[Jeff Schaap]

Anyone?? Has anyone done any command line stuff in the PC version of Worker Node?

[Jeff Schaap]

Hey Bryson,

[bryson jones] “AVC is like the poor, it will be with us always (now there’s a reference for you.)”

Hahaha, yep, Matthew 26:11 🙂

Thanks for the encouraging word. I’ve benefited from your wisdom more than once and greatly appreciate your willingness to answer questions.

[Jeff Schaap]

Hey Bryson,

I wanted to ask you about:

[bryson jones] “Bigger issue, it’s a best practice to use UNC paths in CatDV and Worker. Mapped drives can create issues with Quicktime (google that for some fun) and also are more confusing for writing scripts”

I did google it but I can’t find one definitive issue… So I was wondering exactly what the problem may be. Could I trouble you for a link to a specific site detailing the issue?

I ask because we have in fact had what I would call “access delay” in CatDV when previewing files on drive letter mapped locations. So, I am wondering if this is the issue.

Thanks,
Jeff

[Jeff Schaap]

I got an email from Rolf which solved the issue (thank again Rolf):

“One thing you could try is replace CatDV Pro.exe in the CatDV 9 folder with the corresponding file from CatDV 10. The exe is just a launcher and it’s possible we made some improvements to that since v9. (The CatDV application itself is inside the lib folder).

-Rolf”

Jeff

[Jeff Schaap]

Hey Bryson, thanks for the response. Our solution, for the time being, is to just ingest via a Mac workstation. This way, all the paths are usable by WorkerNode and we move on with life.

[bryson jones] ”
Bigger issue, it’s a best practice to use UNC paths in CatDV and Worker. Mapped drives can create issues with Quicktime (google that for some fun) and also are more confusing for writing scripts.”

I am not sure how that is possible in a Mac environment (our CatDV server is a Mac) since UNC paths would be misinterpreted by WorkNode as well. Maybe I am misunderstanding something.

[bryson jones] “In defense of the system, not many systems (any?) will dynamically allow you to send a command based on a Mac or PC path being auto sensed and it’s fairly easy to have 2 scripts that run depending on the root of the path if you get outside of the Worker itself.”

I am not intending to bad mouth CatDV. It has some great features. It has some shortcomings. What would be great, for our purposes, is if the “original media path” search behavior in the client extended to WorkNode. Maybe there is some great reason it doesn’t but, in a mixed environment like ours it’s an issue.

I considered the “two scripts” idea but.. yikes. It would be easy enough to detect if the path was from a Mac or PC (you could do that within WorkNode’s interface I believe) but quite a scripting feat to convert a PC path to the correct corresponding Mac path. At least, for me. While I’ve written some python in the past I don’t have the time or inclination to spend the hours it would take me to figure it out. Deadlines are always looming. Much easier to just ingest via Mac for now.

[bryson jones] “Great work and let us know how you do with the mts files. (an even bigger mess) We can’t seem to get them to span correctly or carry TC when we just raw process them via a watch. Has Adobe sorted this yet?

If so, we’ll get to work rolling out some CLI scripts for Media Encoder so people don’t have to drop and move files”

Yes.. the AVCHD conundrum is at the heart of this whole problem. If CatDV could play AVCHD natively I think I would cry. Haha. When pulling .MTS stuff into Premiere I don’t see timecode and it isn’t adjoining clips that are technically all one recording. But, it’s of little issue for us. I guess some people might need that functionality.

When we were all Mac I used to command line ClipWrap from WorkerNode and create proxies for all our .MTS clips. A second pass from WorkNode would compress them down. This worked great most of the time but every once in while WorkerNode couldn’t process a clip generated by ClipWrap. So I looked for another route.

Tried FFMPEG and got random freezes. Tried Adobe Media Encoder through a watch a folder arrangement and that works most of the time but on big jobs it can hang. Frustrating that nothing is rock solid.

There’s Xuggle of course but the play back is too rough to be useful. If only there were an AVCHD codec for Quicktime. VLC can play it! Sigh.

[Jeff Schaap]

Be glad to. I sent it to Rolf (we’ve been emailing) but I will send it to that address to. Thanks Matt.

[Jeff Schaap]

Hahaha, no suggestions is ignored! But, yes, I did try that right off when the problem started.

