GENERAL

(THE REPOSITORY FUNCTIONALITY IS STILL IN A BETA STATE AND NOT GENERALLY AVAILABLE.

A SEPARATE SCRATCH LICENSE AS WELL AS A REPOSITORY SERVER ACCOUNT ARE REQUIRED.

THESE  ONLY AVAILABLE ON REQUEST AND FOR SPECIFIC CASES)

A SCRATCH Project Repository provides secure central storage for SCRATCH projects to be shared with others. A Repository holds an unlimited number of projects and works along the following principles.

• You work on a local copy of the project on your system.
• Any changes you make you can commit into the Repository version of the project.
• Others have their own local copy of the project and commit their changes into the Repository version while downloading any changes made by others into their local copy.
• Any change you commit is accompanied by a short description - as such a Change Log of the project is built and maintained.
• Because you always work on the local copy of the project, you do not depend on an Internet connection. You only need a connection when committing your changes or downloading changes other have made.
• If your changes conflict with changes other have made in the project, SCRATCH allows you to resolve the conflict without any loss of data.

Note that a repository is only storing the project meta data and does not store or hold any media.

ACCESS

Typically an organization will have its own repository and assign an administrator to give certain users access. Creating a new repository and assigning the administrator is either done by by Assimilate Licensing or through a special web-page on MyASSIMILATE / Assimilate Store that will check whether you are entitled to create a repository. After that the administrator can use use the MyASSIMILATE site to give other access and even assign a new administrator. The MyASSIMILATE site was discussed earlier in this chapter.

To login to a repository from SCRATCH you need to enter your MyASSIMILATE account and select a repository from the drop-down list. If no repositories are listed yet - please select the recycle button on the right. SCRATCH will then check to which repositories you have access and list those.

After you selected the Repository from the list - you click the Login button. Note that the Mem button in the login panel allows you to save your password so you do not have to enter that on each time you want to access the repository or other collaboration tools that require you to login.

LOAD A PROJECT

You can load a project from the Repository - meaning that you make your own local copy - by using the Load From Repository button under the Project list on the Startup Screen. After logging in to the repository you are presented with a list of available projects

You select a project and set the local name you want to use for the project. By default this is set to the same as the name of the project in the repository but you can change this. It is possible to have multiple local versions of the same repository project. Next, you set the media folder for the project. Note that you can do that also after creating the local copy or change the media folder later - just like you can do with any project.

When clicking the Open button, SCRATCH starts to download the project from the repository and creates the local copy. The local project is now linked to the repository version but does not require an active link to work with.

LOAD AND COMMIT PROJECT CHANGES

Changes that you make in a project that is linked to a repository are reflected in the Project Tree by showing a colored bullet

A yellow bullet indicates that changes were made in the Construct after the last time the local version of the project has been synchronized with the repository version. A white bullet indicates a new Construct that has not yet been stored in the repository version.

To commit your changes to the repository version of the project and download the changes others made into your local version you use the Sync with Repository button from the Tool menu in the Construct module. You also use this function to add a new project to the repository.

LOG ENTRY

In the top part of the Local Changes tab you enter a description for the Project Change Log. You only enter a description when you have changes to commit. When you only download other changes no log entry is created.

LOCAL CHANGES

The grid holds all changes made since the last time the local project version was synchronized with the repository version.  

Actions

Per changed item you determine what to do with the change:

• Commit - save the local change in the repository version of the project.
• Skip - do not save the local change to the repository version of the project but maintain the local change.
• Revert - revert the local change with the repository version of the item
• Copy - make a copy of the changed item, revert the original and commit the copy. This is mainly used in case of a conflict when the Construct you changes was already changed and committed by someone else. This action can only be used with a Construct.

Items

Changes are grouped together on certain levels:

• Project Defaults - any changes made through the Project settings menu in the Startup screen.
• Project Settings - any changes that were made to various project global settings like e.g. RED decoding values.
• Group - any changes that were made to Construct Groups.
• Construct - any changes that were made to a Construct, timeline edits or individual underlying shots. 

Note that the Project Trays and User Settings are not part of the Repository version.

State

Show if the item is new, modified or was deleted from the local version of the project. In case of a new project has no Repository link  yet - all items are marked as new.

SYNCHRONIZE

Start the synchronization process. For large projects this might take some time. When SCRATCH detects a conflict between the local version and the repository version the process is halted and you are required to update the Action with the conflicting item: revert, skip, copy.

SHOW DETAILS

This button is only enabled when a Construct item is selected in the change grid. This function opens a dialog with a list of changed items within the Construct.

VIEW CHANGE LOG

There are different ways to view the Change Log with a project.

• While inside a project: click the second tab in the Synchronization dialog, available from the Tool menu in the Construct module.
• From the Startup screen: if a local project is linked to a repository the Change Log button is enabled and will popup the Change Log panel.
• From the MyASSIMILATE site: discussed earlier in this chapter.

The Change log contains:

• The date the changes were made
• The user that committed the changes
• The description that user entered with the changes

Also the yellow color of a change log entry indicates till what change the local version of the project database has been synchronized.

USER ADMINISTRATION

All access to a repository is managed through the MyASSIMILATE site and was discussed earlier in this chapter.