CDFinder Introduction: A QuickStart Guide



What is CDFinder?
This is a quick intro to the powerful digital asset management (DAM) software CDFinder...



Script:
This is a quick introduction about what CDFinder does and how to use it.

CDFinder is a digital asset management tool. Aaaah-ha. What that really means is that CDFinder knows where all your files are, digital photos, movie files, songs, documents, and so on.

You say: Well, that is what Spotlight is doing? Right, but what about the files on external disks? As soon as you disconnect or unmount a disk from your Mac, Spotlight forgets about it immediately. But CDFinder remembers! So CDFinder is meant for your disk Library, your Archive, and Backup disks.

And don’t let the name “CD”Finder fool you, this mighty software catalogs anything that you can hook up to your Mac, hard disks, server volumes, iPods, USB Sticks, DVDs, CDs, and much more.

Here is an example: You need to find a song named “Give A Little Bit” by Roger Hodgson (formerly Supertramp). You can simply type that name into the QuickFind field, hit return, and voila, here are the results.

Of course, there are also non-song files here, because CDFinder will search each and every piece of information it got for that name. Now, it would be very cool if you could ask CDFinder only to show you song files with “Give A Little Bit” as the title, and even maybe also just songs of Roger Hodgson as the artist, omitting the tracks he did with Supertramp. Here you go. It is that simple!

The cool Inspector window here shows you all the details that CDFinder knows about every selected item, also including all metadata.

And Music isn’t the only part in which CDFinder excels. What about photos? You’ll get an entire set of powerful search options, including all EXIF and IPTC tags, of course. Movies?
Sure! It is all there for you.

So, how does CDFinder work its magic? You need to let CDFinder catalog every one of your disks once. CDFinder will quickly gather information about every item on the disk, and a lot of additional metadata that makes it easier for you to find your stuff later.

And before you start cataloging, you really want to have a look at the CDFinder Preferences, and especially the Cataloging section. All these settings here greatly influence the cataloging speed, but also the amount of data that CDFinder has available to find your stuff.

Then catalog your disks, one by one, simply drag it in, and CDFinder will catalog it.

Or if you have an entire stack of disks, use the Batch Cataloging, and feed the disks, and let CDFinder catalog and then eject them for you. Very easy!

What can you do if you have changed some files on an cataloged disk? Simply let CDFinder “Update” its catalog by selecting the catalog in CDFinder, and using the Update Catalog command.
Then CDFinder will quickly go over the disk and pick up the changes. That is really simple.

This was just an introduction. CDFinder can do so much more for you. We have more Video Tutorials for you, an excellent Users Guide for those who still read, and other cool resources in the Help menu of CDFinder…

And now enjoy this amazing library manager!