Introducing Silverstack Lab

Data Management and Dailies Creation in One.

Thank you for purchasing or testing Silverstack Lab. We value your trust in our company and products, and we will do our best to meet your expectations.

Silverstack Lab merges data management and dailies creation into one integrated activity. Footage can be backed up securely and organized transparently – while at the same time dailies can be created.

Silverstack Lab comes with a high performance transcoding engine, an automated audio sync function, and a library extension that simplifies the management of transcodes. By supporting the parallel creation of AVID DNxHD, ProRes, and H.264 files in various resolutions at the same time, the dailies creation process becomes extremely fast and reaches a new level of productivity.

Silverstack Lab bases on the proven data management functionality of Silverstack XT and extends it to handle data management and dailies creation in one application.

 What’s New in Silverstack Lab:

• High-speed transcoding engine:  Fast, hybrid CPU/GPU-based transcoding engine
• Transcoding to native AVID DNxHD MXFs: Transcode to DNxHD codecs in MXF wrapper for native use in AVID Media Composer
• Improved transcoding functionalities: Create custom transcoding configurations, preview the transcoded clips in the transcoding preview and transcode to MXF DNxHD, Quicktime ProRes and H.264
• Use of second GPU for transcoding: Use of second GPU for accelerated transcoding speeds
• Multi destination and multi format transcoding: Transcode footage to multiple destinations with different resolutions simultaneously
• Advanced burn-in options and overlay: Choose from various steady and dynamic burn in options and add a watermark to your transcoded clips
• Frame line burn-ins: Transcode your clips with burned in frame lines in various aspect ratios
• Metadata workflow support: In Silverstack Lab’s transcoding configurations you can set which and how metadata files should be automatically created after finishing the transcoding jobs.
• Transcoding statistics: Profit from transcoding statistics to make sure to transcode all required clips
• Native support for audio clips: Automatic assembly of audio files (BWF, *.wav) to audio clips including metadata support, playback capabilities and integration in reporting functionalities.
• Automatic audio sync: Sync audio clips to video clips seamlessly with the automatic audio sync by timecode functionality.
• Multichannel audio in transcoded clips: Transcode clips with multiple separate audio channels
• Player multi selection grid view: Show multiple clips side-by-side and compare up to 12 clips  in the player grid view
• UI Layouts: Quick configurations for the Silverstack user interface allow to jump to an environment for certain tasks with the flip of a switch. Choose from “Manage”, “QC”, “Color”, “Config (transcoding configurations)”
• Second display: Extend the Silverstack XT UI to two displays for a two screen working environment
• More formats with audio support: We added native audio support for ARRIRAW (.ari, external audio file), REDCODE RAW (.r3d) clips and Bolex Cinema DNG (.dng, external audio file)

Requirements

Silverstack Lab requires a Macintosh computer with macOS 10.10 or higher. Since we are using the latest of macOS technologies, we are not planning to support earlier versions of macOS, neither will we port Silverstack Lab to other operating systems in the near future.

If your Mac is equipped with an ExpressCard/34-, CompactFlash- or SD card-slot, you can directly offload clips.

Supported Advanced Media Formats

Silverstack Lab provides advanced features for many camera formats to maximize the efficiency of relevant on-set tasks such as quality check, playback and metadata management. For a detailed list of the supported formats, please take a look at the article Assets in Silverstack.

Generally Supported Media Formats

Silverstack offers a more flexible way of data handling by supporting all kinds of file formats – including sound files, photos, any camera media and all other production documents. With Silverstack, all files are copied and managed in the same secure way, which simplifies the daily tasks for DITs and streamlines subsequent post-production work.

Note: For real time playback of your offloaded video files the usage of a fast hard drive as a SSD card is recommended.

If you have further questions about supported hardware please let us know. If you would like to know more about data performance, you might be interested in this article for improving your performance.

Audio Clips

Silverstack Lab detects Broadcast Wave files automatically as audio and merges associated audio files together to audio clips. Learn more about Audio Clips in Silverstack.

Audio Sync

You can sync audio clips to video clips via timecode in Silverstack Lab. Read more about it in the article How to Automatically Sync Audio in Silverstack Lab.

Learn more about manual audio sync in the article How to Manually Sync Audio in Silverstack XT and Silverstack Lab.

Transcoding

Create multiple custom transcoding configurations, choose from DNxHD, ProRes and H.264 codecs as well as transcode to multiple formats and resolutions simultaneously including burn-ins and overlays.

If you’d like to know more about transcoding in Silverstack Lab, please take a look at the Knowledge Base article Transcoding Clips.

User Interface

Learn how to use Silverstack Lab’s user interface in the article User Interface Overview.

Learn about Silverstack Lab’s UI Layouts that are shortcuts to certain user interface configurations in the article UI Layouts: Quick configurations for the Silverstack User Interface.

The second display in Silverstack enables a two screen working environment. Read more in the article Second Display: Two Screen Working Environment in Silverstack.

Offload and Backup Media with Silverstack

The get a closer look at the different copy modes in Silverstack Lab, please take a look at the following articles:

Parallel Offload

Backup Clips

Cascading Copy

LTFS Backup

Organize your Material

Get a better understanding on how the Library works with the following articles:

The Clip Library: Bins, Folders, Smart Folders and Volumes

The Information Panel

Metadata Handling

Silverstack Lab enables you to edit metadata information of your clips and files. Except some non-editable technical information as format, duration etc. you can change and add a lot of metadata. Related articles:

Metadata Handling

Tips & Tricks: Quick metadata editing

Look Management and Color Grading

Look Management and Matching

While using Silverstack Lab together with LiveGrade on set to manage clip data and looks hand in hand, you surely want to combine the created information afterwards.  Silverstack Lab offers a solution to avoid assigning looks to clips manually. You can connect them based on the metadata you already created while generating them: Look Matching

Silverstack’s Look Library and grading controls enable you to receive looks from LiveGrade: Transferring Looks from LiveGrade Pro to Silverstack

Manage looks within Silverstack Lab in a look library in order to keep a proper overview of all the looks in your project. The look library allows to store new looks, edit their metadata, apply looks to one or multiple clips, as well as to import looks from LiveGrade: The Silverstack Look Library

Color Grading

Silverstack Lab supports different grading modes designed for specific camera setups and workflow environments: Grading Controls in Silverstack.

Player Grid View

You can display up to 12 clips side-by-side in the player to e.g. reference grades. Learn more in the article Player Grid View for Multi Clip Selection.

Look Transfer

Silverstack offers a solution to export clips to DaVinci Resolve including ASC-CDL color metadata. Additionally it is possible to set up Resolve with the according LUTs to reflect the color processing done in Silverstack: Transfer Clips to DaVinci Resolve Including Color Metadata

To learn about the process of matching metadata from an ALE file generated from Silverstack to master clips in Avid: Transfer Color Metadata to AVID Media Composer

Quality Check

Silverstack Lab comes with HD-SDI output to play out ingested clips in best quality for QC on an HD-SDI monitor. The current clip in the player gets mirrored to the HD-SDI output showing the image in full-screen and 10 bit color depth: HD-SDI Output in Silverstack

Additionally, Silverstack Lab offers the possibility to overlay frame lines over the clips in the playback window, as well as for the SDI output: Frame Lines in the Playback View

Further more, functionalities provided within the “Visual Controls” panel allow to check the colors and quality of your video clip: Visual Control Functionalities in Playback Mode

Silverstack Lab offers audio playback of audio data embedded in video clips for preview and quality check: Multichannel Audio in Silverstack

The ability to de-squeeze footage recorded with anamorphic lenses and image flipping is also available in Silverstack Lab: Image transformation

Transfer and Report

Transfer

To process your clips and metadata in other Tools like Avid Media Composer, FinalCut or Speedgrade you can use the Transfer wizards.

Export options also involve transfer to:

• Adobe Premiere Pro
• BlackmagicDesign DaVinci Resolve

Report

You can export a whole project, single or several folders, bins or clips, smart folders and the volumes. For more information:
Creating Reports

Customizing Clip Reports

Library Metadata Transfer

Learn how to transfer metadata between workstations in the article Library Metadata Exchange.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Silverstack Lab provides a lot of different keyboard shortcuts. Please take a look at the Main Menu of the application to find necessary shortcuts to speed up your workflow.

Please be aware that not all of these shortcuts are available in each of the different functional areas within Silverstack. So it may happen that a shortcut won’t work in a certain situation. For example if you don’t have a clip selection then you cannot use the Rate selection keyboard short cut.

Learn how to customize shortcuts: Customize Shortcuts

For More Information Please Check Out Our Knowledge Base:

http://kb.pomfort.com/silverstack

Resources

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SxS

Copyrights

Pomfort GmbH © 2017

The post Silverstack Lab – Getting Started appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

Overview

The transcoding functionalities of Silverstack have been updated with Silverstack 6. The update contains a faster transcoding engine, an updated user interface, more transcoding options and a lot more (details below).

Silverstack separates the configuration of the transcoding settings from the actual starting of a transcoding job:

• The section “Transcoding Configurations” will explain how to adjust the settings for your transcoding job.
• The section “Starting a Transcoding Job”  will explain how to execute a transcoding job.

Transcoding Configurations *

Silverstack XT offers multiple custom transcoding configurations while Silverstack offers one custom transcoding configuration.

