File Entities - Double Entries?

Flow Production Tracking
1

So I’m operating on a couple presumptions that could be incorrect, but here they are (I’m using an aws cloud site):

  • Uploading an image sequence or movie file will generate a transcoded version(1080 mp4 file) of that media
  • The reason its transcoded to 1080 even if it’s a larger res is to save space on the server.

So what I’m seeing is that when I upload media, Shotgrid creates two entries entries as File Entities. The File Entities are have a Link field that points to the Version. I’m wondering why the two versions. The transcoded version is pretty simple to identify because a number code is prefixed to the name. But there there this second file which “appears” to be a full resolution movie version of what you uploaded. So I guess I’m wondering:

  • Why two versions?
  • Is this full res file taking up space on the cloud? If so, what purpose does it serve, since it’s not something easily accessed from the Versions page (loading a version thumbnail in RV loads the transcoded version)?

Here’s what I tested with the same results each time:

  • Image Sequence EXR 4k Uploaded via RV Submit Tool
  • Image Sequence EXR 4k Uploaded via SG Create
  • MOV file 4k Uploaded via SG Create

When an Image Sequence is uploaded from Create or RV the tools seem to first output a .MOV file that is the full image res but in movie form. Then that movie is in turn transcoded to the 1080 mp4.

I’f I click on any of the .MOV file entities, the web browser will download them locally from the site and then loading them in RV I can indeed see they are 4K movies. Maybe someone can explain things for me please. :slight_smile:

See images below:

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image1456×767 84.1 KB

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image1855×1027 271 KB

Thanks!

Christopher Lexington

2

Hi @clexington ,

Unfortunately I don’t really have a reliant answer to this, but I assume (guess) the following:
The transcode may not be happening to save space on the cloud server, but rather to improve the user experience when viewing the a Version via the Web-Player on the SG-site or RV in Streaming mode. Having the full-resolution file still available will allow you to access the full-res data if needed.

3

Yes, I get that controlling the transcoding might place it in a form that better suits streaming. But then why all the options for pointing to the original file locally? Every version has a “path to movie” option to point to a local or network (but not cloud) drive. Why bother saving the movie file to the aws server? Sure I “could” download it if I lost it. But it’s not even an option to eable the capability at all…it’s mandatory as far as I can tell. It does seem like it could weigh heavy on the cloud space though. Shotgrid supports transcoding files up to 5 GB. With 4K and higher resolutions, I’m just surprised that those are being kept on the cloud in the first place. There’s really no way to interact with those files except to download them. So in practice between Shotgrid and the customer studio, 3 versions of the file could be being saved…One transcoded for streaming on AWS, one of the original file on the customer network and another of the original file on AWS. Am I the only person who thinks that’s strange? :slight_smile: