FFAStrans forum

Hi all! First, thanks to Steinar for this software - truly appreciated...

In my adventures working with FFAStrans I've read a lot - and learned a lot - from the posts here. I wanted to be able to contribute in some way to grow the knowledge-base around using this great resource, and I recalled the other day seeing a message from Steinar in a thread:

admin wrote: ↑Thu Nov 08, 2018 7:27 pm ... There is no collection of workflow-examples but it might be a good idea to have a separate forum-category for this...

So here we are - I'm starting the repository / library / examples thread with my own little workflow. This workflow is relatively simple, watching a folder for files, encoding them to MP4, then moving the source to the same destination as the encoded file. It includes a catch in case of error so that the source is moved to a subfolder of the watchfolder and the error is shown in the status monitor. You'll need to set up these paths for your own use as they've been sterilized in the copy I'm sharing here.


What follows are additional details about the needs & use case for which this workflow was created.

Often the projects in which I'm involved have a requirement of two or more outputs delivered per element, similar to the following:

1. myComp.mov = RGBA 16BPC, encoded with CineForm
2. myComp.mp4 = RGB 08BPC, encoded to MP4

Unfortunately, achieving this with the Adobe video products (After Effects, Premiere Pro, Media Encoder) is problematic to say the least. In earlier versions of the applications it was possible achieve this quickly and easily through workflows such as these:

AW1 = Enqueue & render "myComp.ext" to both outputs at once (MP4 + MOV) via Media Encoder (AME)
AW2 = Enqueue & render "myComp.ext" to both outputs at once (MP4 + MOV) via AE
AW3 = Enqueue & render "myComp.ext" to one uncompressed output via AE, into a Watch Folder (WF) and have AME re-encode to delivery formats (MP4 + MOV)

The problems I've encountered in implementing those ideal workflows:

1. AW1 lacks scalability. This is vague but the details are not exciting. See this post for more info: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2557137
2. After Effects does not seem to offer an export option for uncompressed or unconstrained output at 16BPC.
   There are two formats available upon export which are video files (as opposed to sequences) which are AVI and Quicktime, neither of which have options for uncompressed 16 BPC output.
3. After Effects no longer includes an option to render to MP4 directly.
4. Problems 2 & 3 prevent AW2 and AW3
   Rendering from AE to WF can only be done via a compressed format, resulting in two passes of compression for the MOV output.

Hi Cx_, thank you for using FFAStrans and welcome to the forum, and thanks for sharing your workflow!

Just a question: Your first "Move source" node will fail if the input is a .mp4 file. Is this intentional?

-steinar

Heya Steinar! Glad to do a little bit to help!

RE: MP4 source = fail: no, it's not intentional but rather just a happy accident. The input for me should never be an MP4, and as such, it should fail.

However, if the workflow fails, it should still move the source file to a folder so that the user knows that there's a problem with the file. Will this not happen in the example I shared?

Also, when the workflow is exported as XML, are paths and such preserved? My reason for asking is that it was a fair bit of work to "sanitize" the workflow and if that wasn't necessary it might be helpful to know. Would you consider adding an option to export workflows for sharing which would auto-magically sanitize them? Perhaps it could be a checkbox in the export XML dialogue?

Thanks again!
-Chris

Ok, just wondering because you have not explicitly denied mp4 files as input. Otherwise it looks ok

You can look at xml-exported workflows as backups. EVERYTHING should be preserved, at least in theory. I HAVE found some bugs regarding exported workflows which has been fixed in the upcoming 0.9.4 version but for most purposes exporting works the way it should. And by "sanitize" do you mean "replace all personal/local data with some other generic stuff"?

-steinar

Here something for this thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=786

[Description]
It shows how to do regex in the populate variables command and how to use custom avisynth.
The basic usecase is to have 3 pictures as input source, each one containing the R,G and B channel from an RGB image. The 3 input images are merged by avisynth into one image and then encoded and delivered of course

[Usage]
The input files have to be named *R.jpg, *B.jpg *G.jpg. It is assumed that you configure the watchfolder to only take R.jpg as starting point. B and G have to exist already (could use hold component in case they don't)

admin wrote: ↑Tue Nov 20, 2018 9:07 pm You can look at xml-exported workflows as backups. EVERYTHING should be preserved, at least in theory. ... And by "sanitize" do you mean "replace all personal/local data with some other generic stuff"?

That's exactly what I mean by "sanitize". When sharing a workflow, I'm hesitant to do so without clearing those out. The workflow ".INI" files seem to be human-readable though, so I guess 'noids like me can always strip out sensitive info from a copy before sharing the XML.

-Chris

Yes, I understand that you would want to remove personal info and I can certainly strip away obvious stuff but f.eks. replacing your very personal monitor folder might be difficult. FFAStrans would not know how to look for f.ex. \\server\share\my\wife\in\bikini.... I think the best thing is to make a copy of the workflow and remove/change fields for easier sharing without giving away private stuff.

-steinar