New post
0

is it possible to use local links to media in (hosted) screening room app

Avatar
Stu Aitken
None
Follow

we're currently looking into using the newly bundled screening room app on hosted SG and were wondering if the need to upload media to the hosted server is the only route currently available without also installing the additional RV toolset?

we had been thinking that setting up a local video server (which could serve the media via a web accessible URL) might be a much more efficient way to do this (ie it woulkd avoid the considerable latency and IO bandwidth involved in uploading from here to the US hosted server and then back again for playback)

the lack of this feature seems a little strange given that we can directly link to local media from within SG fields anyway (but using local file links rather than web based URL) with is a feature we already use heavily

Date Votes

3 comments

  • 0
    Avatar
    Brandon Foster

    Hi Stu,

    This is definitely possible, though not 100% supported yet as we haven't done extensive testing with separate media servers. So long as your media is accesible via a web url (and not a locally linked file), you can input those addresses into the sg_uploaded_movie_mp4 and sg_uploaded_movie_webm fields (which are hidden in the UI, but are accessible via the API). This is only applicable for the web player, and not the RV player.

    Check out this article, specifically the section labeled "DIY Transcoding", for more information. Give it a try and let us know how it works for you.

    https://support.shotgunsoftware.com/entries/21700632#diy_transcoding

  • 0
    Avatar
    Stu Aitken

    Thanks Brandon - we got this working!

    another (possibly dum) question - the RV version of screening room seems to require a different file path format to find local media (ie manually entering a complete file system path which may be OS dependent  as opposed to the (smarter, OS independant) 'local file link' type thing we have been using to hold previews up to this point - is there any reason it couldn't use the same methadology? (if nothing else the local file link UI widget is much more user friendly for adding a file path manually...)

     

    some other things I noticed:

    RV screening room seems to break if you use scenes instead of sequences to order your shots (ie it literally won't find ANY shots unless you are using sequences) - since SG itself lets you use scenes OR sequences as shot parents shouldn't this option also be observed by RV screening room app? (eg the RV package queries the admin setting for this or something and acts accordingly)

    the config file for RV screening room throws an error and refuses to run the app if there is no field on versions called  'department' - this field doesn't exist in the default schema (it didn't on ours anyway) - doesn't seem like a serious enough error to throw that much of a wobbly (its only used for info) - in fact RV doesn't seem to handle errors that gracefully in general from what I've seen so far in many cases - and we would prefer to use another mechanism to handle this anyway (ie "department"  would be inferred from the pipeline step of a linked task on the version - a method which would seem to sit more with how that sort of thing is handled generally in SG anyway)

  • 0
    Avatar
    Brandon Foster

    Hi Stu,

    Within the shotgun_fields_config_custom.mu file, down near the bottom there is a "WINDOWS COMPATIBILITY FOR UNIX PATHS" section that allows you to configure how to interpret the paths in the Path to Movie and Path to Frames fields into a different OS format. We do have plans to revisit this in the future so you'll be able to use Shotgun's built in file linking, but I currently don't have a eta on that.

    The first iteration of the Screening Room column browser admittedly uses a fairly rigid structure of the most common hierarchical configuration we have observed in use (Sequence > Shots). We understand that is just one of many, many possible permutations out there (e.g. Episode > Sequence > Scene > Shot > Sub-Shot, etc.). We do plan to allow for a greater degree of custom browsing through more diverse series of entity relationships in a future release.

    Screening Room has some fields which are required in order for some of the features to work. The app should have created missing fields for you automatically at first startup. For that, and other errors you're experiencing, please submit a support ticket request to support@shotgunsoftware.com and we can work with you to resolve the errors.

Please sign in to leave a comment.