Path wildcards

Silverstack offers you a very convenient feature to rename folders and build entire folder structures easily from scratch. The Path Wildcards feature allows you to define individual folder structures per destination, organize your files and is a very useful tool in general. Path Wildcards can be set for Backup and Transcode activities within the Workflow Configurator.

A wildcard is simply a placeholder that gets substituted by the actual (metadata) value of the clip during the backup or transcode process. You can determine the folder names by selecting the individual wildcards from a broad set of options. Silverstack uses these wildcards to save your files automatically at the dedicated paths, as specified by you. For example, your clips can be stored in folders according to their submission date while each clips’ name carries the project title and submission time.

1. Wildcard locations#

Wildcards are an essential concept in Silverstack and can be found in many places:

Backup and transcode activities: Building the destination paths.
Burn Ins: Building burn ins from metadata.
Still Exporter: Creating destination folders and file names.
ALE files: Creating the name column.
Report Wizard: Creating the report names.

2. Document wildcard handling#

You can decide how to handle non-clip files in your folder structures. It is possible to preserve the source folder structure or create a custom one (inheriting the metadata from the clips). By default, Silverstack inherits metadata from clips. This setting can be changed under Settings > Copy & Jobs > Documents:

Inherit metadata from clips: Documents have the same paths like clips.
Always preserve folder structure: Documents have the same paths like clips from the source.

When the option Always preserve folder structure is set, all files not considered as clips by Silverstack (e.g., image file sequences, sidecar files, etc.) are copied in the path of the source clips. Therefore, all documents preserve the same folder structure as the source medium while all clips are located in the custom folders you have created.

3. Multi-optional wildcards#

Some wildcards have multiple options which can be selected by clicking the small triangle next to the wildcard name:

Submission Time and Shooting Time
Submission Date and Shooting Date
Path Components ¹
Reel Characters ²

¹ You can choose the amount of path components of the clips’ source folder structure which will be included in the path of the newly generated folder structure (e.g., if you choose 3, the last three levels of the source clip’s folder structure are included in the new clip’s path).

² For reel characters it is possible to choose parts of the reel name as wildcards. You can either select the first or the last characters of the reel name (if applicable).

4. Use path wildcards to rename transcodes#

You can use path wildcards to rename transcodes based on metadata. To do this, simply remove the / at the path’s end and add the path wildcards you would like to use. For example, if you want to rename your transcodes by scene, shot, take and use an underscore as separator, enter the following path wildcards in the destination/path field of a transcode activity:

~/Your/Path/Scene _Shot _Take

Optionally, you can also append a file extension like “.mp4” to the path name.

Tip: You can copy & paste path wildcards like any other text.

5. Important notes#

Make sure the path you have set in the path field is not changed or deleted unintentionally. Simply add wildcards to the already existing path components.
In the path field, single wildcard tokens are separated by a slash ( / ) if they are supposed to define a folder. Separate them with a dash ( – ) to combine different wildcards for the same folder level.
Filenames should contain some wildcards in order to make them unique. Silverstack checks the uniqueness of all created file paths and warns you if necessary.

6. User interface#

Path
Sets the destination path. You can either directly enter path components or drag & drop wildcards into the textfield. Double-click a wildcard to transform it into plain text. Click the folder icon on the right to open a dialog which allows you to choose a path.

Example
Shows an example of the destination path.

Wildcards
Shows all available wildcards to choose from and drag & drop into the path field.

Token: Displays the wildcard name.
Example: Shows an example value using a clip from the library.
Availability: Views the proportion between clips that have actual values for the wildcard and all (selected) clips.