The transcoding settings can be found in the transcoding tab of the right bar. Click the transcoding icon  to access the transcoding tab:

Fig. 1: Configure the transcoding settings in the transcoding tab of the right bar

The upper part of the transcoding tab shows the custom transcoding configurations. The lower part shows the detailed settings for the selected configuration. The settings will be applied and stored to the configurations immediately.

Locking Transcoding Configurations

Fig.2: Locking transcoding configurations

Transcoding configurations can be locked to avoid changes to them by clicking the lock icon on the right side of the “Settings” header bar. Locked configurations will be shown with a white lock icon in the table*.

Transcoding Settings

Audio & Video

Video

• Codec: Select the output codec depending on your requirements. There are different options available (also shown in Fig. 3):
  • H.264 (Quicktime Container)
  • ProRes 4444
  • ProRes 422
  • ProRes 422 (HQ)
  • ProRes 422 (Proxy)

Fig. 3: Available transcoding options

• Size (for H.264 and ProRes): This drop down menu allows you to select the final resolution of the transcoded clips:

Fig. 4: Available frame sizes

• Duration (Limit to In/Out points): By enabling this option Silverstack only transcodes the part of the clip between the in and out points set in the library.

Audio

Tick the checkbox to include audio in your transcoded clips.

• Format:
  • Linear PCM
  • ACC – Good Quality **
  • ACC – High Quality **

• Channel Layout:
  • Stereo Mixdown: The custom audio mix created in the audio panel

Source

Choose from different general debayer options:

• Soft (GPU)
• Default (GPU)
• AHD (CPU)

Choose different decoding options for RAW source formats *:

• ARRIRAW:
  • 1/2 resolution
  • Full resolution
• SONY RAW
  • 1/4 resolution
  • 1/2 resolution
  • Full resolution
• R3D
  • 1/8 resolution
  • 1/4 resolution
  • 1/2 resolution
  • Full resolution
• Canon RAW
  • Quality:
    • Full Resolution
    • 1/2 Resolution
    • 1/4 Resolution
  • Debayer Mode:
    • High Speed
    • High Quality
• AVC-Intra / XAVC
  • 1/2 resolution
  • Full resolution

Compositing

• Resizing:
  •  Fitting Strategy:
    • The zoom to fit (Adding black bars/Without black bars) option will adjust the horizontal resolution of the clip to fit in the selected final size.
    • Zoom to fill will affect the vertical resolution of the footage to the final size, cropping the sides.
    • 1 to 1 will zoom the footage to 100% in the center of the image to adjust to the final selected size, cropping everything else.

Fig. 5: resizing example results

• Grading: 
  • Look Source: Choose how to manage the color data for the clip:
    • As set in Library: enable this setting to include the looks applied to the clip in the Library. For more information on how to apply looks, please check the article The Silverstack Look Library.
    • None: Disables the color processing and transcodes the clips unmodified (as recorded).
    • From file: Reads the clip metadata and applies the color processing described in the embedded looks. In case there is no look embedded, Silverstack applies the default Log to Rec.709 conversion for the specific format.

Overlays

• Burn Ins: Choose from two different options to burn into the transcoded clip:

Fig. 6: Burn in options

• Burn in Parameters: The following parameters can be adjusted for the burn ins:
  • Margins: A horizontal and vertical margin to position the burn ins in the frame.
  • Font: Sets the font style for the burn ins.
  • Font Size: Sets the font size in pt.
  • Transparency: Sets the transparency level for the burn ins.
  • Text Color: Sets the text color to “White” or “Black”
  • Background: Sets the background to a “Box” shape, adds an “Outline” to the text or with “None” adds no background.

• Image Overlay: Choose an image overlay (.png, .jpg, .tiff) to be burned into the transcoded clips.

•  Image Overlay Parameters:
  • Size: Sets the size of the image (0 -100 %)
  • Position X: Sets the position in horizontal direction
  • Position Y: Sets the position in vertical direction
  • Transparency: Sets the transparence (0 – 100 %)

The Transcoding Preview

When the transcoding tab in the right bar is showing Silverstack automatically switches to a transcoding preview to be shown in the playback view:

Fig. 7: The transcoding preview

The transcoding preview displays a preview of the transcoding configurations applied to the currently selected clip.

Starting a Transcoding Job

The «Transcode» button

In order to start transcoding the clips, first select a folder or bin in the Library panel. Then click on Transcode to open the wizard. There you will be able to select the clips you want to transcode. Click on continue to select the destination and transcode settings.

Fig. 8: clip selection wizard

Now you are able to select where the transcoded clips will be stored. You can add and remove destinations by using the «+» and «-» buttons. Alternatively, it’s also possible to modify each destination path and path wildcards. You can select from the configurations previously configured in the transcoding configurations tab:

Fig. 9: The transcoding destination step

Click the current configuration to open the list of all available transcoding configurations:

Fig. 10: The transcoding configurations dropdown

When the checkbox “Add to Library” is checked the transcoded clips will automatically be ingested into the Silverstack Library after the transcoding job is done. Transcoding statistics will be available for the clips in the statistics view.

Click “Start Render Job” to start the render job. It can then be traced in the jobs panel.

Path Wildcards for Transcode Destinations

Path Wildcards can be used to customize the transcoding path with available metadata. Click the “Path wildcard” icon in the status bar (see fig. 13) to access the path wildcards settings for the selected destination:

Fig. 11: The path wildcard window

It is also possible to rename the transcoded clips by leaving out the “/” and optionally also adding a file extension. Here’s an example:

Fig. 12: Path wildcards for transcoding destinations

Multi Destination Transcoding*

Silverstack XT is able to transcode to multiple destination formats at a time. In certain cases (see below), the transcoding of the configurations has to be run sequentially. The transcoding wizard will give you a hint if the transcoding will be run in parallel or sequentially:

Fig. 13 : The info message about parallel or sequential transcoding

In case of sequential transcoding you can open theWildcards for Transcodes panel to get details about the transcoding order.

The following settings can influence the parallel execution of the transcoding job:

• In/Out Points
• Debayer settings
• Decoding resolution

Make sure to set the above settings to the same value when transcoding to two different configurations to avoid sequential transcoding.

Management of Transcoding and Offload Jobs

Silverstack Lab is generally able to transcode and copy at the same time. Transcoding jobs as well as copy jobs run in the background while the app is still fully accessible.

Optionally you can choose to pause transcoding jobs when offloading and while playing back clips. To do so go to the “General” in the Preferences and select the according checkbox “Automatically Pause Transcoding Jobs during Playback and Offload”:

Fig. 14: The “General” tab in the preferences

Transcoding Functionalities Overview for Silverstack and Silverstack XT

The transcoding functionalities of Silverstack have been updated with version 6. Silverstack and Silverstack XT come with a different set of functionalities concerning Transcoding.

• Silverstack 
  • Single destination transcoding
  • One custom transcoding preset
  • Timecode and Clip Name burn in options
  • Watermarking
  • Transcoding resolution up to full HD (1920 x 1080)
  • Stereo mixdown audio channel layout for transcoded clip

• Silverstack XT
  • Multi destination transcoding
  • Many custom transcoding preset
  • Timecode and Clip Name burn in options
  • Watermarking
  • Transcoding resolutions higher than Full HD (1920 x 1080)
  • Stereo mixdown audio channel layout for transcoded clip
  • Transcoding statistics

* Silverstack XT only

**Only available for ProRes and H.264

The post Transcoding in Silverstack and Silverstack XT appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

Overview

The transcoding functionalities of Silverstack have been updated with Silverstack Lab 6. The update contains a faster transcoding engine, an updated user interface, more transcoding options and a lot more (details below).

Silverstack Lab separates the configuration of the transcoding settings from the actual starting of a transcoding job:

• The section “Transcoding Configurations” will explain how to adjust the settings for your transcoding job.
• The section “Starting a Transcoding Job”  will explain how to execute a transcoding job.

Transcoding Configurations

The transcoding settings can be found in the transcoding tab of the right bar. Click the transcoding icon  to access the transcoding tab:

Fig. 1: Configure the transcoding settings in the transcoding tab of the right bar

The upper part of the transcoding tab shows the custom transcoding configurations. The lower part shows the detailed settings for the selected configuration. The settings will be applied and stored to the configurations immediately.

Locking Transcoding Configurations

Fig.2: Locking transcoding configurations

Transcoding configurations can be locked to avoid changes to them by clicking the lock icon on the right side of the “Settings” header bar. Locked configurations will be shown with a white lock icon in the table*.

Transcoding Settings

Audio & Video

Video

• Codec: Select the output codec depending on your requirements. There are different options available (also shown in Fig. 3):
  • H.264 (Quicktime Container)
  • ProRes 4444
  • ProRes 422
  • ProRes 422 (HQ)
  • ProRes 422 (Proxy)
  • DNxHD LB 1080p 36 8-bit
  • DNxHD SQ 1080p 100/85/80 8-bit
  • DNxHD HQ 1080p 145/120/115 8-bit
  • DNxHD HQX 1080p 220/185/175  10-bit
  • DNxHD SQ 720p 100/85/55/45 8-bit
  • DNxHD HQ 720p 145/120/75/60 8-bit
  • DNxHD HQX 720p 220/185/110/90 10-bit

Fig. 3: Available transcoding options

• Size (for H.264 and ProRes): This drop down menu allows you to select the final resolution of the transcoded clips:

Fig. 4: Available frame sizes

• Duration (Limit to In/Out points): By enabling this option Silverstack only transcodes the part of the clip between the in and out points set in the library.

