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Workflow General information

This page should describe all “basic workflow information around workflows, e.g. branching behaviour etc…

File Flow

Workflow Properties

All these properties are accessible by right-clicking on a workflow in workflow manager.

General Tab

Setting	Description
Description	Description of your workflow. Has no implication on functionality bu it will be displayed in the upper editor area if description is enabled there.
Work folder	This info tells you where the work folder for the workflows jobs reside. This is set automatically from the “Work cache” options in the main configuration and cannot be changed by the user.
Workflow ID	Shows the ID of the workflow. This is automatically generated and cannot be changed by the user.
Sleep timer	Here you set the loop for how many seconds FFAStrans should wait for the workflows monitors to start looking for new files. In workflows without monitors this setting as no effect.
Priority	This sets the workflow priority. This is NOT a CPU priority but rather job run order priority. The higher priority jobs will be processed before lower priority jobs. However, already started lower priority jobs will not stop or pause if higher priority jobs is queued. Note: Jobs manually submitted from the GUI will always have the highest priority. Jobs submitted through the API will use the default workflow priority unless specified different in the job post.
Timeout level	Defines how quick FFAStrans will abort jobs that seem to have stopped for various reasons. Usually due to encoding/decoding hangups. The lower the number the faster FFAStrans will abort. When working with very large files you might need to set this higher.
Run on	Here you can set on what week day on which the workflows monitors will be active. Note: Regardless of this setting and the workflow state, one can always submit jobs either manually from the GUI or through the API.

Maintenance Tab

Setting	Description
Keep all job work folders on completion	Enabling this option will prevent FFAStrans from deleting all the files and work folders it creates for jobs. Note: You should avoid enabeling this as the it may fill up your storage. Use only for debugging.
Keep only failed job work folders	Enabling this option will prevent FFAStrans from deleting the work folders for failed jobs. Note: In this regard, a job is considered failed only if the last executing branch has failed outcome.
Cleanup time	Here you can set the time of day on which FFAStrans will perform cleanup of cachefile. This option may disappear in future versions.
Validate records after <n> days	This option tells FFAStrans how many days it should “remember” what files it has processed. If a file has been registered longer than the number of days specified, AND the original file is gone, the file record will be removed. If the file comes back after removal, FFAStrans will see it as a new file.
Keep work files for <n> days	This option tells FFAStrans how many days it should keep the work folders for each job.

Farming Tab

Here you can include or exclude hosts in the workflow. The purpose of this is to create segregated farming environment that lets you design special workflow for special members of the farm.

Setting	Description
Host	The host to add to the list. Default is the current host. You can insert any host on the list. The hosts will not be validated so you must write the correct name for the host.
Add	Add the host to the list.
Remove	Removes selected host(s) from the list.
List includes hosts	Option tells the workflow that the hosts on the list will take part of the workflow jobs.
List excludes hosts	Option tells the workflow that the hosts will NOT take part of the workflow jobs.

Note: An empty list makes all the host participate in the workflow jobs regardless of the two latter options.

Special Tab

Setting	Description
Log Level	Sets the log level of the workflow. Higher log levels produce more detailed logging information for debugging. Logging is always on.
Protect workflow	Here you can protect you workflow with a password. Note that this is not a foolproof protection. It's purpose is to make sure your workflow has a basic protection so it's not easily tampered with.
Force 32bit dependencies	Force FFAStrans to use only 32 bit versions of all dependencies like FFMpeg and AviSynth. This option will override all other 64 bit settings in any workflow nodes.
Create start TC from Exif data	This option will try and create a valid start timecode based on the exif metadata field “Date and time (original)”. This is an alternative for some media coming from cameras that don't have a real TC track.

FUNCTIONS

Functions lets you manipulate strings and/or numbers to fit your needs.
Usage description:

 $function(input-1 = "string", input-2 = integer[, optional input-3 = "string"/integer])

ALL string inputs containing alphabetic characters (a-z, A-Z) must be encapsulated with single or double quotes: “my string”, '123abc', ”%s_variable%“, '%i_variable%'.
Functions that accept numbers do not need to be encapsulated with quotes.
If numeric character(s) (0-9) are used in functions that accept strings then the number will be treated as a string: 123 = “123”
All functions can be nested (functions within functions):$replace($left(“my strings”, 6), “my”, “your”) = “your str”
Nested function must NOT be encapsulated with quotes.See Nested Functions

Character String Functions

$left	Get string n-characters from the left side.
$triml	Trim string n-characters from the left side.
$right	Get string n-characters from the right side.
$trimr	Trim string n-characters from the right side.
$middle	Get string n-characters from n-position.
$between	Get string between two strings.
$upper	Force string to upper case.
$lower	Force string to lower case.
$proper	Capitalizes every first letter following a non-alphanumeric character.
$replace	Replace string in string.
$alrep	Replace all non-alphanumeric characters and add optional exceptions.
$leads	Add leading character(s) to a string. If string to fill is omitted a zero (0) will be used.
$trails	Add trailing character(s) to a string. If fill-string is omitted a zero (0) will be used.
$stripws	Removes leading and trailing white spaces.
$stripcrlf	Strips string for line feed and carriage returns.
$isdigit	Check if string is only numbers. Success returns 1, failure returns 0.
$isalpha	Check if string is only alphabetic letters. Success returns 1, failure returns 0.
$length	Retrieves length of the string (number of characters).
$reverse	Reverse a string.

Mathematics Functions

$round	Round number to nearest decimal.
$roundd	Round number down to nearest integer.
$roundu	Round number up to nearest integer.
$inttotc	Convert integer to time code.
$tctosec	Convert time code to seconds.
$abs	Returns the absolute value of a number.
$log	Returns the natural logarithm of a number.
$random	Returns a random integer number between two integers.

Other Functions

$exists	This is a file function that will tell if file(s) exists.
$base64	Encodes the input string as base 64.
$jsonencode	Converts the input string to an JSON friendly string.
$jsonget	Retrieves the value from a JSON object key.
$readarray	Returns an instance from a valid array; ”[data, data, etc…]“.
$regext	This is regular expression function. It extracts text based on recognition patterns.
$hex	Converts a decimal integer to hexadecimal number.
$dec	Converts a hexadecimal number to decimal integer.
$guid	Returns a random GUID/UUID.
$xxhash	Returns an eight character hash for any file.
$read	Reads the contents of a any text file.
$urlencode	Converts the input string to an URL friendly string.

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