Encode Workflow Operation Handler

Parallel FFmpeg encoding

Description

The encode workflow operation can be used to encode media files to different formats using FFmpeg.

Its functionality is similar to the compose workflow operation but can utilize the parallel encoding capabilities of FFmpeg. This has the advantage that the source file needs to be read only once for several encodings, reducing the encoding time quite a lot. Additionally, this will let FFmpeg make better use of multiple CPU cores.

Parameter Table

configuration keys	example	description
source-flavor	presenter/work	Which media should be encoded
target-flavor	presenter/delivery	Specifies the flavor of the new media
source-tags	sometag	Tags of media to encode
target-tags	sometag	Specifies the tags of the new media
encoding-profile	webm-hd	Specifies the encoding profile to use

As explained in the "Encoding Profile" section, every media file created by an encode operation has its own named suffix. The suffix name is defined in the encode profile definition. It will be added as a tag to the corresponding track in the media package. This is different from the target-tags workflow operation parameter, which will cause the specified tag list to be added to every media file created by the operation.

For instance, let us take the example operation and encoding profile defined in this documentation. After a successful run of the operation, the media package will contain four new tracks: the first one containing the new tags engage-download, engage-streaming and low-quality; the second one containing the new tags engage-download, engage-streaming and medium-quality; etc.

Operation Example

<operation
  id="encode"
  fail-on-error="true"
  exception-handler-workflow="partial-error"
  description="encoding media files">
    <configurations>
    <configuration key="source-flavor">*/trimmed</configuration>
    <configuration key="target-flavor">*/delivery</configuration>
    <configuration key="target-tags">engage-download,engage-streaming</configuration>
    <configuration key="encoding-profile">parallel.http</configuration>
  </configurations>
</operation>

Encoding Profile Example

Unlike a regular compose operation, this operation can generate more than one output file and, therefore, more than one media package track elements. In order to distinguish these tracks, the encoding profile syntax for this operation allows different named suffix parameters in the form of <profile_name>.suffix.<suffix_name> = <suffix_value>.

Because file names are irrelevant for the workflow operations, each suffix name is added as a tag to the corresponding media package element. For instance, if a media file with a filename of myfile.ext is processed with the encoding profile in the example below, the first output file will be myfile-low.mp4 and the resulting media package element will contain a tag with the value low-quality; the second output file will be myfile-medium.mp4 and the resulting media package element will contain a tag with the value medium-quality; and so on.

# Distribution format definition for low quality presenter download
profile.parallel.http.name = parallel video encoding
profile.parallel.http.input = visual
profile.parallel.http.output = visual
profile.parallel.http.suffix.low-quality = -low.mp4
profile.parallel.http.suffix.medium-quality = -medium.mp4
profile.parallel.http.suffix.high-quality = -high.mp4
profile.parallel.http.suffix.hd-quality = -hd.mp4
profile.parallel.http.ffmpeg.command = -i #{in.video.path} \
  -c:v libx264 -filter:v yadif,scale=-2:288 -preset slower -crf 28 -r 25 -profile:v baseline -tune film -movflags faststart \
  -c:a aac -ar 22050 -ac 1 -ab 32k #{out.dir}/#{out.name}#{out.suffix.low-quality} \
  -c:v libx264 -filter:v yadif,scale=-2:360 -preset slower -crf 25 -r 25 -profile:v baseline -tune film -movflags faststart \
  -c:a aac -ar 22050 -ac 1 -ab 48k #{out.dir}/#{out.name}#{out.suffix.medium-quality} \
  -c:v libx264 -filter:v yadif,scale=-2:576 -preset medium -crf 23 -r 25 -pix_fmt yuv420p -tune film  -movflags faststart \
  -c:a aac -ar 44100 -ab 96k #{out.dir}/#{out.name}#{out.suffix.high-quality} \
  -c:v libx264 -filter:v yadif,scale=-2:720 -preset medium -crf 23 -r 25 -pix_fmt yuv420p -tune film  -movflags faststart \
  -c:a aac -ar 44100 -ab 96k #{out.dir}/#{out.name}#{out.suffix.hd-quality}