Taking part in the development

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nknuelle
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Jul 01, 2019 4:39 pm

Taking part in the development

Post by nknuelle »

Hi,

I like the idea of ffastrans and I'm glad that it's free software. But it is not open sourced right now. Why not?

I would like to take part in the development. We already use it in production for some workflows but we would like to integrate it with our Avid workflows.

Is it possible to take part in the development of ffastrans?
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 1658
Joined: Sat Feb 08, 2014 10:39 pm

Re: Taking part in the development

Post by admin »

Hi knuelle, thank you for using FFAStrans and for your interest in taking a part of the development :-)

Right now, the code is undergoing a major change so giving broad access to the code at this point is not a viable option. So currently both the old and new source code is closed. This might change in the future but no decisions has been made.

What kind of Avid-integration would you be interested in doing?

-steinar
nknuelle
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Jul 01, 2019 4:39 pm

Re: Taking part in the development

Post by nknuelle »

Hello again,
sorry - I thought I will get an announcement if someone posts a reply to my post but there wasn't any .. :)

We are using an Avid Interplay Environment and I am in contact with Avid to get access to Avid Interplay Web Services API and Avid Media Toolkit. It would be very nice to integrate interplay with ffastrans. Maybe as some kind of plugin if Avid agrees to use their license.

Avid told me that the problem using another encoding software is that the Avid Media Toolkit only compresses RAW Frames for rewrapping. But you need the AMT to build Avid compliant AAF files which are important to check those files into the Avid Interplay/Media Central Production environment.

I think there is no chance for now to use ffastrans to provide RAW frames nor Avid compliant AAF files. So I am figuring out how to achieve that..
emcodem
Posts: 1631
Joined: Wed Sep 19, 2018 8:11 am

Re: Taking part in the development

Post by emcodem »

Hey knuelle,

i'd not recommend to use the AMT for encding as it is too slow and propreitary.
There was already a thread about how to generate AAF, a commandline tool for generating the AAF that you need for interplay checkin is ready for you to download and use.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=892

However, you might want to know that ffastrans is about driving external tools, it does not include any native functions for media processing. So if you want to add something to ffastrans it is best to first create the (commandline) tool that does what you wish and then ask steinar to utilize the new tool.
emcodem, wrapping since 2009 you got the rhyme?
nknuelle
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Jul 01, 2019 4:39 pm

Re: Taking part in the development

Post by nknuelle »

Hi emcodem,

thanks for your reply!

I am currently checking your tool. As I understood you are using pyaaf2 right? I already tried that library and got some working AAFs. But there is one problem with those AAFs and Avid Interplay. I generated an AAF which links to MXF Op Atom files on a network drive (Avid ISIS Storage System). Afterwards I checked-in this AAF via Interplay Web Services (a SOAP service by Avid). This is working fine but there is another issue. We are using the Interplay Access Tool which is a kind of Database GUI. The pyaaf2 generated AAF causes an issue:
You can see a so-called "Masterclip" which is generated after CheckIn. But this Masterclip does not reference any assets which makes it impossible to delete the Masterclip AND the related media files within the Interplay Access Tool. If you open up this Masterclip in Avid Media Composer everything is working fine and all media assets are found...
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