FFAStrans forum

Hi everybody,

I did some search on this but could not find anything on this. Is it somehow possible with the Folder monitoring processor to "capture" folders rather than files? I need to get all the folders folder and not the files.

My scenario is that I have folders containing thousands of .dpx files and they are getting encoded to an .mkv file using the tool rawcooked. The tool needs a directory as input.

I could probably write my own process node but I am not sure how to tell a workflow to start with that node. Is it correct that every workflow has to start with the folder monitoring tool in order to trigger a workflow?

Many thanks for your help!

Cheers,
Gilles

Hey gilles,

welcome to the forum and thank you for using FFAStrans!
this is not possible, not directly. But as you describe, you have one DPX sequence in each folder, so you can workaround easily:
Identify one file name pattern that only occurs once in each folder, e.g. something_0001.dpx. Then configure your monitor processor to watch only for *0001.dpx and in your workflow you can easily go on with the %s_original_path% variable.

Maybe the image sequence monitor could be of help as well but that depends on your requirements.

Hi emcodem,

thank you very much for your reply. That's a good idea, I'll give that a try!

Am I correct in my assumption that we have to start a workflow with a watchfolder/monitor?

Gilles

Sounds good, let us know if it works out for you

gilles wrote: ↑Thu Apr 14, 2022 8:49 am Am I correct in my assumption that we have to start a workflow with a watchfolder/monitor?

Well there are various ways to start workflows. If you want to monitor some folder for files then the workflow "has" to start with a monitor processor.
But Jobs can also be started in many other ways, here the ones that come quickly to my mind:

-) By manual submit on any processor in the Workflow Editor (yes this can be used in production as well)
-) Using the "workflow" Processor (starting a sub-workflow)
-) From a 3rdparty program using API
-) From Webinterface job submitter
-) From Webinterface job scheduler


In all of these cases, the workflow can start with any processor and the "starting processor" can be chosen by the submitter.
One example for starting a job with a folder instead of a file would be to use Webinterface job submitter and submit a folder instead of a file to the Workflow. In that case, your workflow would most likely not start with a monitor processor (what for?) but directly execute the commandline or whatever you want to do. In that case, the most important variable %s_source% would contain the submitted folder path only instead of some filename.


It's always exciting to have new users here, please don't hassle to throw any question at us

Hi emcodem,

i am using the image sequencer to detect the dpx sequences and as you suggested %s_original_path% to get my root folder. it works perfectly .

Thanks for clearing that up on how to start a workflow. I will definitely have a look at the web interface.

I am excited to dive deeper into FFAStrans and will definitely come back with questions

Hi. I'm looking at creating a similar process of using Rawcooked for dpx encoding to FFv1 for scanned films. I'm curious how you're handling audio and the frame rates for batching. I've only just touched the surface with FFTrans.
We have many varying framerates in our source films. Many non-standard as well, some with sound, some mute. Any tips, advice warnings etc?

Hi DCassidy,

I´m not quite sure, if this helps - but...

As you scan the Film, the Playback-framerate can be put in the DPX so it can be read out by e.G. MediaTool. This is built-in to FFAStrans by using a function called $jsonget(). Have a look at the documentation for further info on that.

For ease of workflow in the PostProduction, we always set Speed at 25fps. We set the estimated or correct FPS as a metadata in our Database.

My Workflow for dpx is to start always from Frame 90000 (so 1 Hour or 01:00:00:00). This gives me the opportunity to check file-consistency on a basic level.

Also, if available, the Sound is inside the folder containing the dpx-files. So i can check witch a $exist() in a conditional-node if audio exist.

If so, a command-Executor node will later merge transcoded video (even if this is done by RawCooked) with audio.

This is very short now, if you are interedted we can dive deeper...

so long,
Thomas