Audio

Tick the checkbox to include audio in your transcoded clips.

• Format:
  • Linear PCM
  • ACC – Good Quality *
  • ACC – High Quality *

• Channel Layout:
  • Stereo Mixdown: The custom audio mix created in the audio panel
  • All Tracks: All available audio tracks (separate tracks, no mute/solo/level taken into account)

Source

Choose from different general debayer options:

• Soft (GPU)
• Default (GPU)
• AHD (CPU)

Choose different decoding options for the source formats:

• ARRIRAW:
  • 1/2 resolution
  • Full resolution
• SONY RAW
  • 1/4 resolution
  • 1/2 resolution
  • Full resolution
• REDCODE RAW
  • 1/8 resolution
  • 1/4 resolution
  • 1/2 resolution
  • Full resolution
• Canon RAW
  • Quality:
    • Full Resolution
    • 1/2 Resolution
    • 1/4 Resolution
  • Debayer Mode:
    • High Speed
    • High Quality
• AVC-Intra / XAVC
  • 1/2 resolution
  • Full resolution

Compositing

• Resizing:
  •  Fitting Strategy:
    • The zoom to fit (Adding black bars/Without black bars) option will adjust the horizontal resolution of the clip to fit in the selected final size.
    • Zoom to fill will affect the vertical resolution of the footage to the final size, cropping the sides.
    • 1 to 1 will zoom the footage to 100% in the center of the image to adjust to the final selected size, cropping everything else.

figure 5: resizing example results

• Grading: 
  • Look Source: Choose how to manage the color data for the clip:
    • As set in Library: enable this setting to include the looks applied to the clip in the Library. For more information on how to apply looks, please check the article The Silverstack Look Library.
    • None: Disables the color processing and transcodes the clips unmodified (as recorded).
    • From file: Reads the clip metadata and applies the color processing described in the embedded looks. In case there is no look embedded, Silverstack applies the default Log to Rec.709 conversion for the specific format.

• Frame lines: Apply frame lines to the transcoded clips and choose among different aspect ratios and appearances.

Overlays

• Burn Ins: Choose from different options to burn in metadata in the transcoded clip:

Fig. 6: Burn in options

Note: The «Custom Text» burn in option (Silverstack Lab only) allows to add metadata wildcards into the custom text field. For instance, it’s possible to display «Scene: [scene value]-[shot value]» as shown in the following figure by writing «Scene: $scene$-$shot$» in the custom text field.

Fig. 6b: custom text wildcards for metadata burn ins

• Burn in Parameters: The following parameters can be adjusted for the burn ins:
  • Margins: A horizontal and vertical margin to position the burn ins in the frame.
  • Font: Sets the font style for the burn ins.
  • Font Size: Sets the font size in pt.
  • Transparency: Sets the transparency level for the burn ins.
  • Text Color: Sets the text color to “White” or “Black”
  • Background: Sets the background to a “Box” shape or adds an “Outline” to the text.

• Image Overlay: Choose an image overlay (.png, .jpg, .tiff) to be burned into the transcoded clips.
  •  Overlay parameters:
    • Size: Sets the size of the image (0 -100 %)
    • Position X: Sets the position in horizontal direction
    • Position Y: Sets the position in vertical direction
    • Transparency: Sets the transparence (0 – 100 %)

Metadata Export

Choose a target application to automatically export a metadata file to transfer detailed clip information to different 3rd party systems.

Choose from the following export tools and formats:

• Adobe Premiere Pro  (.XML)
• AVID Media Composer (.ALE)
• Final Cut Pro 7 (.XML)
• Final Cut Pro X (.FCPXML)
• Pomfort XML Metadata (.XML)

Select the destination tool and click the “Configure…” button to define the detailed settings for the metadata file export. Click the links to the tools above to learn more about the configuration of the metadata exports.

The Transcoding Preview

When the transcoding tab in the right bar is showing Silverstack automatically switches to a transcoding preview to be shown in the playback view:

Fig. 7: The transcoding preview

The transcoding preview displays a preview of the transcoding configurations applied to the currently selected clip.

Starting a Transcoding Job

The «Transcode» button

In order to start transcoding the clips, first select a folder or bin in the Library panel. Then click on Transcode to open the wizard. There you will be able to select the clips you want to transcode. Click on continue to select the destination and transcode settings.

Fig 8: clip selection wizard

Now you are able to select where the transcoded clips will be stored. You can add and remove destinations by using the «+» and «-» buttons. Alternatively, it’s also possible to modify each destination path and path wildcards. You can select from the configurations previously configured in the transcoding configurations tab:

Fig. 9: The transcoding destination step

Click the current configuration to open the list of all available transcoding configurations:

Fig. 10: The transcoding configurations dropdown

When the checkbox “Add to Library” is checked the transcoded clips will automatically be ingested into the Silverstack Lab Library after the transcoding job is done. Transcoding statistics will be available for the clips in the statistics view.

Click “Start Render Job” to start the render job. It can then be traced in the jobs panel.

Path Wildcards for Transcode Destinations

Path Wildcards can be used to customize the transcoding path with available metadata. Click the “Path wildcard” icon in the status bar (see fig. 13) to access the path wildcards settings for the selected destination:

Fig. 11: The path wildcard window

It is also possible to rename the transcoded clips by leaving out the “/” and optionally also adding a file extension. Here’s an example:

Fig. 12: Path wildcards for transcoding destinations

Hint: It is also possible to copy and paste path wildcards like plain text.

Multi Destination Transcoding

Silverstack Lab is able to transcode to multiple destination formats at a time. In certain cases (see below), the transcoding of the configurations has to be run sequentially. The transcoding wizard will give you a hint if the transcoding will be run in parallel or sequentially:

Fig. 13 : The info message about parallel or sequential transcoding

In case of sequential transcoding you can open the “Learn More” panel to get details about the transcoding order.

The following settings can influence the parallel execution of the transcoding job:

• In/Out Points
• Debayer settings
• Decoding resolution

Make sure to set the above settings to the same value when transcoding to two different configurations to avoid sequential transcoding.

Management of Transcoding and Offload Jobs

Silverstack Lab is generally able to transcode and copy at the same time. Transcoding jobs as well as copy jobs run in the background while the app is still fully accessible.

Optionally you can choose to pause transcoding jobs when offloading and while playing back clips. To do so go to the “General” in the Preferences and select the according checkbox “Automatically Pause Transcoding Jobs during Playback and Offload”:

Fig. 14: The “General” tab in the preferences

Transcoding Functionalities Overview for Silverstack Lab

• Multi Destination Transcoding
• Many custom transcoding preset
• All available burn in options
• Watermarking
• Transcoding resolutions higher than Full HD (1920 x 1080)
• Transcoding statistics
• Separate audio channels in transcoded clip
• Transcoding to DNx codecs
• Use of second GPU for transcoding
• Frame lines burn-in for transcoded clips
• Automatic metadata companion file export

*Only available for ProRes and H.264

Keywords: dnx36, transcoding, dnx

The post Transcoding in Silverstack Lab appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

Silverstack allows to export and import project settings to transfer them to new projects or different machines. This can e.g. help to move project settings from established projects to new projects to avoid setting up from scratch. Other use cases involve the transfer of transcoding configurations from Silverstack XT or Lab to new projects or other machines.

Which Settings Can Be Transferred ?

The settings transfer involves certain project based settings as well as global settings. Find the settings that can be transferred below.

Project settings:

• Folder Structure
• Smart Folders
• Transcoding Configurations
• Copy Job Templates

Global settings:

• Table View Presets
• Format Options

Export and Import of Project Settings

To export or import project settings go to the Silverstack Main Menu and select “File > Project Settings > Export… / Import…”:

Fig. 1: Export and Import of Project Settings

You can choose the content to be exported after clicking on “Export…”:

Fig. 2: Export project settings options

Here are the details about the different export options:

Project settings:

• Folder Structure: Transfer the folder structure of your Silverstack library to a new project. All top level folders can be selected for the export.
• Smart Folders: Transfer your custom smart folders to a new project.
• Transcoding Configurations: Transfer your custom transcoding configurations to a new project*
• Copy Job Templates: Transfer your custom copy job templates saved in the offload wizard to a new project.

Global settings:

• Table View Presets: Transfer your table view presets (of the main table of clips and metadata) to a new project.
• Format Options: Transfer the settings of the “Format Options” in the Silverstack preferences to a new project.

Fig. 3: Example of the project settings export wizard including folders and transcoding configurations

Click “Export” to save the .psconfig (project settings configurations) file containing the project settings information to the selected destination.

The export and import settings windows are symmetrical hence you can choose which content to write to the .psconfig file as well as which content to import from a .psconfig file.

Fig. 4: Example of the project settings import window

Setting a Default Template for New Projects

Additionally to the export and import of project settings you can define a .psconfig file that should be used as a template to create new projects.

First export a project settings file as described above and include all the settings the default template for new projects should contain.

Then go to the Silverstack preferences by choosing “Silverstack/Silverstack Lab > Preferences…” in the Main Menu.

In the “General” tab of the preferences you can click “Choose…”  to select the default .psconfig file for new projects:

Fig. 5: Choose the .psconfig file the default project settings for new projects should be loaded from.

