Edit video before enconding

[Francois]

Hi,

we need to add slates to every video (from animatics to final renderings) on some of our projects. The first frame of every video is left blank intentionally. The slate would contains various data such as the project name, the episode number, the sequence name, the shot name, a thumbnail, etc. Here is an exemple of what this could look like:

As such a process is really cumbersome, I would like to make it automatic. So here is what I would like to happen : when uploading a version on a given Ftrack project, the file would be "intercepted" before the encoding job starts.  A frame corresponding to the slate would be created and added to the vidéo, replacing the first frame. The encoding job would then start normally.

Do you know if such a thing can be done with the API? Would this require us to run a Ftrack instance on our own server, or would this be feasible on an hosted instance?

[Mattias Lagergren]

Would the slate be added when the users are uploading from the Web UI? In that case it gets more tricky.

[Francois]

Yes, I would like the slate to be added when uploading from the Web UI. I would need it to be possible when publishing from a Ftrack plugin too.

[Mattias Lagergren]

Got you, for the web uploads there is no really good solution for this at the moment - not for local installations or cloud hosted. For submits happening from other places it is of course possible to do your own encoding, add a slate, etc.

This is a good idea and both having a built in slate support, but also being able to hook in and override such things via the API would be nice to have. I will add a feature request for this.

[Francois]

Understood. Thank you for the feature request.