Transcoding workflow

This article covers features which are only available in Silverstack Lab

This article requires knowledge about the transcoding preset panel and the workflow configuration window. It covers knowledge on how to create transcoding presets, transcode clips using the workflow configuration window and export metadata to 3rd party applications.

Let’s assume the following scenario: You need to create transcodes for three different purposes:

1. Client previews
2. Dailies for editorial
3. Combined clips as quick overview of the produced footage

Please note that there are many uses cases, this is just an example to explain you the core concepts. Let’s break down our task into the following steps:

1. Creating three different transcoding presets for the three different targets above, including adjustments on:
   1. Audio settings
   2. Overlays & Burn Ins
   3. Metadata export for Editorial
2. Transcoding clips with the workflow configuration window
   1. Creating a transcode job
   2. Exporting a combined clip
   3. Creating hashes for the transcodes

The following tutorial is assuming that your library already contains some clips with corresponding metadata and synced external audio.

1. Creating transcoding presets#

Client previews

Let’s start with creating a transcoding preset for the client previews. Click on the Presets button in the top right toolbar to open the transcoding preset panel. We use the TV preset as a starting point, select it and by Right-Click > Duplicate Preset we make a copy of it. In the same way, we can rename the transcoding preset to “Client Previews”, for example. Since the audio and video settings are already set correctly by the TV preset, we only want to add some burn ins. Within the settings of the “Client Previews” preset, click the Burn In checkbox to enable the associated functions. Choose some metadata values from the dropdown menus to allocate them to the required positions. For the top center we choose the “Project” wildcard from the “Custom…” menu and clicking on the … button. For the bottom row, we decide to use “Scene-Shot-Take”, “Video TC” and “Clip Name”. Feel free to adjust the other parameters as needed, e.g. setting the H / V margins to 5% and changing the appearance settings. You created your first custom preset.

Dailies for editorial

The requirements for editorial may differ widely depending on the workflow. In this case, we want to create dailies that carry all available audio tracks and metadata using the codec “DNxHD LB 1080p 35 8-Bit.” Feel free to adapt the existing preset or work with a duplicate of it. For a better overview, we name the preset “DNxHD 36 AT-MD” (AT for All Tracks, MD for Metadata). In the audio settings of the preset we change the “Channel Layout” to “All Tracks” to include all internal and external tracks we synced before as explained in this article. Next, we want to set the metadata export to automatically create metadata companion files for our transcodes on export (e.g., ALE files). Within “Metadata Export” we change the “Target Application” from “None” to “AVID Media Composer” which will create an ALE file after export that carries the available library’s metadata. By selecting the target application a … button appears which allows you to define the settings for the ALE as described here.

Combined clip as quick overview of the footage

This feature allows you to easily combine several clips into one. It’s helpful to create a quick overview of a scene’s footage, etc. However, there are some restrictions that apply. We do not need to create a separate preset for that and, instead, use the TV preset which we kept earlier. Now, we are ready to proceed with the next step and transcode files using the workflow configuration window.

2. Transcoding clips via the workflow configuration window#

The workflow configuration window enables you to run several jobs in parallel. A very common use case would be to concatenate one or two backup and transcode jobs to offload a card and then immediately transcode from the copied files. You are very flexible regarding the combination of jobs. For simplicity reasons, we only explain the transcode job and assume that your library already contains clips or you offload them first before you start transcoding. Learn more about the workflow configuration window.

Click on the Transcode button in the top left toolbar to open the workflow configuration window. You can select the clips for transcoding in the resource selection activity. Create a new transcode activity for our first two presets we specified above (“Client Previews” and “DNxHD 36 AT-MD”). For the first transcode activity, we need to add a preset by clicking the Add Preset button and define a destination path. Clicking the Add Preset button again allows you to add another preset to the same activity. For the destination paths, we recommend taking advantage of the wildcards feature as explained here.

For the combined clip transcoding, we have to create a second transcode activity since the feature is not combinable with the DNxHD codec. Use the TV preset, set a destination path and enable the checkbox Transcode to combined clip . Please note that the order of the clips in the resource selection step reflects the order of the clips in the combined clip. You can change the order by resorting the table columns.

You may save the configured workflow as a preset if you wish. Finally, click Start Workflow to start the transcoding workflow.