When you now create a new project in the toolbar or from the “File” menu (“File > New Project…”) all contents of the selected .psconfig file will be loaded as default for the new project.

Additionally to the manual process of loading the default .psconfig file in the preferences you can copy a .psconfig file named “defaults.psconfig” to the library folder to be taken as the default template:

For Silverstack 6: ~/Library/Application Support/Pomfort/Silverstack6

For Silverstack Lab 6: ~/Library/Application Support/Pomfort/SilverstackLab6

Attention: Please be aware that the .psconfig file in this location will overrule the UI settings.

*Only available for Silverstack XT and Silverstack Lab as the basic version of Silverstack does not support custom transcoding configurations.

The post Transfer of Project Settings appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

LiveGrade Pro comes with support for remote look control of ARRI Alexa cameras. This includes the following ARRI Alexa camera types:

• ARRI Alexa SXT
• ARRI Alexa Mini
• ARRI Alexa 65

With this feature set you can send looks to be applied on the outputs of the camera by using a network connection (LAN or WiFi depending on your setup).

Additionally, it’s possible to get frame grabs from the current live image of the ARRI Alexa camera. This way you can include the graded frame grabs to the Look Reports.

Furthermore, you can use the Alexa’s image source as an image reference in the Image Viewer, allowing the fine tuning of the looks later – even if the camera is not available.

Adding the ARRI Alexa Camera as a Device

In order to exchange look information with LiveGrade Pro, the Alexa camera needs to have a working network connection with the Mac where LiveGrade is running on.

In order to connect LiveGrade to the Alexa you have to enable the “Camera Access Protocol” in the Alexa network menu at “System -> Network”. You can also set a password there to protect access to the camera.

Make sure that you have set the monitor output to “Look File” in the camera’s Color menu, in order to have the look applied to your monitor out.

Once the network setup is finished and the camera access protocol is running, you can add the Alexa from the LiveGrade menu “Device->Add Device…->Add ARRI Camera…” (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Adding an Alexa Camera

After that, a wizard window opens:

Figure 2: Add ARRI Alexa camera wizard

• Choose your ARRI Alexa camera from the list of automatically discovered cameras by clicking on the entry in the “Found Cameras” box
• Alternatively you can enter the IP address or the camera’s serial number based host name (e.g. serial number: 6712 -> host name: alexa6712.local) manually. To do so click the checkbox “Use Custom IP Address” and fill in the information in the text field that appears.
• Enter the password for that camera (if you set any in the network settings of the camera)
• Enter a client name that should be shown in the camera menu (e.g. your name)
• Click on “Add ARRI Camera”

You can enable / disable, if you want to receive frame grabs from this camera by checking the «Enable Framegrab» checkbox.

Working with the Camera in LiveGrade Pro

In the main window of LiveGrade Pro, the ARRI Alexa camera is now displayed in the corresponding grading slot as a device.

On connect, LiveGrade will load the look currently selected in the camera. Furthermore if you change the selected look in the camera, LiveGrade will load the new look automatically.

Once you alter the initial look loaded from the camera the Alexa will show a * next to the look name to indicate that it is changed.

When creating new looks in LiveGrade you can choose if they should be stored to the camera as well.

Getting the Camera’s Image in LiveGrade Pro

If frame grabs are enabled the camera image will be shown as an image source of the slot:

Figure 3: Example of a connected Alexa SXT with Image Source

You can open the Image Viewer to display the current image by double clicking on the frame grab thumbnail in the Image Sources section.

Figure 4: The LiveGrade Pro Image Viewer

In case that you want to display an updated live image, you can perform a frame grab in LiveGrade by clicking on the «Refresh Image» button. After that you will have the latest frame of the live image.

You can generally check if the ARRI Alexa camera is properly connected by going to the Device Manager. A green indicator shows a positive connection status.

How to Store a Frame Grab

You can take framegrabs from the video signal by clicking on the “New Look” button. This takes a new frame from the camera and saves it to the Clip Library with the associated grade for further reference.

Figure 5: record and grab frames

The post In-Camera Grading Support for ARRI Alexa Cameras appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

xnbLiveGrade Pro supports a wide range of devices that interact with the software. As they are of different product types LiveGrade offers different integrations for the different types of devices.

The device types are:

• LUT Boxes
• Monitors
• Cameras
• Camera Extension Modules
• Capture Devices
• Playback Devices
• Grading Panels

LUT Boxes

This type of devices is used for interactive look control of an HD-SDI stream. They usually have an in- and output to route the signal through the box. LiveGrade connects to them to manipulate the look of the image.

BoxIO by Flanders Scientific (FSI)

Connectivity___ Ethernet, Wifi

LUT Size___ Large

Extras___ Frame Grab, Time Code

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

---

Notes___ Two separate signal chains possible, clean loop through, scopes

Best suitable for advanced setups. Control two independent channels in one device. Highly flexible product for a broad range of use cases.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

BoxIO Lite SDI by Flanders Scientific (FSI)

Connectivity___ Ethernet, Wifi

LUT Size___ Large

Extras___ Frame Grab, Time Code

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

---

Notes___ Clean loop through

Best suitable for advanced setups. Control two independent channels in one device. Highly flexible product for a broad range of use cases.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

COLR by Teradek

Connectivity___ Wifi, Ethernet,USB

LUT Size___ Large

Extras___ —

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

---

Notes___ Wireless control

Best suitable for advanced setups that have to be flexible and control color from distance. Highly flexible product for a broad range of use cases.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

COLR Duo by Teradek

Connectivity___ Wifi, Ethernet,USB

LUT Size___ Large

Extras___ —

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ●

---

Notes___ Wireless control, two channels

Best suitable for advanced setups that have to be flexible and control color from distance. Highly flexible product for a broad range of use cases.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

IS-Mini by WoWow Entertainment

Connectivity___ USB

LUT Size___ Medium

Extras___ Time Code

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

---

Notes___ Pyramidal LUT interpolation

Best suitable for more advanced setups. High quality processing for users that need precise color reproduction.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

IS-Mini X by WoWow Entertainment

Connectivity___ USB

LUT Size___ Medium

Extras___ Time Code

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

---

Notes___ 4k with rack, pyramidal LUT interpolation

Best suitable for more advanced setups. High quality processing for users that need precise color reproduction.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

HDLink by Blackmagic Design

Connectivity___ USB

LUT Size___ Small

Extras___ —

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Basic, LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ○ ○

---

Notes___ LiveGrade 4k compatible
Attention: BMD drivers only compatible up to OS X 10.10

Best suitable for basic setups. Delivers solid quality for the according price.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Monitors

This type of devices is used for interactive look control of the image directly on the monitor. The monitors have the processing power of the LUTbox built inside. LiveGrade connects to the monitor to manipulate the look of the image.

DM 250 by Flanders Scientific (FSI)

Connectivity___ Ethernet

LUT Size___ Large

Extras___ Frame Grab, Time Code

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro, LiveGrade Air

Price Range___ ● ● ○

---

Notes___ Clean loop through, scopes

Best suitable for compact viewing setups. No additional LUT box required to control color directly on the monitor.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

DP-V2410/DP-V3010 by Canon

Connectivity___ Ethernet

LUT Size___ Medium

Extras___ Frame Grab

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

---

Notes___ Dual input mode (side-by-side)

Reference monitor for compact, high-quality setups. No additional LUT box required to control color directly on the monitor.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Cameras

This type of devices is used for interactive look control of the output signal of the camera. The cameras have the processing power built inside. LiveGrade connects to the camera to manipulate the look of the camera output image.

ALEXA SXT by ARRI

Connectivity___ Ethernet

LUT Size___ Large

Extras___ Frame Grab, Time Code

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ●

---

Notes___ Look embedded in recorded clips

Best suitable for high-end setups with advanced look workflows. Directly control the look on the camera output through LiveGrade.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

ALEXA Mini by ARRI

Connectivity___ Ethernet, Wifi

LUT Size___ Large

Extras___ Frame Grab, Time Code

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ●

---

Notes___ Look embedded in recorded clips

Best suitable for high-end setups with advanced look workflows. Directly control the look on the camera output through LiveGrade.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

ALEXA 65 by ARRI

Connectivity___ Ethernet

LUT Size___ Large

Extras___ Frame Grab, Time Code

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ●

---

Notes___ Look embedded in recorded clips

Best suitable for high-end setups with advanced look workflows. Directly control the look on the camera output through LiveGrade.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

VariCam 35 / HS / Pure / LT  by Panasonic

Connectivity___ Ethernet

LUT Size___ Small

Extras___ —

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro, LiveGrade Air

Price Range___ ● ● ●

---

Notes___ Wireless control through iPad with LiveGrade Air

Control the look directly in the camera through LiveGrade.

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

F65 by SONY

Connectivity___ Ethernet

LUT Size___ Large (in-camera only)

Extras___ —

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ●

---

Notes___ –

Control the ASC-CDL based look directly in the camera through LiveGrade

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Camera Extension Modules

This type of devices is used as an extension to the camera. LiveGrade can connect to the extension module to interactively control the look of the image on the output signal.

OMOD by OFFHOLLYWOOD

Connectivity___ Wifi

LUT Size___ Large

Extras___ —

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

---

Notes___ Two independent output channels

Best suitable for advanced setups. Option for controlling two independent channels with one device. High-quality product for a broad range of use cases.

