Prerequisites #
Before you read this doc you should have a look at The Vidiot folder structure mind map. You should also have a look at the How to share RAW video with a remote editor doc.
What is the FSA? #
What the F is the folder scanning app? This is an addon that allows you to scan customer edited video folders for .mp4 files. It is only useful if you are giving customers an edited video. It is a tool that allows system admins to scan the customer’s ‘edited-video’ folder and count .mp4 files. This allows you to find any errors that may exist before sending out the ‘Video is ready’ email.
An Example #
Anyone can edit videos if you are giving edited videos. You could have someone on Mars edit the videos for you if there was an internet connect on Mars. In any scenario you do not want to have to look in every customer’s edited video folder to make sure there is a video in there. We are human and we make mistakes. Sometimes videos do not get rendered into the correct folder. Once we have dragged and dropped all of the edited videos into the customer edited-video folders we can use the Folder Scanning App to scan the edited-video folders for .mp4 files. The app will count the number of files it finds in each customer edited-video folder and update the database for each customer. You can find the results of the scan in the admin area with in the metadata column for each customer. You can also find the results under metadata within the folder scanning app (FSA).
If you give each customer 1 edited video of their skydive and after running the FSA you see a customer with 0 or 2 files in their edited folders you know that something went wrong somewhere. You can now fix the problem before sending the customer the ‘Video is ready email’.
The editor folder hierarchy Vs. the customer folder hierarchy #
The editor folder may only be useful to you if you are giving an edited video and you are not sharing RAW video with you customers. Since the folder structure path is exactly the same under the ‘editor’ and ‘customer’ folders you can share just the empty ‘editor’ folders with an editor rather than having to share the full ‘customer’ folders (the customer folder contains photos, thumbs, teasers and other folders unnecessary for editors). Once the editor has rendered the edited videos in the correct folders and shared it with you, you can simply drag and drop the folder structure from the ‘editor’ folder into the ‘customer’ folder and the edited videos will be added to the correct customer folder and autmatically uploaded.
customer\CUSTOMER-NAME\shared-folder\edited-video
editor\CUSTOMER-NAME\shared-folder\edited-video
How to install the FSA #
You can install the folder scanning app by downloading the files and copying the ‘fsa’ folder into the root ‘vidiot’ folder. For example, copy the ‘fsa’ folder into:
htdocs/vidiot/
Stand alone installation #
The folder scanning app can also be installed remotely, (at your house for example), if you download and backup all of your customer media there. You do not need to have the entire Vidiot program installed. However, you will need XAMPP installed and your database connection credentials. Simply download the FSA files and create a ‘vidiot’ folder with the XAMPP ‘htdocs’ folder. Copy the ‘fsa’ folder into the ‘vidiot’ folder.
htdocs\vidiot\fsa
You will also need to by syncing (with Insync) the edited videos to your remote computer. The fsa is going to count the files locally. Make sure you are syncing the edited file to the same location as the ‘fsa’ within a folder named exactly ‘storage’. This will be the base Insync folder. The FSA is looking for a folder called ‘storage’ in the same directory as the ‘fsa’ folder.
htdocs\vidiot\storage
Using the FSA as a stand alone app remotely is useful if you want to work from home and/or your dropzone has slow internet. For example, your dropzone has really slow internet and you do not want to wait for all of the edited videos to download to your dropzone server to count them. Since you can install Insync at home, you can simply retrieve the edited videos from your editor, do a file count, and drag and drop the edited videos into the customer folder at home. The edited videos never need to reside on your dropzone’s server. Just make sure to backup all customer files including edited videos on a separate backup drive.
