Catalog Size and Performance

The biggest factor affecting catalog size is the number of records in the catalog. There is no hard limit on the number of records that a catalog can hold, but catalog files cannot be larger than one terabyte in size.

As multiple catalogs can be opened in one window, an advantage of this is that it makes it easier to search for an asset. Workgroups with large catalogs can now split them into multiple catalogs and be able to open and search them in one Window. The beauty of smaller catalogs is that, the time required to repair, restructure or reorganize a catalog is reduced tremendously. Furthermore, if a particular catalog is being repaired or restructured, the assets in the other catalogs will be unaffected and can still be accessed.

Search times, however, are not affected by catalog size.

The actual number of records you can fit into the catalog size limit depends on the individual records’ sizes. Factors that determine a record’s size include:

• The type of asset the record represents. Different asset types have different information that needs to be stored to identify them, so their records use varying amounts of catalog space. For example, a video clip uses space for frame rate and total frame number fields that a simple image doesn’t require.

• The amount of text in the record’s Notes field. All those characters in the Notes field have to be stored somewhere! If you add 1k worth of text, you add 1k to the record size. Multiply that times a thousand or so records and you have added an entire megabyte to your catalog’s size.

• The record’s thumbnail size and quality. Larger and higher quality thumbnail images take up more space. (See “Catalog Settings”, for information on thumbnail settings.)

Typically, your catalogs will never reach the maximum size. If they do, you’ll need to divide them. (See “Dividing Catalogs”.)

As a catalog grows, the time required to catalog new assets increases. There are a few tricks for Asset Handling Sets that you can do to increase performance when cataloging large amounts of assets at once:

• Choose Catalog Duplicates on the Cataloging tab. This option prevents Cumulus from having to “think” too much about what it is cataloging. (See Client User Guide “Overview: Asset Handling Sets” for details.)

• Deactivate any asset formats that you don’t need. (See Client User Guide “Asset Format Support” for details.)