Webinterface

[emcodem]

Hey Jeremy,
thanks for the kind words, i love to hear that it is useful
your request was just in time and very good. No problem, please download and check out the newest version. As i don't know with what version you work, i have to tell you:
please make sure on the admin page this is set:
STATIC_INIT_RUNNING_GRID_COL_WIDTHS_PERCENT
0,10,10,10,30,10,0,0,*,0,5

We are extremely close to a final release for ffastrans 0.9.3, please let me know any further doubts.

Cheers,
emcodem

[momocampo]

Hello emcodem and happy new year to all in this great forum!!
I just saw the new release of your webinterface and I am really impressive. It's awesome , I love it
You did the browser and it works well, you did an administration tool with documentation well done!
Very funny the 2 helmets I didn't know you are Austrian.

I have to test it more but I have A question. My FFastrans server is on a workstation, I can of course access to server on local(localhost:3002) but do you think it could be possible to access to this ffastrans server from another workstation? (without use remote desktop or vnc server for example)
My idea is to install a FFastrans server especially for encode and can be access by users that have to encode their own files. And for that, It can be possible to access FFastrans server from another computer and remote it. Hope you understand my wish.
Thanks and congratulations again, great work and please don't stop!!!

Happy new year .
Cheers

Benjamin

EDIT:
1/ First I have a problem with upload, it doesn't work anymore. The % stay at 0.7 but don't grow up. Same thing if I change the upload directory in administration tool
2/ I don't succeed to configure log in/log out. When I clic on create users in admin tool, I have an error "Cannot find module 'ejs' "
Thanks
3/ I don't access to my NAS. The UNC path is "\\nameofnas\share1\share2\". It works on windows explorer but not in Webinterface. Here is the line in webinterface -admin :
c:\,\\nameofnas\share1\share2\,E:\,C:\USERS\ctvf2avidtech2\Desktop\
(4 paths : local, unc, dd e and local desktop).
4/ Suggest : It will be nice if we can save the webinterface aspect (workspace) it will avoid to "pull" on each windows each time we log on.

[Ghtais]

Hi emcodem

And happy new year to all
I have tested your great interface and first of all I must say congratulations for this very good job. It works great !!
I'am using FFAStrans in a broadcast office with many different users. Upload file directly from the webinterface is a very interesting and powerful feature for us.
However, if I can give you my personal feedback, I find the interface to much complex and I don't really understand why there is so much windows and functions. For example do we need "Browse" and "add path" when we have "Drag & drop" witch is very friendly user ?
Do we need a search functions in the job running area ?
Populate variable for dynamically change the destination folder is an interesting function and could be integrate in an other tab witch could be hidden if we don't use it.
I thing that more it is simple, more it is powerful, more people can use it

Please don't think I ask something for my personal use. It is just a feedback if it can help.
One more time, congratulation for your amazing work !!

Bye

I add an example to illustrate my point of view. Perhaps you could add some function to personalize the interface with account login and different type of user : Admin / Tech user / simple user / only watch ... etc
In this case, first select your workflow, then dag & drop your file/folder and that it (no start or submit button) then watch your job running.

[jerrysub]

Hey Jeremy,
thanks for the kind words, i love to hear that it is useful
your request was just in time and very good. No problem, please download and check out the newest version. As i don't know with what version you work, i have to tell you:
please make sure on the admin page this is set:
STATIC_INIT_RUNNING_GRID_COL_WIDTHS_PERCENT
0,10,10,10,30,10,0,0,*,0,5

We are extremely close to a final release for ffastrans 0.9.3, please let me know any further doubts.

Cheers,
emcodem

Hi emcodem,

Thanks for your advice, I have successfully updated my version to the lastest.
The interface looks much better and I like the auto-refresh feature.

I had a look on the new features as admin part which is good but I cannot find the button "go back" which could be better following user knowledge.

Jérémy

[emcodem]

Thanks a lot for the nice comments!

@Jeremy
to be honest, on the admin page i don't like to implement features that the browser already have. There is a "go back" button in every major browser. Are you sure an additonal go back button is something admins really need? Where would you place it without taking precious space?

@Ghtais:
i dislike the current design. Especially the right "job submission" pane, it must be moved to somewhere else. The job submission should be totally disconnected from the job monitoring. Originally i did not have plans for authtentification and rights management (or to got that far anyway) but as i now have auth, i guess the next step will be user-group rights management anyway (after that probably AD integration), i would probably introduce a left-side navigation pane where users see the options they are allowed to see, e.g. "monitor,job submission,admin". Sure this also might need to allow users to see only certain jobs which will probably never happen in a free version of the webinterface.

