Category: Uncategorized

This release continues on the 1.2 path of addressing bugs and anomalies. With some minor improvements to general farming reliability.

Changes include:

• Some improvements in the job distribution between farm hosts.
• Other minor farming reliability improvements.
• Improved recognition of arib-std-b67 (HLG) on some formats.
• Added warning when exporting/importing workflow with plugin nodes
• Added warning when running FFAStrans on outdated OS (< Win8)
• Fixed some rare case decoding issues with some ProRes and DNxHD variations.Setting HDR colors pace in x265 encoding did not work.
• “Video quality” node used folder dialogue instead of file when browsing.
• Location of the browser buttons in “Video quality” node had switched places.
• FTP monitor did not properly report status when downloading.
• Address several long file path issues with FFAStrans installation location.
• Fixed a “Not equal” logic issue in the “Conditional” node.
• The PCM option in the “H.264” encoder was not working properly.
• Fixed an issue when selecting “Fast” in the “H.264” node. Would revert to “Faster” when reopening the gui.
• “Encoders” would fail if unset user variable was used in the “Loudness correction”, even if option was unticked.
• Status would not update properly when retrying failed jobs.
• Converting to b601 with the “Color conversion” filter did not always set the proper color flag.
• Auto-selecting variable in the prefix/suffix input in the “Audio extraction” node did not work.
• + several other minor issues addressed.

This release continues on the 1.2 path of addressing bugs and anomalies. A few minor features also added.

Changes include:

• Added option to not localize monitored FTP source files.
• Added option to set the total number of files to wait for in the “Hold” node.
• Added warning before resetting job history list in inbuilt status monitor.
• Added new $week() function for retrieving week numbers.
• Added new $weekday() function for retrieving week day numbers.
• Improved filtering of unwanted non-video side data that could cause corrupted encoded frames.
• Fixed some graphics glitch in inbuilt status monitor app.
• Fixed zoom issue in workflow canvas on older OS (Win8/Server2012)
• Addressed some clipboard issues when working with nodes.
• Addressed issues with finished jobs still showing in status monitor.
• Fixed some inconsistent behavior with the channels selector in all encoders.
• When importing workflows on completely new FFAStrans installation user variables could double up.
• Creating AVID project files could on some systems fail on non latin characters.
• The user variables was not reported correctly in the workflows API call
• The DVCPRO did not set correct video signaling on HD.
• Transwrapping could fail due to frame rate read from wrong value.
• A bug in user variable editor made FFAStrans “loose” child windows when switching to other windows apps.
• The MXF muxer in “H.264” encoder would fail on frame rates > 120.
• Statics containing variables was not properly expanded on workflow export.
• FFAStrans reported wrong UTC bias in log time stamps.
• Retaining audio pitch in the FPS converter filter did not work properly.
• Monitoring growing files with “continuously” checked sometimes caused too much to much i/o overhead.
• Start TC where only hours was set was not properly recognized.
• Fixed rare crash when shutting down farm from the Manager.
• Fixed rare crash in API service when getting history log.

Focus for this release has mainly been about finding and fixing bugs and anomalies. For this we have created many automated test workflows for testing all nodes, functions, variables and general behavior of FFAStrans job execution. In addition we have dug deep to find those obscure bugs very few encounters directly but contribute to edge case unpredictability. In sum this is the most bug hunted version to date. But in addition we have several new nice features.

Changes include:

• New filter: Safe Color Limiter makes sure you video stays within legal TV ranges.
• New filter: Linear Transformation for linear conversion between different color formats like HDR <-> SDR.
• Both conditional and populate nodes now supports dynamic number of fields and resizes the GUI accordingly.
• Added new operator mode to support regular expressions in the conditional node.
• Added the ability to send attachments and a “Reply to” field to the “Send E-mail” node.
• Added HD profiles to the “DV/DVCPRO” encoder.
• Added lasso functionality for selecting several nodes in the editor.
• Added new function $regreplace() for replacing strings using PCRE regex patterns.
• Added new function $jsonput() for adding JSON data to an existing or create new JSON formatted string.
• Added new variable %s_wf_folder% for getting folder of the running workflow.
• Added new variable %i_job_priority% for getting priority of the running job instance.
• Added new variable %s_split_id% for getting split id of the running job instance.
• Added file count to the “Hold” node wait for file option.
• Added option in “Custom AviSynth” filter to attempt adapting colors pace metadata to video properties.
• Copied nodes with connection within the group is now kept.
• Selected nodes can now be moved simultaneously while keeping their relative position.
• The “YouTube”-decoder will no longer try to download complete lists.
• Improved start TC detection on some formats.
• The “H.264” encoder can now produce MXF files and uncompressed PCM audio in the MOV, MKV and MXF wrappers.
• The “A/V Media” decoder now dither if source video bit depth is higher than specified in the node.
• Increased the number of max active jobs the inbuilt monitor would display.
• The rest service now returns 503 if database is not available. Mostly a problem when running FFAStrans from share.
• Aborting jobs will now try more graceful shutdown of child processes before force killing.
• General improvements to file monitoring and job initiation reliability.
• Addressed several stability issues when running FFAStrans from a share.
• Fixed issue where running FFAStrans would not properly close on shutdown.
• Submitting files to other workflows than the current in editor did not work.
• Video with too short audio could result in corrupt endings.
• Results from PSNR and SSIM in “Video quality” analyzer was switched.
• Fixed issues with catching all STDOUT data from “Command Executor”.
• Fixed GUI issues when controlling manager through TeamViewer.
• Fixed several reliability issues with the camera monitors.
• Fixed crash when attempting to use predefined levels in “Colorspace” filter.
• The workflow counter in FFAStrans Workflow Manager lower status bar did not work.
• Fixed issue with the FFAStrans Workflow Manager causing graphic issues and instability when working with large workflows.
• Custom nodes would crash if trying to open a help section that did not exist.
• Variables within variables was not properly expanded.
• The web interface would sometimes show hanging node even though it had finished.
• When submitting file through the API, the job id was initially written to a wrong key.
• Fixed crash that sometimes occurred when enumerating child processes.
• Variables or statics with data containing the pipe “|” character was not displayed in the variables list.
• + Numerous other minor bug fixes and improvements.