Manufacturer Website

Capture Devices

This type of devices is used for capturing signals to store frame grabs and look references in LiveGrade. 

Ultrastudio Series by Blackmagic Design

Connectivity___ Thunderbolt

Frame Grab___ Yes

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Mini Recorder by Blackmagic Design

Connectivity___ Thunderbolt

Frame Grab___ Yes

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ○ ○

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Decklink Cards by Blackmagic Design

Connectivity___ PCIe

Frame Grab___ Yes

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Playback Devices

This type of devices is used to mirror the Image Viewer in LiveGrade to an HD-SDI output for full quality display on a broadcast monitor.

T-Tap by AJA

Connectivity___ Thunderbolt

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

KONA Cards by AJA

Connectivity___ PCIe

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ●

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Io Series by AJA

Connectivity___ Thunderbolt

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ●

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Ultrastudio Series by Blackmagic Design

Connectivity___ Thunderbolt

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Mini Monitor by Blackmagic Design

Connectivity___ Thunderbolt

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ○ ○

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Decklink Cards by Blackmagic Design

Connectivity___ PCIe

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Grading Panels

This type of devices is used to control the grading interface in LiveGrade through a hardware panel. 

Element Series by Tangent Wave

Connectivity___ USB

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Ripple by Tangent Wave

Connectivity___ USB

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ○ ○

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Wave by Tangent Wave

Connectivity___ USB

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

Artist Color by Avid

Connectivity___ USB

Compatibility___ LiveGrade Pro

Price Range___ ● ● ○

In-Depth Knowledge Base Article Manufacturer Website

The post Supported Devices in LiveGrade appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

Pomfort currently develops an update for Silverstack – Silverstack 6.2 . All members of the Pomfort beta program as well as selected customers now have the chance to preview and test the latest beta version of Silverstack 6.2.

What Is New in This Beta of Silverstack ?

The Silverstack 6.2 beta comes with a broad range of new features.

ZEISS Lens Correction with Extended Data from CP.3 XD Lenses :

• Import, Display and Export of Lens Correction Data from ZEISS CP.3 XD lenses *

Improved Management of Copy Jobs:

• Reordering of Scheduled Copy Jobs

New Camera Formats: 

•  Advanced Camera Support: “Canon RAW Light (.CRM)” for Canon C200 Cameras
•  Advanced Camera Support: “KineRAW (.KRW)” for Kinefinity Cameras *

New Productivity Features:

• ProRes Half Res Decoding for Playback
• Easy Copy and Paste of Looks
• Enhanced Movie Slate Import
• Improved Column Selection for Table View Columns
• Renaming of Custom Metadata Fields

Download the latest beta of Silverstack here

The beta is available until the official release. A valid Silverstack license is needed.

We are happy for any feedback! Please send an e-mail to: feedback@pomfort.com

More Info in the KnowledgeBase

You can find more information in our KnowledgeBase – detailed articles cover the following topics:

• ZEISS CP.3 XD Lens Correction:
  • ZEISS CP.3 XD Lens Correction Hardware Setup
  • ZEISS CP.3 XD Lens Correction in Silverstack

System Requirements

Intel Mac with macOS 10.10 or higher.

The post appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

Pomfort currently develops an update for Silverstack Lab – Silverstack Lab 6.2 . All members of the Pomfort beta program as well as selected customers now have the chance to preview and test the latest beta version of Silverstack Lab 6.2.

What Is New in This Beta of Silverstack Lab ?

The Silverstack Lab 6.2 beta comes with a broad range of new features.

ZEISS Lens Correction with Extended Data from CP.3 XD Lenses :

• Import, display and export of lens correction data from ZEISS CP.3 XD lenses

New Transcoding Options:

• Single Clip Transcoding: Transcode multiple clips to one single transcoded clip

Improved Management of Copy Jobs:

• Reordering of Scheduled Copy Jobs

New Camera Formats: 

•  Advanced Camera Support: “Canon RAW Light (.CRM)” for Canon C200 Cameras
•  Advanced Camera Support: “KineRAW (.KRW)” for Kinefinity Cameras

New Productivity Features:

• ProRes Half Res Decoding for Playback
• Easy Copy and Paste of Looks
• Enhanced Movie Slate Import
• Improved Column Selection for Table View Columns
• Renaming of Custom Metadata Fields
• New Audio Tracks Transcoding Option

Download the latest beta of Silverstack Lab here

The beta is available until the official release. A valid Silverstack Lab license is needed.

We are happy for any feedback! Please send an e-mail to: feedback@pomfort.com

More Info in the KnowledgeBase

You can find more information in our KnowledgeBase – detailed articles cover the following topics:

• ZEISS CP.3 XD Lens Correction:
  • ZEISS CP.3 XD Lens Correction Hardware Setup
  • ZEISS CP.3 XD Lens Correction in Silverstack

System Requirements

Intel Mac with macOS 10.10 or higher.

The post appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

Silverstack XT and Silverstack Lab allow to import, display and export dynamic lens correction data from ZEISS CP.3 XD lenses. In particular this involves shading and distortion correction of the recorded image.

Overview

The following steps can be executed in Silverstack:

• Import lens correction data directly from Ambient Master Lockit Plus to consolidate it with the according clips in the library.
• Display and review shading and distortion correction via the ZEISS lens correction panel in Silverstack.
• Export .ZLCF lens correction files to transport lens correction data to consecutive applications such as DaVinci Resolve.

To learn more about the hardware setup please visit the article ZEISS CP.3 XD Lens Correction: Hardware Setup.

Prior to importing lens correction data, clips have been recorded in the camera with the MasterLockit Plus attached to camera and lens.

Import Lens Correction Data from Ambient Master Lockit Plus

The lens correction data saved in the MasterLockit Plus holds a timecode relation to the clips recorded in the camera. The lens correction data be pulled via a network connection from the MasterLockit Plus and then be consolidated with the clips via timecode

1. Offload the clips that have been recorded with lens correction data into the Silverstack Library
2. Open the Import wizard through the “Import” button in the toolbar:

   Fig. 1: Choose MasterLockit Plus (CP.3XD Lens Data) from the Import menu

3. The lens data import wizard opens. Enter the MasterLockit Plus IP Address to the “Master Lockit Address” address field to connect to the Master Lockit Plus. After a successful connection the lens data events have been connected to the clips:

   Fig.2: The lens data import wizard

   Be aware that only clips that do not hold lens correction data will be displayed in the import wizard. Learn how to remove lens correction data in the sections below.

4. Options:
   1. Lens data queried by shooting date: The lens correction data saved in the MasterLockit Plus will be queried for a certain time range around the shooting date of the clips. You can set a wider time frame for the query with this dropdown. By setting the time and date of the camera correctly you can initially make sure that the shooting date and time of the clips matches the timestamp of the lens correction data.
   2. Import Options
      1. Overwrite “Lens” information of clip: The lens info coming from the MasterLockit Plus can be taken over to the “Lens” metadata field in Silverstack.
      2. Sensor width: The sensor width is important for the lens correction to be correctly applied. It is automatically detected by Silverstack based on the Camera manufacturer, the camera model and the sensor type.* In case an automatic detection is not possible (due to the lack of metadata) you have to enter the sensor width manually to be applied to all the clips receiving lens correction data.
5. To take over the lens correction data to the clips click the “Apply Lens Data” button.

Display and Review Shading and Distortion Correction

The clips now hold lens correction data. The “ZEISS Lens Correction” entry in the General Info shows the enabled correction data:

Fig. 3: ZEISS Lens Correction entry in the General Info

Click the pen icon to open the ZEISS lens correction popover:

Fig.4: The ZEISS Lens Correction Popover in the General Info

• The ZEISS Lens Correction Popover in the General info allows for
  • two different “Actions”:
    • removal of lens data (for single and multiple clips)
    • import of ZLCF file (only if no lens correction data is available for the clip)
  • multi edit of shading and distortion correction activation
  • multi edit of sensor width

The ZEISS lens correction panel can be opened from the “Look” section of the main menu:

Fig.5: Open the ZEISS lens correction panel

Fig. 6: The ZEISS lens correction panel

• The ZEISS Lens Correction panel allows for
  • separate activation and deactivation of shading and distortion correction for display in player
  • entry of distortion zoom factor
  • dynamic lens data review per clip

The lens correction data will be displayed in the Silverstack player:

To export the status of the lens correction data into a clips report please activate the “ZEISS Lens Correction” column in the table view:

Fig. 8: The ZEISS lens correction column in the clips table view

Export ZEISS Lens Correction Files

The acquired lens correction data can now be exported per clip for consecutive productions steps. To open the export wizard go to the “Export” button menu in the toolbar and select the “ZEISS Lens Correction Files (ZLCF)” entry from the list:

Fig. 9: Open the ZLCF export wizard

This opens the ZLCF export wizard:

Fig. 10: The ZLCF export wizard

Please be aware that the wizard only shows clips that hold lens correction data. All others will not be shown and are reflected in the status line at the bottom.

Per clip one .zlcf (ZEISS lens correction file) will be exported. After clicking “Export…” the wizard points you to select a folder for the zlcf files to be placed.

