Worker Node, Proxies, and Paths

[Bryson Jones]

This is not a “quick one”, at least not for me.

I’d reach out to your dealer/integrator and know that the short answer is to not drag and drop batches onto the Worker Node. That will be looking at the preset root in the Worker action and not necessarily at the full path. Notice the “Relative to:” field in the Worker action.

There may be a way to get that path into the action, but we direct clients to set up actions by a server query and set a metadata flag to “create proxy” to trigger the Worker. That way it gets the full path and you can also get the flag to be set to “proxy created” or something so you can track what’s done.

Free advice (and worth every penny.) Consider making h.264 mp4 files for proxy instead of mov. Android won’t read mov and many PC’s don’t have it installed. Most every browser can play an mp4 now and you never know what you might want to do with those proxies down the road.

bryson

bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com

northshoreautomation.com

[Doug Metz]

[bryson jones] “I’d reach out to your dealer/integrator and know that the short answer is to not drag and drop batches onto the Worker Node. That will be looking at the preset root in the Worker action and not necessarily at the full path. Notice the “Relative to:” field in the Worker action.

Thanks, Bryson. That makes good sense. Do the importing in Pro, save, wait for Worker to pick it up that way.

[bryson jones] There may be a way to get that path into the action, but we direct clients to set up actions by a server query and set a metadata flag to “create proxy” to trigger the Worker. That way it gets the full path and you can also get the flag to be set to “proxy created” or something so you can track what’s done.

Virtually everything I bring in will need proxies, so finding a way to have that happen automatically is what I’m after. Probably could set that flag on import, yes?

[bryson jones] Free advice (and worth every penny.) Consider making h.264 mp4 files for proxy instead of mov. Android won’t read mov and many PC’s don’t have it installed. Most every browser can play an mp4 now and you never know what you might want to do with those proxies down the road.”

That’s actually what I’m doing… should have typed it that way! ;^)

Thanks again,

Doug Metz

Anode

[Bryson Jones]

As to “proxy everything” you can totally set the Worker to do everything just by setting a query to:

“if this field is blank, make proxy” but know that the minute you do that you’ll almost certainly drop in a bunch of stuff that you didn’t want proxy for. 😉

It’s so easy to just set a flag on everything by selecting all that it’s best to not have it do it “automatically”. Also, if you have 10,000 assets in, the Worker would decide what goes first, so it’s better if you just set the flags and then you can pick what goes first.

“Automatic” is great, but it needs to be in a controlled data set, nothing should ever be automatic across the whole database unless you just like watching your Worker run for weeks on end.

Also, it robs you of the ability to save temp versions of things. Setting up a server query is really interesting. Most people start with one flag/comdition to run something and then realize that that is a bit limited. The more you think the deeper your queries get. For instance:

If field 1 is set to X
Or field 7 is set to Y
But not if field 13 is blank
Or media path does not contain Z
Then do action.

Beware queries like, “do this action on everything regardless.”

Final tip. Never use the “Notes” field for your own data. (The verbatim logger overwrites it.) And never use the “Status” field for anything. The Worker uses that sometimes and can overwrite your data without you realizing it. Create your own “notes” and your own status fields, preferably one for every action you do so that you can track when and what actions have happened. Also, writing a date and time to a separate field when an action runs is a great way to track automation. For every automated workflow we set up, we generally add 2 to 6 new fields to the db. Seems like a lot, but you can tell at a glance what processes have been performed on a file.

bryson

bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com

northshoreautomation.com