• New encoder: XAVC (Sony style AVC Intra). Currently only i-frame up to 1080p60 class 200 properly supported.
• New encoder: Generic MPEG1/2.
• New analyzer: Video metrics. Compare video quality using VMAF, SSIM and PSNR.
• Much improved internal priority control:
  • “Max active jobs” are now per priority setting. Meaning if you have used all your job slots on lower priority jobs, higher priority jobs will still start.
  • Child jobs like encoding now inherets the workflow priority ranging from 0 (idle) to 4 (very high). Meaning lower priority child jobs will be given less resources if higher priority jobs starts.
• Starting from this version, every time you save your workflow a time stamped copy will be stored in archive for later retrieval.
• All encoders now features separate audio channel mapping per track.
• The AviSynth deinterlace node now includes the world renowned QTGMC deinterlacer and BWDIF.
• The AviSynth resize node now includes NNEDI3 up-scaling. (Defaults to “Sinc” on down-scaling).
• Several database operations speed improvements.
• Slightly changed look and color scheme on nodes for improved visibility.
• Selected nodes can now be connected to any node. Makes connecting several nodes easier.
• Reintroduced and improved option for shutting down a complete FFAStrans farm.
• Added “Clear search” and “Set max list size” in the inbuilt status monitor app.
• The “A/V Media” decoder now supports forcing audio bit depth (16/24/32) and sample rate (48000/96000/192000).
• “YADIF” deinterlace filter no longer force 8 bit processing on 64bit systems.
• All windows now accept shortcut keys like ESC (close window), ENTER (OK) and F1 (help) where applicable.
• Added option to the “Custom AviSynth script” filter to skip script verification.
• The “YouTube” decoder now supports URLs as source inputs (submitted from API or the Workflow Manager).
• Error state can now be forced in the “Populate variables” by populating the “%s_error%” variable.
• Variables are now traversed in order to fetch variables within variables.
• Added %i_v_bit_depth% for bit depth of first valid video stream.
• Added option to use none linear seek in the “A/V Decoder”.
• The MP4 encoder now sets MPEG-4 part 14 flag as standard on mp4 files.
• Fixed a bug that caused jobs to hash crash when modifying the jobs workflow.
• When submitting files to host exceptioned workflows, FFAStrans could in some cases stop picking up new jobs.
• FFAStrans Workflow Manager could crash when deleting nodes on very large workflows.
• The GoPro monitor did not show correct progress when configured to check for growing files.
• Selecting “Default” preset in nodes now properly set default node values.
• Retry job did not properly re-use the stored workflow from previous job.
• Fixed several issues dealing with long file paths.
• Fixed a bug with “Forget missing files” monitor option not working correctly with sub-folders.
• Monitors, while running, did not correctly update user variables/statics upon changes.
• Fixed a memory leak in the “Insert media” filter.
• Fixed a bug that caused the “Folder” delivery node to fail if output path contained some very unusual characters.
• Fixed a crash when trying to browse FTP-paths.
• Fixed bug that sometimes caused crash in FTP monitor.
• Child processes in a job did not always close properly.
• Fixed a bug that could cause monitors to go into loop when picking up very long file path.
• Disabled nodes was not displayed correctly.
• Pausing a job did not always cause all child processes to be suspended.
• Selecting “AVI” in the uncompressed encoder did not work.
• Selecting workflow properties other than the one displayed in the editor did not work.
• The tray option in the Workflow Manager did not work properly.
• The “Interlaced input” option in DVD encoder did not work with variables.
• Fixed and removed some unneeded excessive logging in the API and queue manager.
• + Lots of other minor changes, improvements and bug fixes.

Grandmaster Steinar struggles with his wish for a new website for a long time. Voila, after the 1.1 release, we found some time to come up with a more modern website, hope you enjoy!

-emcodem