*Works currently only for ARRI models (state: Silverstack 6.2 Beta Version)

The post ZEISS CP.3 XD Lens Correction in Silverstack appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

This article describes the hardware setup needed to use the ZEISS lens correction data of CP.3 XD lenses together with the Pomfort applications LiveGrade Pro and Silverstack.

What is Extended Data?

ZEISS eXtended Data is a newly developed lens data technology. It is based on the Cooke /i technology and extends the functionality with additional information about the lens characteristics such as distortion and shading. The characteristics are calculated in real time for every focal point and effective T-stop. The lens data are transferred either directly to camera through 4-pin Cooke /i interface (PL mount) and / or to any supported equipment via external cable.

General Overview

The extended data can be used for:

• On-set preview with LiveGrade Pro
• Extraction of recorded lens data and consolidation with clips in Silverstack XT and Silverstack Lab

Exemplary Setup Using an ARRI Alexa Mini

1. Connect the ZEISS CP.3 XD lens via the metadata cable to the grey ACN port of the MasterLockit Plus
2. Connect the timecode cable from the TC port of the MasterLockit Plus to the TC port of the camera

On-Set Preview of Lens Correction with LiveGrade Pro

LiveGrade Pro is able to receive realtime lens correction information from a ZEISS CP.3 XD lens that is connected to an Ambient MasterLockit Plus.

Which Hardware Components are Involved ?

The following hardware components are involved:

• ZEISS CP.3 XD lens
• Camera
• Ambient MasterLockit Plus
• Cables
  • Lens data cable
  • Power cables
  • Metadata cables
  • Timecode cables
• Apple Mac / Macbook (Pro)
• Blackmagic Design UltraStudio Mini Recorder or similar recording device
  • Thunderbolt cable
  • HDMI or SDI cable
• Software
  • Pomfort LiveGrade Pro

Mode of Operation

The live signal of the camera is connected to hardware capture device that is again connected to LiveGrade Pro to receive a live image in the application. Read the articles HD-SDI Setup for LiveGrade as well as SDI Recording and Frame Grabs for more information about live image capturing in LiveGrade.

LiveGrade Pro connects to the MasterLockit Plus that receives live lens correction data from the ZEISS CP.3 XD lens. The live lens correction data can be applied to the captured live signal from the camera.

Extraction and Display of Recorded Lens Data in Silverstack

Silverstack XT and Silverstack Lab allow to import, display and export lens correction data from ZEISS CP.3 XD lenses.

Which Hardware Components are Involved ?

The following hardware components are involved:

• ZEISS CP.3 XD lens
• Camera
• Ambient MasterLockit Plus
• Cables
  • Lens data cable
  • Power cables
  • Metadata cables
  • Timecode cables
• Apple Mac / Macbook (Pro)
• Software
  • Pomfort Silverstack XT or Silverstack Lab

Mode of Operation

The lens correction data is recorded in the MasterLockit Plus. Clips offloaded in Silverstack hold timecode information that matches the recorded lens data. Silverstack can connect to the MasterLockit Plus via a network connection to receive the recorded lens data and to consolidate it with the clips in the Silverstack database. After that step, the lens correction can be viewed and also exported for consecutive production steps.

Learn more about the process in Silverstack in the article ZEISS CP.3 XD Lens Correction in Silverstack that offers a detailed description of the functionalities.

The post ZEISS CP.3 XD Lens Correction: Hardware Setup appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

LiveGrade Pro is able to receive realtime lens correction information from a ZEISS CP.3 XD lens that is connected to an Ambient MasterLockit Plus.

Please learn more about the general workflow concerning the ZEISS CP.3 XD lenses in the article ZEISS CP.3 XD Lens Correction: Workflow Overview.

Prerequisites:

• MasterLockit Plus is connected to the lens and camera correctly
• MasterLockit Plus is connected via WIFI or Ethernet to the Mac
• Lens is connected and recognized by the MasterLockit Plus.

Adding the MasterLockit Plus as a Device

The MasterLockit Plus has to be added to LiveGrade as a device in the Device Manager to receive live lens correction data from the ZEISS CP.3 XD lens.

To add the MasterLockit Plus as a Device go to the main menu and select “Device > Add Device.. > Add Lockit…”:

Fig. 1: Add the MasterLockit Plus as a device in LiveGrade

After successfully adding the MasterLockitPlus it is shown in the device manager as a device in a slot. You can open the device manager with the “Devices…” button on the left side of the LiveGrade user interface above the slot section:

Fig. 2: The device manager with the added MasterLockit Plus

Adding a Capture Device As Image Input for the Lens Correction

The lens correction preview will be performed on the image viewer in LiveGrade. LiveGrade is capable of capturing camera signals through third party devices. Please learn more about capturing SDI signals in LiveGrade in the article SDI Signal Recording and Frame Grabs.

To add a capture device to LiveGrade click “Add Device…” and choose “Add Capture Device…”:

Fig. 3: Adding the capture device to receive a live image in LiveGrade

After a successfully adding the Ambient MasterLockit Plus and the capture device the device manager should look like this:

Fig.4: The device manager with an active MasterLockitPlus and a capture device

The Lens Correction Controls

Now open the ZEISS lens correction controls from the “Window” menu by selecting “Lens Correction Controls…”:

Fig.5: Open the Lens Correction Controls

The lens correction control window opens:

Fig. 6: The lens correction controls window

From top to bottom it contains the following elements:

• Shading Correction: The checkbox enables/disables the shading correction applied in the image viewer
• Distortion Correction: The checkbox enables/disables the distortion correction applied in the image viewer
  • Distortion Zoom: Sets the zoom level to balance possible visible image borders when applying the distortion correction
• Sensor Information: Depending on the recording camera and format the active sensor width differs. The active sensor width in mm is necessary to correctly calculate the lens correction. Please take a look at the detailed camera specs to learn more about the sensor width for your specific recording format.
• Lens Communication: This section displays the live information that is coming from the lens including TC, Focus, Aperture and detailed shading and distortion information

Here’s how a completed setup including image viewer with live image, lens correction controls window and the device manager looks like:

Fig. 6: Image viewer, lens correction controls and device manager in a completed setup

Shading and distortion correction can independently be enabled or disabled to be applied on the image in the image viewer.

The post ZEISS CP.3 XD Lens Correction in LiveGrade Pro appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

With Combined Clip transcoding, Silverstack Lab can transcode multiple source clips to one single combined transcoded clip. This allows to create combined clips for complete scenes or more.

To learn more about the “standard” Individual Clips transcoding option please refer to the article Transcoding in Silverstack Lab.

Starting a Combined Clip Transcoding Job

Start the Combined Clip transcoding by clicking on the “Transcode” button in the toolbar and choose “Combined Clip (single file with multiple clips)”:

Fig. 1: Start the Combined Clip transcoding

Clips Order Selection in the Source Selection Step

This will open the source selection step:

Fig. 2: The source selection step indicating the order of clips

Please be aware that the order of clips in the source selection step reflects the order of clips in the combined transcoded clip. You can change the order by resorting the table columns.

Click “Continue”.

Combined Clip Transcoding Settings

Choose your transcoding settings:

Fig.3: Choose the transcode settings for the combined clip

Choose your transcoding preset from the transcoding configuration presets that you have created.

Select the transcoding destination path. Click “Start Render Job” to start the transcoding job.

Restrictions That Apply to Combined Clip Transcoding

Please be aware that the following restrictions apply to Combined Clip transcoding (compared to Individual Clips transcoding):

• Only H.264 and ProRes codecs can be used for combined clip transcoding
• Stereo mixdown will automatically be chosen for audio encoding
• The clips can not automatically be ingested into the library
• No automatic metadata export available
• Only one destination at a time
• No path wildcard options

The post Combined Clip Transcoding in Silverstack Lab appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

Scheduled copy and transcoding jobs can be reordered and suspended since Silverstack version 6.2.

Overview

In detail this means:

• Copy and transcoding jobs are visualized in separately colored queues
• Waiting jobs can be reordered with a drag and drop operation
• Running jobs can be suspended to stop them after the next subtask is completed
• Waiting jobs can be suspended to take them out of the queue order of operation

This functionality gives you full flexibility to maintain an optimized task order at any point.

Job Queues

There are three job queues that are visualized in the “Queue” column with different colors:

• Primary copy queue (magenta)
• Secondary copy queue  (green)
• Transcoding queue (blue)

The “Queue” column indicates the order of the completion of jobs. Jobs in a queue will be completed from top to bottom. Running jobs are always on top.

Fig. 1: Running and waiting copy jobs in primary (magenta) and secondary (green) copy queue, with the queue column indicating the order of completion

Active jobs have different statuses that are also indicated by according icons in the “Queue” column:

• Active jobs (upper table view):
  • Running
  • Waiting
  • Will Suspend
  • Suspended

Primary Copy Queue

Copy jobs are generally scheduled into the main primary copy queue where they will be executed from top to bottom. You can set the number of parallel jobs for the primary copy queue in the preferences. Please see the article Multiple Simultaneous Copy Jobs in Silverstack for more information about the general copy preferences.

Secondary Copy Queue

The secondary copy queue holds “Second Run” jobs from Cascading copy jobs. Learn more about Cascading copy jobs in the article Cascading Copy. Enabling a separate queue for “Second Run” copy jobs will automatically schedule them into the secondary copy queue. Learn more about the independent execution of “Second Run” copy jobs in the article Cascading Copy Preferences.

