset handling set. Your new filter(s) will be at the bottom of the list, but we want them at the top.

FIGURE 3 New filters you add are placed at the bottom of the list. Use the button shown to move them to the top. You can later change a custom filter’s file extension or image through its Properties window.

6. (Figure 3) Select your filter(s) in the list and click the button shown in figure 3 to move them to the top of the filters list. Click Apply to save your changes.

That’s all there is to it! When you next catalog an asset of the type you configured, Cumulus will use the image you chose for the asset’s thumbnail, and the File Format metadata field will include the name you provided. (Figure 4)

FIGURE 4 Lose those ugly operating system icons! Replace them with beauties like these, freely available from http://yellowicon.com.

WHY DOES THE FILTER ORDER MATTER?

When a file is cataloged, Cumulus “passes” it down the list of active filters, in numerical order, asking each: “Can you do anything with this file type?” If a filter can work with the file type, it does what it’s supposed to and then passes the file down to the next filter in the list. If the filter cannot do anything with the file type, the file is passed down to the next filter immediately.

When a filter receives the file, it checks to see if anything it knows how to do with the file type has already been done. For example, if Filter 2 can generate a thumbnail, but Filter 1 has already done so, Filter 2 skips that step.

In our case, we want Cumulus to use the thumbnail and file type we defined in our custom filter(s). By placing our filters at the top of the list, we know that no other filter will override our choices.

Take another look at figure 4. You can see some WAV files that have a thumbnail defined through a custom filter. This thumbnail was used because the custom filter was higher in the list than the standard WAV (Audio) filter supplied with Cumulus, which uses the operating system icon for these files. However, because our custom filter doesn’t extract any metadata from the assets, the “real” WAV filter does that for us, so we can still get our duration, sample rate, etc., assuming that metadata is inside the asset.

NOTE This Power Tip is known to work on all editions of Cumulus 7.0, and later.

In this issue:

• Blog Intro
• Canto Power Tips
• Canto News
• Term of the Month
• Events