FFAStrans forum

Hi Steinar:

Is there any kind of starter pack with some sample workflows to learn from (read: reverse engineer)?

Thanks!

Hey michael,
i believe there is a need for something like that. But as a senior developer and user of different workflow engines, my perspective is not the right one to imagine what unexperienced users would expect in a kind of a starter package.
Could you shortly point out what was so far easy to understand for you and where you'd need most help with?

cheers,
emcodem

I would imagine the target demographic would be deliverables for professional outlets, and workflows to PREP that media for post.

Now, we can speculate OR we can look at what the 'leaders' in this space do, ala Vantage. The only problem is that the professional market is much smaller, so take that into consideration.

Thus, I'd propose:
starter:
Watch folder looking for a specific file type encoded into a web appropriate h.264, sending confirmation email.
This teaches watch folder usage, filtering (wildcard), plus a common encode and how to use the email notifier

IPTV/VOD export
This would be an MPEG2 or XDCAM or DNxHD/H(OP1A) in an MXF wrapper, suitable for a broadcast deliverable starting point. Working with captioning (if present in FFAStrans) These would be simple packages, not IMF creation.

"Edit ready" Encode:
Watch folder for a camera card hierarchy, would stitch clips and fix timecode (if FFAstrans does this), flip to mezzanine files (e.g. DNxHR OPatom for Avid), CIneform, or ProRes via ffmpeg (unsure if youw ant to even touch the Prores Windows Rats nest)

QC
Any transcode that triggers a QC check,like loudness and the end result of that report. Perhaps tie that to an FTP watch. Again, only to show how it's used.


Essentially, a collection of presets that can be duplicated, tweaked, and used. Building 20 presets for every VOD outlet? No, but 1 or two to show how it's done...would be a great starting point. In fact, adding a section to the forum for folks to share presets may be a great help...and offload YOUR work.

Hey, thanks for the quick answer (that was really fast)!
This list is totally unexpected to me, the ideas you have feel very custom to me, i cannot imagine how to create some generic starter package containing different encoding and processing settings. I wonder what @steinar has to say about it, please stay tuned...

cheers,
emcodem

Hi emcodem:

I could be completely off base here. Perhaps my estimation of where FFAStrans falls into the competitive transcoding market is incorrect. If it is - apologies. I also may be over estimating the current capabilities of FFAStrans (again, apologies).

I only throw out the example above as they show how to use the various options in ONE workflow, not because all of those steps are necessary in real life. Quite frankly, anything that can be looked at and trigger a "ooooh, that's how you do it" could be deemed useful.

Maybe one more question that will definitely help: are you aware about the tools underneath ffastrans (ffmpeg/avisynth/bmx/mediainfo...) and do you know how to use them without ffastrans?
What i am trying to do here is to get more insight in your perspective and the reason why you ask this question. The accuracy of the result depends on the informations you provide.

Thanks,
emcodem

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

A product like FFAStrans is not for the faint hearted and I'm not sure a "starter pack" is the right approach. However, there has been some discussions about a workflow repository and I could certainly imagine that would be useful. If we have the repository I think we need strict rules on how the workflows should be made so that they are adoptable to others by changing just the minimum. Also, I think the repository should be user driven; That is the workflows should be posted and maintained by the users. Curently there is too much work with developing FFAStrans to also maintain a repository and create various workflows.

Please also note that you have lots of workflows posted on this forum that covers a lot of use cases.

-steinar

HI emcodem:

I'm aware of them. I'm not as fluent as I'd like to be in CLI with ffmpeg. I've movedto GUI based transcoding applications due to time constraints. Medianfo is my best friend ever.

Not that I want to make this post about me, as I'm sure many folks would enjoy sample to work from, but I've been in the M&E industry: broadcast and post side for nearly 15 years; which includes building workflows with Telestream, Root6, Amberfin, et al. And right now, there is a massive gap between pro-sumer and enterprise, both from a feature standpoint as WELL as price. Hoping FFAStrans might be the fit.

Steinar: thanks for the welcome. I've been searching the forums, hoping for more XML downloads...I'll keep searching!

hey, i see you are experienced with lots of related stuff and i guess no matter what result this thread has, you might use ffastrans in future anyway
Sure mostly everyone here is working in broadcast industry, that's the current messaging of the website... I guess at one point in time steinar could open a booth @IBC - but to be honest, this year i had a very friendly talk to the owner of mediainfo, jerome martinez. He is still joining IBC as a visitor instead of exhibitor. All users that meet him basically only complain about some misbehaviour but besides that they have nothing to say besides "thanks". So i am not sure how smart it is to create free tools for broadcasters and then join IBC;-)

Also i guess you are right with the off-topic as from an encoding/CC handling/decoding perspective just utilizes the named open source tools. If it was more like your perspective, steinar would possibly need to use licensed codecs and work full time on the project.
My personal perspective is that steinar approached something impossible: make it easy for "totally unexperienced" users to work with avisynth filtering and ffmepg. I see and use it (also in commercial projects) as a free workflow engine, i just ignore all the "filters" and "encoders" in the engine and use it only for starting commandline processes.

Anyway, as the title of this topic targets something very generic, i would like to point out what i would expect from a starter pack:
-) explain the user how to work with variables
-) explain splits and joins after splits (with and without synchronize)
-) template for typical watchfolder setup (containing only one node - the watchfolder node)

Cheers,
emcodem

I would second this, I love the capabilities of ffastrans, but definitely would find a starter pack extremely useful even from a learning perspective. How common workflows are laid out, as well as little tricks in it like how to lay out a custom ffmpeg encoder with options. It's formatted differently than my first expectations which isn't bad just would be great to peek at an example. It's similar to how excited I was to find Resolve powergrades users were willing to share and peek around their node graph to improve my own workflows.

I think some things like creating vimeo presets or a set of web ready proxies, or even just prores examples would be great. A node tree I've built a few times now is taking an 8 track MXF master and mixing down to h264 stereo for vimeo, Prores 5.1, prores stereo and uploading the h264 to dropbox for vimeo then emailing me.

I love what you've created here and this is just a feature I think I could talk a lot of my coworkers into using that might be willing to learn. Basically just lets us have a chance to share what we've created with the community in one spot. We could discuss and iterate them, which we can already do in the forum of course but for me it's less of a starter pack and more of a one stop repository for sure.