Transcoding Queue

The transcoding queue holds all transcoding jobs and will also be executed from top to bottom. Please see the articles Transcoding in Silverstack and Silverstack XT or Transcoding in Silverstack Lab for more information about transcoding.

Fig. 2: The blue transcoding queue

Terminated Jobs

The active jobs are shown in the table in the upper half of the jobs view while the lower half shows the terminated jobs:

Fig. 3: The upper table view with active jobs and the lower table view showing terminated jobs

Terminated jobs are not anymore a part of a copy queue. They will be automatically moved to the second table view in the lower half of the jobs window.

Terminated jobs have different statuses in the “State” column:

• Terminated jobs (lower table view):
  • Finished Successful
  • Finished with Error
  • Aborted (by system)
  • Cancelled (by user)

Reordering of Jobs

Waiting jobs in a job queue can be reordered with drag and drop. Select a waiting job and pull it over or under any other waiting jobs in the same queue:

Fig. 4: Reordering a copy job inside the queue by dragging it to the intended queue position

Please be aware that:

• Jobs cannot be moved between queues
• Suspended jobs cannot be reordered above waiting jobs. They stay at the bottom of the queue and will not be executed until they are resumed.
• Waiting jobs cannot be reordered above running jobs. Suspend running jobs for the next job in the queue to start.

Suspension of Jobs

Suspending a job will stop the job after the next task (often being the next file) is finished.  This enables the prioritization of an incoming job and avoids loss of copy or transcoding progress.

To suspend a running job select it and click the “Suspend” button in the right tab:

Fig. 5: The suspend and resume buttons in the right bar of the jobs window

To resume the job again click the “Resume” button.

When suspending a job the following state transfers will be made:

• Running -> Will Suspend -> Suspended
• Waiting -> Suspended

When resuming a job it will again be queued with its former priority.

Suspended jobs are still visualized at the bottom of the queue but will not be executed.

Cancelling Jobs

Cancelling a job will immediately stop the job and move it to the terminated jobs at the lower half of the jobs window. The copy progress of the current task/file will be lost, the copy progress of completed tasks/files is preserved. Cancelled jobs can be re-queued and will continue the copy process after the last successful task/file.

The post Reordering and Suspension of Jobs appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

The «Custom Text» burn in option (Silverstack Lab only) allows to add metadata wildcards into the custom text field.

For instance, it’s possible to display «Scene: [scene value]-[shot value]» as shown in the following figure by writing «Scene: $scene$-$shot$» in the custom text field.

Fig.1: Custom text setting in the burn in settings of transcoding configurations

Here are the keys that can be used ($[key]$) and the metadata they produce (“->”):

• $shootingDate$      ->      shooting date in format “y-m-d”
• $clipName$      ->      clip name of source clip
• $projectName$      ->      project name
• $rating$      ->      rating (1 to 5 stars)
• $flagged$      ->      circled/flagged mark
• $caption$      ->      caption metadata field (string)
• $resolution$      ->      resolution of source clip
• $take$      ->      take value
• $comment$      ->      clip comment
• $scene$      ->      scene
• $camera$      ->      camera letter
• $shootingTime$      ->      shooting time in format “h_m_s”
• $codecName$      ->     source codec
• $reelName$      ->      reel name
• $shot$      ->      shot
• $reelNameCharacters$      ->      the first characters of the reelname (example ARRI reelname: “A007R2VJ”; reelNameCharacters: “A007”)
• $label$      ->      label name set in User Info tab

The post Custom Burn In Wildcard Keys for Silverstack Lab appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

Linear (or Longitudinal) timecode (LTC) is an encoding of SMPTE timecode data in an audio signal.

The process of feeding LTC into the audio channel of a camera from external sources (such as timecode devices), is often used for cameras that either cannot handle external TC sync and/or do not provide proper timecode to the recorded clips. It offers the possibility to include such cameras in a workflow that requires synchronous timecode.

The timecode data existing in internal audio tracks of video clips can be extracted in Silverstack and Silverstack Lab to be applied to the metadata of the video clip. This enables subsequent processes that leverage timecode, such as e.g. providing detailed clip metadata for editing, transcoding clips with embedded timecode metadata, creating detailed clip reports or automatic audio sync based on timecode.

How to Extract LTC and Apply it to Clips

To extract LTC in Silverstack first make sure to ingest all clips with LTC into the Silverstack library.

Choose the bin or folder containing the LTC clips and from the “Media” button menu in the toolbar choose “Extract LTC”:

Fig. 1: Extract LTC in the “Media” menu

A wizard window opens that immediately extracts LTC for all selected clips:

Fig.2: The LTC wizard finished the extraction of LTC for all selected clips

The following information is visible to the user in the wizard:

• Selected clip and audio information
• Original Clip TC
• Extraction status with channel information
• Extracted LTC and fps of LTC info

Silverstack attempts to read the LTC at the beginning of a clip. If no LTC is found the application iterates into the clip’s timespan in several steps searching for an LTC in the whole clip. This also indicates that an LTC only has to exist for the beginning of a clip to be read out properly.

By checking the “Mute LTC Channels” checkbox you can make sure that after applying the LTC timecode to the clips the channels with LTC will become muted in Silverstack.

Click “Apply TC” to replace the Clip TC with the extracted LTC.

After taking over the extracted LTC to the clips each clips will have the regular “TC Start” and “TC End” in the General Info metadata on the right and in the table view:

Fig. 3: The extracted LTC now is handled as the regular Clip TC in the Silverstack library

Now the timecode can be used for all subsequent task that involve the need of timecode for clips like e.g.  transcoding or automatic audio sync based on timecode.
. Learn more about it in the article How to Automatically Sync Audio based on Timecode in Silverstack Lab.

Error Cases and Troubleshooting when Extracting LTC

When extracting LTC from video clips there are different possible error cases that are displayed in the LTC extraction wizard:

Fig. 4: The LTC extraction wizard with error messages

The “Extraction Status” column gives you insights about the following error cases:

• “No LTC track found”:  No LTC track was found for the clip. Check the clips audio in the audio tab of the “Audio&Color” panel.
• “Type mismatch”: The fps of the LTC do not fit the LTC of the clip and the clip TC can therefore not be calculated correctly. This could especially become a problem with certain DSLR camera types that display 24fps as user selection in the menu but record in 23.976fps. Make sure clip TC and LTC match for a proper extraction.
• “Clip offline”: Clip is offline. Bring clips online to extract LTC.
• “Extraction error”: An unknown extraction error occurred.
• “Clip has no audio”: The clip has no audio.  Check the clips audio in the audio tab of the “Audio&Color” panel.

Please be aware that LTC in the audio track does usually not survive compressed codecs such as e.g. MP3.

As the drop flag only affects the way of counting timecode and not its actual speed it is possible to apply drop-frame LTC on non-drop clips and vice versa.

As the bounds of an image frame are not necessarily the bounds of an LTC-audio frame, an error of up to a half frame can accumulate when synchronizing audio to LTC.

The post Extracting LTC from Internal Audio in Silverstack and Silverstack Lab appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

Silverstack allows to crop clips to a custom aspect ratio. Cropping is non-destructive as long a crop setting is not used for transcoding.

Cropping can be set via the “Crop” popover in the General Info tab on the right side of the main window. Learn more about the right sidebar in the article The Information Panel.

Crop Clips to a Custom Aspect Ratio

Go to the “General Info” Tab and scroll down to the “Processing” section where you can find the “Crop” entry.

Fig. 1: Crop in the Processing section

Click the little grey button with the pencil to open the popover:

Fig. 2: The Crop popover in the General Info

Enter a custom aspect ratio into the combo box or select one from the list of presets.

The “Source Resolution” and “Resulting Resolution” give you information about the original and the resulting image resolution:

• “Source Resolution”: Native resolution of the clip as also displayed in the General Info under “Format -> Resolution”
• “Resulting Resolution”: The cropped and/or desqueezed resolution. The factor relevant for the calculation of the Resulting Resolution are displayed below (e.g. “Desqueeze (2.0) and Crop”)

Please be aware that the decoding resolutions of the player do not affect the calculations of resolutions in the “Crop” popover

Click “Apply” to crop the current image to the set aspect ratio. The image in the player is now displayed cropped to the factor set in the crop aspect ratio box.

Apply Crop to Multiple Clips

To apply a crop to two or more clips select multiple clips from the table view and open the “Crop” popover:

Fig. 3: Multi edit for crop

The number of altered clips is displayed in the popover. Click “Apply” to apply the set crop factor to all selected clips.

Tags: crop, multi edit, multiedit, aspect ratio

The post Crop Clips appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

In the Pomfort Account you can manage your licenses online. Review the license status of all licenses purchased under a specific e-mail address and easily track e.g. license expiration dates, renewal dates or the current activation status of your yearly subscriptions or temporary licenses. 

This article will help with the following topics

• How can I create the personal login to access my Pomfort Account?
• Which information can I see in my account?
• Using a custom License Location / Hostname
• Emergency License for Subscribers
• Troubleshooting

How Can I Create the Personal Login to Access my Pomfort Account?