On a different topic, it is very interesting that you use the upload feature but you did not really get what's the browse on server feature for. So here my perspective: as we deal with a broadcaster software, i have to assume that source files are really extremely huge (e.g. UHD movie, class 480 might be one file > 1,5TB). Those files are not something you want to upload using a browser but the files already are located on a central storage where users rendered it from their editing program for example. After editing, users can browse the central storage for their file and submit a special workflow.
Please let me ask a few questions:
-) are the uploading users in the same network than your ffastrans server or in a totally different network like internet?
-) can you imagine how many different users could be "uploading" files?
-) do you know that uploading through a browser is a very dangerous feature when it comes to large files > 4GB?

cheers,
emcodem

[Ghtais]

Hi emcodem,

Thank you for your reply. Ok, you're right, I didn't really understood how the browser function work and his main purpose. In my office, we only work with QuickTime reference files to avoid dealing with huge file on the network. Here is why I found the drag & drop option very friendly
Now with your explanation it appears clearly that browse on server is a very interesting function and we need it
I'am going to follow this post and see with next releases if I can deploy it on my office.

thank you for your hard work.
Cheers

[emcodem]

I have to test it more but I have A question. My FFastrans server is on a workstation, I can of course access to server on local(localhost:3002) but do you think it could be possible to access to this ffastrans server from another workstation? (without use remote desktop or vnc server for example)
My idea is to install a FFastrans server especially for encode and can be access by users that have to encode their own files. And for that, It can be possible to access FFastrans server from another computer and remote it. Hope you understand my wish.
Thanks and congratulations again, great work and please don't stop!!!

Hey Benjamin, thank you so much for the nice words, you really understand how to keep us working on the stuff
There is now release 0.9.3 out, i hope it solves all problems you listed.

To be honest, i don't 100% understand what you are after but from feeling it is designed to do what you like. From other posts i understand that you struggle most with understanding permissions.
Here a network access drawing of the most typical scenario:

network_topology.png (15.46 KiB) Viewed 15816 times

In this default scenario, users only access the Webinterface which is running on port 3002 (or 80, whatever), they don't directly access the central NAS or the Local drives on the FFASTrans workstation/Server. Only the installed windows services for ffastrans and webserver access FILES on the NAS and/or local drives on the server. Even when uploading Files, users client workstations do not need permission to the Storages, only the windows services.

Here a short checklist:
On the workstation running ffastrans and webinterface:
-) make sure to install the webinterface as a windows service (install_service.bat)
-) create one windows user in Active Directory or locally on the server for later running the installed services. Log on with this user to the server and make sure, when you enter the path to the files in windows explorer, there is no popup asking for user credentials. Do not map network drives, this is of no use at all.
-) Install webinterface and ffastrans API as windows services and edit the services to use the credentials mentioned above.
-) make sure the new users is in the administrator group on the SERVER
-) when using local user instead of Active Directory, make sure, the same local user was created on the SERVER and NAS, having the same password
-) turn off windows firewall for first try
On any other workstation in the same network
-) open a browser and enter http://%workstation_ip%:3002

It should be pretty easy to get done what you want if you just get rid of the user permission issues and understand a little about how serving a webservice works.

If you still have massive troubles, i'll probably need to come up with a drawing and more detailed instructions for you.

Cheers,
emcodem

[momocampo]

Hello emcodem,

First, I must thank you to try to explain to me and help me, really appreciate and so kind !
your drawing is perfect and near to my configuration except clients can access to nas.
So, I have to check several things(if ports are open for example), and follow that you wrote for me.
But I think I want to do the same workflow as you = clients can load webinterface on their workstation, upload a file if the file is not on server, choose a workflow and encode the file(delivery folder will be on nas because clients can access).
Here is the beginning of my idea. I want to succeed because I really like your webinterface and I want to use it.
I have now to test that and I will inform you if I succeed.

Thanks again emcodem and cheers

Benjamin

[momocampo]

Hello emcodem,

I'm back for good news!! I succeed ...almost
I succeed to install the webinterface and now I see my nas and I can submit files--> good!
Now, I must try to access to my webinterface workstation from another workstation but I think the antivirus (mcafee) stops the port so the address http://%workstation_ip%:80 (I am with 80 now but same thing with 3002) not works. Unfortunately, this is an enterprise antivirus and it will be quite difficult to open a port...(It's my problem )
Anyway, I must tell you thank you and especially congratulations for your new release 0.9.3 which is better and better.
Just a question : when a job finished, I can't see log, I have a message "workflow "X" is not loged enabled":: Is it a future feature?

Cheers

Benjamin

[emcodem]

Hey Benjamin,

great that you finally got over the permission issues, congrats! ...i am pretty confident that you get your McAffee configured as you desire too. Be aware that only HIPS (Host intrusion prevention) from McAffee is able to block network access but the antivirus only will not do that. Are you sure HIPS is enabled on your servers? ..anyway, i guess your mates @work are able to help you getting rid of this situation.

By the way, thanks for your likes regarding 0.9.3, i think this is a good design now and it might most likely look like this for a long time. Subpages might change but not the top bar showing number of workflows and left menu bar.

Regarding your problem with the logs, i will add this to my first post but i cannot add more than 1 graphics there so this is how you enable workflow logging: in ffastrans workflow manager, right-click a workflow->Properties->Special->log to files. I asked @steinar to enable wf logging by default, it is the only known to me way to get a pretty complete log of a job.

ffas_wflog.png (9.49 KiB) Viewed 15778 times

Please let me know any problems that you might encounter and keep on your good work in this forum!

Cheers!
emcodem