Sectioned Media Management

Very large canvases typically use sectioned (carved) media, so that the bandwidth per media server is optimised. In Actor, sectioned media needs to be ingested with section metadata, so that each set of sectioned frames retains identity and location (position) within the original media resolution.

A series of folders for the sections will typically have a common root name, as will the stem name of the frames they contain, but prior to ingest, each section-named subfolder also requires a sidecar.json file containing destination tags and positional properties.

{

"metadata":{

"sectionOriginX": "8192",

"sectionOriginY": "2160"

"tags": [

"section_4"

]

}

This will ensure that Asset Management can identify the sections, their respective distribution locations, and relative positional (origin) properties. Frame size is gathered on ingest from the native frame metadata.

The tag identifying the media section each Actor requires, is used by the server that is managing asset ingestion (see Configure Asset Logistics for Remote Servers) to push the respective media sections to the designated section Actor servers.

The result in the Asset Management panel will be a parent group of assets, the children assets of which are all the sections. When the group (‘the movie’) is added to the timeline, each Actor recognises the name of ‘the movie’ and plays the section of that name that it has been given. An asset group ingested in this way will not split as if it were many things when added to a timeline, it is regarded as a single entity for the user.

Together, this will ensure all sections can be re-assembled, arranged and played back correctly and precisely.

Page edited [d/m/y]: 19/01/2024