[Jeff Schaap]

Here’s the log but I don’t know what to make of the errors:

failed to redirect stderr: Bad file descriptor
failed to redirect stdout: Bad file descriptor
Thu Oct 10 17:09:22 2013
CmdLine=”C:Program Files (x86)Square BoxCatDV Pro 9.0.6CatDV Pro.exe”
Args=
EXEname=C:Program Files (x86)Square BoxCatDV Pro 9.0.6CatDV Pro.exe
Filename=
cd C:Program Files (x86)Square BoxCatDV Pro 9.0.6
redirected output -2 & -2 to fd 3
RegOpenKey SoftwareJavaSoftJava Runtime Environment -> 0 (00000078)
RegQueryValueEx(CurrentVersion) – ‘1.7’
CurrentVersion=’1.7′
RegOpenKey SoftwareJavaSoftJava Runtime Environment1.7 -> 0 (00000078)
RegQueryValueEx(JavaHome) – ‘C:Program Files (x86)Javajre7’
QTJava=C:Program Files (x86)QuickTimeQTSystemQTJava.zipa

[Jeff Schaap]

Thanks Tim and Bryson for your responses. I did figure out what was going on and unfortunately, it had nothing to do with spaces in the filenames or paths and my original mv command was working properly. Sorry for the wild goose chase.

The issue is a Mac/PC environment. We began as an all Mac environment but now are a mix of PC and Mac. Files that were ingested on a Mac are getting paths like /Volumes/maxxraid1/Footage/… and the same file, when ingested from a PC gets Y:maxxraid1Footage… and herein lies the problem.

For operations within a client I can set up original media search paths to account for the fact that files maybe located under /Volumes/… or as Y:…. That works great. But in WorkNode, it’s a problem. Apparently it doesn’t (can’t?) use that same information to search for original media when running jobs.

So, when I have files that were ingested over a PC and the paths start with Y: you can understand why, when executing a mv command in a Mac environment, it becomes a problem. The mv command can’t find the file because it’s being referenced from a PC mapping, the path is slightly different and the slashes within the path are reversed.

I also noticed that variables change…(figured this out from status emails I had the Workernode send me). $g is supposed to be the base part of the file name (i.e. my_clip rather than my_clip.mov). But when dealing with a file ingested from a PC this variable becomes the WHOLE path and the file name (without extension):

$g from Mac ingest file = IMCFTG3471_Creson Bob and Dallas_0002

$g from PC ingested file = Y:FootageDomesticWycliffe PersonnelCreson Bob and DallasIMCFTG3471_Creson Bob and Dallas_002

I don’t get that at all… is this a bug??

It probably is time to talk to support but I wondered if I might be missing some simple thing that would make this work. I can’t be the only person with this problem.

[Jeff Schaap]

Hey Bryson,

Your beard is awesome.

Thanks for the input, yes there is some deep mystery in WorkerNode at times…

Replacing the ” with ‘ gave exit status 1. I would imagine because a ‘$g’ is interpreted literally as $g and not a variable.

It seems crazy that I have to write a script to do one mv operation… but at this point I am willing to try almost anything. From a terminal window, when I set g equal to the correct file (g = “My File” and p the the destination path (p = “/Volumes/maxxraid1/Footage/Domestic/Personnel/Creson Bob” and do this:

mv /Volumes/maxxraid1/Media_Encoder_Watch/Output/”$g”.mov /Volumes/CatDV_Previews/”$p”/

It works and moves the file. Even with the spaces on the name and path. I was thrilled and figured I would just write a script that looked like this:

#!/bin/sh
mv /Volumes/maxxraid1/Media_Encoder_Watch/Output/”$g”.mov /Volumes/CatDV_Previews/”$p”/

and I called it from Worknode by doing this under Command 1:

/Volumes/maxxraid1/Scripts/move_proxies.sh

But, that didn’t work because I later found out that my variable weren’t being passed to the shell. So I did this under command 1:

/Volumes/maxxraid1/Scripts/move_proxies.sh $g $p

and changed my script to:

mv /Volumes/maxxraid1/Media_Encoder_Watch/Output/”$1″.mov /Volumes/CatDV_Previews/”$2″/

And exit staus 1… ARGH. Not sure what to try next. I can contact support as you suggested.