FFAStrans forum

Hi,

Awesome tool! Credit and praise definitely deserved!

Can anyone point me in the right direction. I am trying to increment a user integer variable by 1 each time a video is decoded, but it is not doing what I desire.

From one input video, I then decode at 4 different bit-rates, placing each in a watched folder...that then performs other operations, before finally increment my variable. Then I conditionally check the variable to find when the last video has finished...before cleaning up intermediary conversion folders/files.

My increment looks like this: Set user variable: %i_number_videos_encoded% to %i_number_videos_encoded%+1

...and my workflow looks like this (not that you can see much, but you get the idea!)



Thanks!
Ste

Hi Ste, thank you for using FFAStrans and welcome to the forum!

I'm afraid it's not very clear to me what you are trying to do. The screen shot was not very helpful either. But if I read you correctly, you're trying to use the variables across jobs and workflows? If so then that is not possible. If I have misunderstood you please let me know.

-steinar

Hi,

Think my lack of knowledge of terminology and how the tool works may have, and indeed might here, hinder my explanation.

Essentially, in the screen shot, you can see I fork into doing 4 encodes, then I jam them into a destination folder...and some time later, I want to increment a variable such that when all 4 videos reach a certain point in the chain...I know to delete the 'working/intermediate' folders and move the source video to storage.

I have implemented a work around where by I dreate dummy files to flag each encode as 'done'...then use a batch file to check for all the files and do the work I require.

Thanks!
Ste

Once you fork a workflow you create separate instances of the job with thir own copy of the variable. F.ex.: You start with the variable %i_number_videos_encoded% = 1. If you fork it 4 times you will have:
Fork 1: %i_number_videos_encoded% = 1
Fork 2: %i_number_videos_encoded% = 1
Fork 3: %i_number_videos_encoded% = 1
Fork 4: %i_number_videos_encoded% = 1

If you increase %i_number_videos_encoded%+1 on all forks you will just have:
Fork 1: %i_number_videos_encoded% = 2
Fork 2: %i_number_videos_encoded% = 2
Fork 3: %i_number_videos_encoded% = 2
Fork 4: %i_number_videos_encoded% = 2

So you see, they are just duplicates. If you want unique numbers on all forks you must set the numbers explicit.

Fork 1: %i_number_videos_encoded% = 1
Fork 2: %i_number_videos_encoded% = 2
Fork 3: %i_number_videos_encoded% = 3
Fork 4: %i_number_videos_encoded% = 4

Was this somewhat clear?

-steinar

Perfectly, you nailed it here:

"Once you fork a workflow you create separate instances of the job with their own copy of the variable"

Is 'workflow-wide' variables on the road-map?

Not with the current design. It would lead to conflict between instances trying to change the same variable. That makes the variable unpredictable, which is not what you want. So a %i_number_videos_encoded%+1 might not give you the correct result and it could eventually break your workflow.

-steinar

Fail enough. The system is flexible enough to work around it with batch files etc so all good