Is there a way to control how much compression is used on uploaded media? We have been finding the default compression used for animations is really heavy and is making hard for clients to comment and review because there is so much artifacts and color shifts from the compression.
We have heard from a few clients that they might like the ability to have a few controls within Shotgun that they can set to give them optimal video quality for their review process (which can vary widely from client to client), while still having the media load quickly and efficiently. If you would like to make a request for this, it can be done on our Roadmap page under Submit Idea.
I would think this is a pretty easy thing to implement as a UI setting per project/site or what have you? Not to say crucial for doing proper work with SG as a review tool. The current default compression is really nasty which means we have to download dailies which in turn kinda kills the whole point of having reviews in SG…watching high bitrate media offline and then going back to SG to annotate is not a very nice workflow.
I believe this have been brought up several times over the last couple of years. Please make it happen.
Thanks for the point of view here. As we are building out Create, this one was of the things we are trying to keep in mind. For reviews (or media playback in general), if the user has access to the media stored on disk Create has the ability to switch through the representations available. We realize Create isn’t for everyone yet, but if it works in your workflow, maybe this is something to check out.
Basically in the timeline there is an indication of either the file extension of the frames, the movie or web that you can toggle between. This is telling Create to try and load the media either from the path_to_frames, path_to_movie or look at the web-transcoded version and stream it. You can also set a preference to try and load one of those first. (i.e. “always try to load the frames first”)
If you check this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNSaq1DGgO0 in the timeline there’s a “mov” on the left hand side, that indicates it’s pulling the path_to_movie for playback.
Let us know if you have any questions or if you have any other feedback! Would love to hear from you!
For us it’s a problem with reviewing media through the client review site. There is so much compression put on the animations we upload it’s impossible for the clients to make decisions on the texture, color and lighting. We are also having to send out the animations separately for review and ask clients to then respond to the highly compressed version on the client review site so all the comments can remain in shotgun.
The Client Review Site does have an option for the client to download the original source media of each Version. You just have to be sure to enable downloads when you share the playlist. This could help resolve the compression issues they may be having.
Here is a little more information on the CRS for Clients.
It does work if everyone has access to the same local media server. So if the media path is on a local NAS, and the users machine can reach that location, it can use that data vs streaming it from Shotgun.
Shotgun Create is a native desktop view of Shotgun, it’s been designed around the iteration cycle between Artists and Reviewers with the goal of making it an easy out of the box solution.
Looks like you snuck in a reply that I missed! Sorry 'bout that.
Trying out some SG Create right now. So how do I know what path is needed for the hires video? And does the dailie need to be submitted in a specific way or with a specific tool or…?
Hi all. I’m the Shotgun PM now responsible for our image transcoding capabilities.
To be brief - I agree that they have languished. We’re now in planning stages in engineering for enabling better content preview.
For the hires video, if submitted through Create it looks at the path of the frames submitted and adds that to the path_to_frames. (If another user has access to that path, they’ll be able to switch to the frames.)
If you submit it through your own tool it should just be the qualified path that you add to the path_to_frames so if it’s: /mnt/the_project/some_folder/ you would add this to the field.
At runtime, in Create, when consuming a path, we loop over the path-prefixes to see if one matches the beginning of path-to-frames. So, for instance, if the path-to-frames is “/mnt/HSM/shot1/version3.mov”, the linux prefix will be found and then replaced by the current platform’s prefix so the path will become:
On Linux : /mnt/HSM/shot1/version3.mov
On Windows : s:\some\where\HSM/shot1/version3.mov
On Mac : /Volumes/HSM/shot1/version3.mov
Then if the path resolves, you should see that media-rep in the media-rep popup. The same should work on path_to_movie as well.