Episode Engine Input Monitors
by Nick Woodcraft
on
Jun 3, 2008 at 11:16:22 am
We are planning on upgrading to Episode 5, but want to get Input Monitors working before we do. We currently use Watch folders for encoding and cannot get Input Monitors to work.
All jobs fail when they go into the folder being monitored. To test, I created a new Watch Folder and put a file through successfully. I then removed the .setting file from the Watch folder, and set up an Input Monitor on the same folder, using the same .setting file. When I put the same video in for transcoding it fails.
Any ideas? Permissions on the file and folder are 777 so shouldn't be a problem.
Re: Episode Engine Input Monitors by Nick Woodcraft on Jun 3, 2008 at 3:06:47 pm
Hi,
Thanks for looking at this. I've tried putting the monitored folder on a local drive and on our XSAN. The permissions check in Episode seems OK. I even tried setting up the monitor using Episode Admin on the primary server, as it seemed to be looking at local folders. It sees the folder and recognises the file when dropped in - but all jobs get the dreaded red text and job parser: failed to create file error.
One thing that puzzled me that may be important - when you create a watch folder Episode automatically creates output and archive folders and fixes the permissions. Where do files processed using an Input Monitor go? Nothing seems to happen automatically. I'm using Engine Pro 4.4.
Re: Episode Engine Input Monitors by Jack Arky on Jun 3, 2008 at 9:32:06 pm
To answer your question about where the output files go, they end up in the Depot folder, in a sub-folder named Monitors. Folders are created in there for each File Monitor you make. Let's hope in the next version they give you the option to specify a destination.
I'll betcha anything it's permissions. Don't know why "777" wouldn't do the trick though.
I've had SMB/CIF monitor types work without a problem on our SMB shares. But for the longest time I couldn't get the "File Monitor" type to work properly. Then one of the Telestream guys at NAB showed me how you could have a file monitor look at ANY shared drive on a system that had the same user name as your EE user name. On install, instead of using default name of "pwce," I used the username that we use for connecting to our network shares. After that, I was able to use Input Monitors looking at folders on those shares without an issue.
Maybe on your XSAN try assigning the pwce user to the folder you have the input monitor pointing to? Shot in the dark....
Re: Episode Engine Input Monitors by Nick Woodcraft on Jun 4, 2008 at 11:19:49 am
Thanks Jack (and Robert). I think it must be permissions based. Folders do seem to be created in:
/Users/Shared/Episode Engine/Depot/Monitors
for each new monitor I setup. The user 'pwce' has access to this folder and a temp file is created each time. We have to have archiving turned on because of our other workflows, but nothing seems to be written to:
/Users/Shared/Episode Engine/Archive
May edit the depots.conf to see if the location can be fixed - have had luck doing this in the past - we use shared storage so a folder on the server is kind of a pain.
Robert - have tried encoding mpgs, xvid avis, as well as H.264 MP4s and movs so I don't think its to do with accessing the codecs. Could be wrong though. Will keep looking.
Re: Episode Engine Input Monitors by Ernesto Sanchez on Jun 21, 2008 at 6:08:07 am
Tell me if this makes any sense.
Mount a NFS share from your file server to /Users/Shared/Episode Engine/ as you normally would for Watch Folders.
Engine will create the normal folders inlcuding Depot to /Users/Shared/Episode Engine
However, this path actually is a link to the RAID on the file server. On the file server we create a NFS mount such as /Volumes/RAID/Episode Engine
On the controller we mount it to /Users/Shared/Episode Engine before installing Engine. During install it creates all the normal folders in Episode Engine.
I've been working on Engine all day and I think my brain has turned to pudding (oh yah, pudding!)
Cheers,
Ernesto
Cheers,
Ernesto Sanchez
Senior SAN Engineer
THE DR GROUP
O - 323.896.3416
C - 949.690.3680
ernesto@thedrgroup.com
Re: Episode Engine Input Monitors by Jack Arky on Jun 23, 2008 at 10:10:11 pm
Ernesto,
This is outlined in the Engine Admin Guide (starting p.59). You'll export the NFS mount from your file server (the export needs to contain the line -maproot=0 so that EE has root access), then mount it from the Controller Node. Take a look at the documentation tho, they have a couple of performance suggestions there. Should work tho.
Re: Episode Engine Input Monitors by Nick Woodcraft on Jul 8, 2008 at 9:57:00 am
Hi, just wanted to add the resolution to this issue. Apologies if I'm telling people what they already know.
Input Monitors use the Depot folder to output the file. The location of the Depot folder can be specified in the /etc/depot.conf file in you Episode Engine installation. The file has a line for mount-point and sub-dir. Mount-point should be where you would like the processed files to go. sub-dir should be the name of the folder - most likely Depot. You need to restart Episode Engine for any changes to take effect. The user 'pwce', or whichever user you installed EE as, needs to be able to write to this folder.
Archiving doesn't appear to be implemented for Input Monitors, the file just sits in the input folder. There also doesn't appear to be a variable available in the automation scripts (found in /evt) to allow you to remove or archive the input file yourself. Has anyone else run into this problem?