Purchasing a license for Silverstack or LiveGrade qualifies you to create your personal Pomfort Account. It is not automatically created after the purchase but requires only a few manual steps:

1. Go to https://pomfort.com and click the account sign in the upper right corner to access the Pomfort Account login page.
   You can access the login page also directly through https://account.pomfort.com
2. Click “Create New Account”
3. Insert the email address your license(es) has/have been purchased with and enter a password.
4. After sending the form you will receive an email with an activation link
5. Activate the account through the link and log in on https://account.pomfort.com with your credentials.

To change your password click “Reset Password” on the login page and fill in your e-mail address in the following page. After submission you will receive a link to create a new password for your account.

Which Information Can I See in my Account?

The core of the Pomfort Account is the “User Licenses Overview”.

It is separated in three sections that hold different types of licenses:

• Subscriptions: This section shows all your subscription licenses.
• Project Licenses: This section shows all your project licenses (e.g. 14-days or 1-month licenses)
• Other Licenses: All other licenses that do not fall under the above are listed here.

The “User License Overview” gives you a comprehensive overview by showing a unique license card for each of your licenses. Each license card contains detailed information about the license status.

For subscription licenses this is in detail:

• Subscription Status: Shows whether your subscription is
  • Running
  • Cancelled
  • Expired
• Activation Status: Gives feedback about the activation of the license key in an application and can display
  • Active: The license is activated on a machine.
  • Inactive: The license is not active on a machine and can be activated for the product.
• License Key is the unique key that can be used to activate your product
• License Location / Hostname: Identifier for your machine that can be sent through the License Manager of the applications (see section License Location / Hostname )
• Machine Hardware ID: Each license can only be activated on one machine. The hardware ID is transmitted to the license server on activation. This can help to identify the active machine for the user.
• Subscription Renewal Date: The date the subscription will renew for the next yearly period.
• Manage Subscription Link: This link brings you to the manage subscription page in the Pomfort online store to show the billing history, edit subscription details such as payment method or address, or cancel your subscription.

For Project Licenses there are only small differences. Here’s an example:

Instead of the renewal date for subscriptions, project licenses show an expiry date after first activation.

•  License Status: Show whether your license is
  • Not in Use: License has not yet been activated.
  • [Empty]: No status is shown as soon as the license has been activated.

Emergency Licenses for Subscribers

We’ve experienced that customers sometimes need a functioning license immediately, but cannot access their regular license due to various reasons.

To cope with such situations and to bypass possible extended solving times due to time zone differences, subscribers are now eligible for creating a personal emergency license.

How to Issue an Emergency License

Click the  link at the bottom of the license card to reach the license troubleshoot page:

On this page you find detailed steps to solve the license issue. If that should not be possible an emergency license can be created by clicking on the “Issue Emergency License…” button.

The following restrictions apply to emergency licenses:

• Only subscribers can issue emergency licenses
• Limited number per subscription period
• Valid for 5 consecutive days from moment of issue

Using a Custom License Location / Hostname

Since Silverstack and Silverstack Lab 6.3.3 and LiveGrade 3.9.3, a custom license location (host name) can be transmitted with the activation of a license. This host name will be shown on the license card in your Pomfort Account in the “IN USE ON” section and can help to identify the machine a license is active on with a descriptive name.

When activating a license key simply fill in your preferred host name in the “License Location” text field:

Additionally the hostname can be altered for all installed licenses by clicking the “Edit Location..” button and filling in a new preferred host name:

After setting the license location in the application you can refresh your browser window with the Pomfort Account to see the license location name appear in the license card of the activated licenses.

Troubleshooting

This section holds an FAQ on the Pomfort Account and possible common problems that might occur.

Why don’t I see my Licenses?

In case you logged into your account and do not see the expected license(es) please verify if the following is true:

• You have bought the licenses with the same e-mail address the Pomfort Account is registered to. Only licenses bought with this e-mail address are shown.
• The expiration date of the license is no longer than 2 months in the past. Licenses that expired more than 2 months ago are automatically removed from the license overview.
• You received a proper license mail for your purchase.

If all of the above is true please contact sales@pomfort.com .

I bought my licenses under different email addresses but want to see them in one Account ?

It is possible to manually merge licenses that have been bought with different email addresses to one address and therefore one Pomfort Account login. Please contact sales@pomfort.com .

The post Pomfort Account: Online License Management appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

Each LiveGrade Pro license key can be activated on one computer at a time. If an error message appears when you try to activate your license on a new computer please check if the license has been properly deactivated from the original computer.

You can do this check by logging into your Pomfort Account. The license status needs to be shown as “Inactive” for you to activate the license on another computer. If this is not the case, please deactivate your license from the computer that it’s shown as activated on.

Find more information about the Pomfort Account here.

The post Why Does LiveGrade Pro Tell me My License Is Already Activated ? appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

Pomfort currently develops an update for LiveGrade Pro 4.1 . All members of the Pomfort beta program as well as selected customers now have the chance to preview and test the latest beta version of LiveGrade Pro 4.1.

What Is New in This Beta of LiveGrade Pro?

LiveGrade Pro 4.1 Beta currently comes with the following improvements:

• Additional metadata sources for ARRI, Panasonic, and Sony cameras:
  • Read ancillary metadata from SDI signals connected to the BoxIO via network
  • Read ancillary metadata from SDI signals connected to the IS-miniX
  • Read metadata from connected Alexa Mini and Amira cameras via CAP
  • Read metadata from connected RED cameras via RCP
• Added ACES IDTs for RED cameras (log3G10)
• Auto-refresh framegrab feature for BoxIO
• Export only the still image of a shot

Download the latest beta of LiveGrade Pro here

The beta is available until the official release. Beta versions are not suitable for productions. A valid LiveGrade Pro license is required.

We are happy for any feedback! Please send an e-mail to: support@pomfort.com

System Requirements: Intel Mac with macOS 10.12 or newer

The post appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.

Since Silverstack 6.4 file resources (all registered file copies and the source) have a verification state that is displayed in the “File” tab of the right bar.

The verification state helps the user to identify the current verification status of the file resource of a clip. This is especially necessary with the possibility to copy files first and verify them later in a separate job: With verification states it is explicitly identifiable if the resource has been verified.

3 Verification States

A file resource can have 3 different verification states:

•     Verified (green)
•     Defect (red)
•     Not Verified (grey)

Here’s more details about the 3 states and what they mean:

• Verified: The hash of the destination file matches the hash created during the initial copy of the file. For source (source file resources) a green verified state means that they passed “Source Verification” (if enabled), which means a second read and hash check of the source and comparison to the the initially created hash.
• Defect: The file resource has a different hash than the one created during the initial copy. This can be identified by any type of verification Silverstack performs (e.g. as part of a copy job or with a separate verify job).
• Not Verified: The file resource has not been verified. Silverstack did not attempt to do a verification due to settings of the user.  This can be the case e.g. for the source file resource when “Source Verification” has been disabled, or for copy destinations when choosing to copy without verification (which we do not recommend).

You can learn more about how the Silverstack copy process works in the following article:

• How does the copy process in Silverstack work?
• The Copy and Verification Process in Silverstack

Verification States in the File Tab

The file resources in the file tab show the verification state per resource and as a summary for the clip:

Fig. 1: The file tab with verification indicators

We can see that the clip has 3 file resources:

• Source: Verified
• Backup 1: Verified
• Backup 2: Not Verified

The summary about the clip tells us that the verification is incomplete because at least 1 file resource is not verified. We will take a closer look at this behavior in the next section.

Escalation of Verification States

Fig. 2: Tracing the indicators from the bin to the file resource in the file tab

To make the user aware of the verification state of all clips resources already on a bin level, the verification state is escalated from the file resource to the library outline:

As multiple file resources can belong to a clips, a clip is inside a bin, and bins can be grouped in folders that can be ordered in the hierarchy inside the Library outline the following escalation is performed:

• File Resource verification state
  • escalates to…
• Clip verification state
  • escalates to…
• Bin verification state
  • escalates to…
• Folder verification state
  • escalates to…
• Library verification state

There’s a clear hierarchy of severity of states that overrule and therefore define the state of the level above:

• Defect
  • overrules…
• Not Verified
  • overrules…
• Verified

Understanding both cascades will help you already identify folders and bins containing problematic clips. Using the verification state column (see fig. 2) you can trace the problem down from the bin to the file resource that might be defect or not verified.

Folders only show the verification state when collapsed to avoid confusion with containing states.

Running Jobs for Bins

Due to their nature, the verification state icons on bin level do not necessarily give meaningful feedback while copy jobs are running for the bin (as running copy jobs naturally lead to a change of the verification state). This is the case because new file resources are registered and verification processes are on the run.

To address this a “Running Jobs” indicator has been introduced. Installed in the library on bin level, it shows in form of a little progress bar and tells the user that this bin currently has jobs running in the background:

Fig. 3: The Running Jobs indicator in the library outline

Furthermore, the “running jobs” indicator for bins also brings other benefits such as e.g. already seeing on bin level if no job is running anymore for a bin and a report can be created with a steady state of the library.

Migration

Please be aware that library versions of Silverstack prior to the 6.4 update do not include information about verification states. Therefore a migration to 6.4 will place verification states based on the existing job information. You can verify resources based on the existing hash information afterwards at any time.

Also PSLAs (Pomfort Silverstack Library Archives) exported with 6.3 and earlier do not include information about jobs or verification states. Opened with 6.4 or later all file resources will receive an “unverified” state.

The post Verification States (for File Resources, Clips and Bins) appeared first on Pomfort Knowledge Base.