Configuring a workflow

This hands on article contains features that are only available in Silverstack Lab. The basic principles work both for Silverstack XT / Silverstack Lab.

A workflow is a sequence of activities that Silverstack applies in one run to any data that is configured as a source. The possibility to combine and group multiple activities helps you work in an efficient and structured manner while maintaining a consistent data management.

This article will guide you through the task of creating a tailored workflow. It requires some knowledge about the workflow configurator, workflow activities, completion steps, the transcoding preset panel, and the report wizard.

A workflow contains usually two or more activities:

An activity that defines the source data (e.g., “Register in Library” or “Resource Selection”)
An activity that defines the actions to perform (e.g., backup or transcode)

The general process of applying workflows contains the following steps:

Creating workflow presets for different sources
Applying the previously configured workflow presets on data

The main idea is to configure a tailored workflow (preset) for a specific source medium and apply this preset repeatedly for the same type of source.

1. Creating workflows#

To explore this task, it is recommended to have some kind of test data to work with (e.g., by downloading Silverstack’s sample project and footage). Ideally, you have a camera magazine available that is identical to the data you need to work with. For this task, let’s assume you work with audio and video clips and want to apply two different workflows for the two different source types. You start with configuring a workflow by putting together an overview of what you want to achieve:

Register clips in the library
Create two copies of the source card on two drives using a backup activity
Transcode the source clips
Create reports
Upload the transcoded files

1.1 Register in library#

Click the Offload button in the top left toolbar and select the desired camera magazine or folder to open the workflow configuration window (WCW). The first activity is automatically set to “Register in Library” and Silverstack immediately scans the source for its content.

By default, all available clips and visible files on the source medium are selected to be registered in the Silverstack library. However, it is possible to unselect certain files from registration or force clips to be registered as documents.

At this point, we can make use of the ingest metadata feature, add valuable information already during ingest, and use that data to build the library or folder structure using path wildcards. In case Silverstack finds metadata within the clips, some fields like “Camera” will be filled in automatically. Otherwise, you may enter the information manually (e.g., for “Shooting Day”).

When you are finished, head to the registration path section, select any preconfigured wildcard preset, or create one on your own. Silverstack now shows you a preview of the registration path (the location where your bin is registered in the library outline).

1.2 Backup#

Since the offload button was used to open the workflow configuration window, a backup was automatically added as a second activity to the workflow. Select it, and add the first volume as a destination path for the backup. Once a valid destination path is set, the error message disappears.Depending on how you organize your actual data on the file system compared to your library, you can set the path wildcards for that destination as you like. You could use the same configuration like before for the registration path or create a custom one.

Now, you can configure the second copy for the source card. There are two possible ways of doing that: Either you simply add another destination (path) to the first backup activity by clicking the + Add Destination button or you add another backup activity to create a cascading copy, for example. For the latter, select the first backup activity and add another one with + Add Activity .The second backup activity should appear as a subordinate activity of the first one — which is visible by the indentation in the activity outline.In the following steps, the further process is explained with a single backup activity that contains two backup destinations.

Note: Any copy activity is based on the backup activity. By combining several backup activities, you have a wide range of options and are able to recreate operations like cascading copy easily. A cascading copy is a “copy of a copy”. In that case, you first offload onto a fast drive and then run your second backup from that fast drive onto a slower one. A cascading copy is helpful to free up camera media storage as fast as possible. This can become convenient in working environments with small amounts of camera magazines or in situations where only one docking station is available and multiple camera magazines have to be offloaded quickly.

1.3 Transcode#

You can find detailed information about transcoding in the articles transcoding preset panel and transcoding workflow.

Start with creating a transcode activity as a child of the backup activity with the + Add Activity dropdown menu in the bottom left corner. Since the parent backup activity has two destination paths, it consequently has two outputs. Therefore, you need to define the source for the downstream transcode activity from its Source dropdown menu at the top.Next, apply a transcoding preset (e.g., the “TV” preset) and set the transcode destination paths with the help of path wildcards. If you want to transcode two different presets from the same backup path, just add another preset to the transcode activity.Alternatively, if you want to run separate transcodes from both outputs of the backup activity or you need to make an additional combined clip transcoding, just add another (child) transcode activity and change the source respectively. Your activity outline may now look like this:

1.4 Reports#

Reports are created in a “Post Step” of an individual activity. To create a report as a post step, you first need to create a report preset, which defines the report’s type and settings. Learn more about that in our article about creating reports. Select the activity to which you want to add a post step, click + Add Post Step and then choose Add Report Step from the dropdown menu. Select the desired preset from the preset menu of the report post step configuration and set the path where the report should be saved.

Note: Post steps are bound to the individual activities. That means the reports contain information for the activities they have been added to as a post step. For example, if you want to create clip reports for both transcode activities, you need to add the report post steps to both.

1.5 Upload#

As the final step of our example task, we want to upload transcodes to a cloud service. To be able to configure an upload activity, you first need to configure an account for that in Silverstack’s accounts settings. The article about uploading explains this in detail. Select the first transcode activity (the one that contains the “TV” preset) and add an upload activity as a subordinate activity (e.g., “Dailies Upload”). Only MP4 or MOV containers are allowed for uploading, that’s why you configured the TV preset earlier. Configure the upload activity as needed and explained in upload.

2. Saving and applying workflows#

2.1 Saving a workflow as preset#

Let’s save the configured workflow as a preset, so you can apply it to a camera magazine or use it as a starting point for other workflows. Go to the top right corner and select Save as new preset… from the Preset dropdown menu. This opens a dialog which allows you to enter a preset name and additional options.Enable Auto Apply and specify a clip type if you want to associate the workflow preset with camera cards that primarily carry the respective clip type (i.e., “ARRI” clips). If you want to manually select the correct workflow from the preset list every time the workflow is started, do not check that option. The workflow presets show their association with an input device through an arrow symbol ← in the preset list. If you are ready, click OK .

In a similar manner, you could now create a workflow for audio clips by using the already configured workflow for video clips. Simply remove redundant activities (e.g., transcode activities) and adapt the existing ones to the requirements of the audio source (i.e., adapt the path wildcards, etc.). As soon as a preset was edited, it shows an asterisk (e.g., “Workflow*”). Then, save the newly configured workflow as a new preset and associate it with audio clips as explained earlier.

Note: You can associate a workflow preset to only one dominant clip type. If you want more input clip types to trigger the same workflow preset, you need to save the same configuration in multiple presets and associate each with the desired clip type.

2.2 Automatically load workflow preset by dominant clip type#

After the scanning finishes, the dominant clip type of the source is extracted. If a workflow preset is associated with the identified dominant clip type, this preset is loaded automatically. Of course, you can still adapt your workflow and add, remove, or edit activities. Via the Preset menu in the top right corner, you can update your previously configured preset with the new changes made by clicking Update Preset .

Note: A card’s dominant clip type is typically the type with the most results. Exceptions are: The “Generic Video” type never dominates a specific type (e.g., “Canon”), and the “Audio” clip type never dominates a video type.

Click on Start Workflow to start the process.