User Guide for Cisco MXE 3500 Release 3.0

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Book Contents

- Introduction to Cisco MXE 3500
- Job Submission

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User Guide for Cisco MXE 3500 Release 3.0

Chapter Title

Folder Attendant XML Reference

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Chapter: Folder Attendant XML Reference

Reference XML Configuration File
Reference XML Application Configuration File
Submitting Media and XML Files

Folder Attendant XML Reference

Revised: March 12, 2010

This section includes the following topics:

•Reference XML Configuration File

•Reference XML Application Configuration File

•Submitting Media and XML Files

Reference XML Configuration File

The Folder Attendant Configuration file (faConfig.xml) defines the directory watch configuration.

This file can be found at
C:/Program Files/Cisco/Media Experience Engine/Folder Attendant/bin/faConfg.xml.

This section describes the following tags:

•Watch Tags

•Job Tags

General Tags


Tag	Description
agilityHost	Host name of platform (ECS). Port defaults to 3501.
monitor-window	Specifies whether preprocessed and encoded images should be displayed in a monitor window. Possible choices are: •On •Off

Directory Tags

The file may contain one or more <directory> tags.


Tag	Description
enabled	Possible choices: •true, if directory is enabled for monitoring. •false, if not.
id	Unique identifier for directory (integer > 0)
path	Directory path to watch. Can be a network share or FTP URL: ftp:\\[username:password]@hostname[:port]\directory
refresh	Frequency at which directory is monitored (in seconds).
maxSubmitRetries	Maximum number of attempts to resubmit a failed job submission.
submitRetryInterval	Frequency at which failed jobs are resubmitted ( in seconds).

Copy Complete Tags

Directory may contain one <copyComplete> tag.

The following parameters are used to assign method for determining when a file has been completely copied to the monitored directory and is ready for submission. These methods will behave differently on different operating systems.


Tag	Description
method	Method for determining when file copy is complete: •rename-to-self: Attempt to rename file to itself. •rename-to-tmp: Attempt to rename file to [filename]-tmp and back to original file name. •file-size-delay: Wait fileDelay seconds since last file size change. •file-modified-delay: Wait fileDelay seconds since last modified time change. •control-file: Wait for control file ([filename].ctl) to be added to directory. •exclusive-open: Attempt to open file exclusively. •immediate: Process file immediately without waiting for file to be completely copied.
fileDelay	Minimum time (in seconds) since last file change indicating that file copy is complete. This parameter only applies to file-size-delay and file-modified-delay methods.

Watch Tags

A directory may contain one or more <watch> tags.

Extension List Tag

A watch may contain one <extensionList> tag.

Extension Tags

An extension list may contain one or more <ext> tags.


Tag	Description
ext	File extension to watch for (.mov, .xml, etc.).

Job Tags

A watch may contain one <job> tag.


Tag	Description
job-priority	Job priority. Positive integer between 1 and 100, with 1 indicating the highest priority.

Meta Data Tags


Tag	Description
meta-title	Defaults to filename of source clip if not specified.
meta-author	Job author.
meta-description	Job description.
meta-copyright	Copyright notice.
meta-rating	Audience rating.
meta-keywords	Comma-separated list of keywords.
meta-timecode	Start timecode taken from the media file.
udm-item	User defined meta data item. The item name and value are given as attributes of the tag, as shown: <udm-item name="myItemName" value="mytextValue"></udm-item>

File Input Tags


Tag	Description
profile	Name of the job profile (i.e. conform.job.awp). The path is constructed using the system profile directory (as configured in the system settings).
source-inpoint	Starting point for encoding relative to start of the clip. Format is HH.MM.SS.XXX.
source-outpoint	End of encoding for the clip. If this number is positive, it specifies the end point relative to the beginning of the clip. If this number is negative, it specifies the end point relative to the end of the clip. In other words, -3.0 means that encoding stops 3 seconds prior to the end of the clip. This must be in HH.MM.SS.XXX format. Not available with file formats that are non-seekable.
delete-source-after-process	Indicates if the source clip will be deleted after successful processing. Deletion is done by the File Manager worker at the end of the Cisco MXE 3500 job. Source clips are not deleted when a job fails. Valid values of "true" or "yes" will turn this option on. It is false by default. Note XML files are not deleted.

System Setting Tags

A watch many contain one <system-settings> tag.


Tag	Description
output-basename	Specifies the output base name. That name is available in the Output profile through the $(basename) variable. All encoded files receive names derived from this base name.
These tags all define output directories for various types of Cisco MXE 3500 output. A complete directory specification, including machine name or drive letter is expected.
report-dir	Location of file report of job execution (from HTTP POST notification).
captionextract-output-dir	Output directory for extracted closed caption data.
flash-output-dir	—
flash8-output-dir	—
h264-output-dir	—
index-output-dir	Data and thumbnails from indexer.
mpeg-output-dir	—
mp3-output-dir	—
ms-output-dir	—
pp-output-dir	—
qt-output-dir	—
real-output-dir	—
thumb-output-dir	Thumbnail images output directory.
wav-output-dir	—

Reference XML Application Configuration File

The following application configuration parameters are defined in the FolderAttendantService.exe.config file:


Tag	Description
folderAttendant.adminPort	Port for administration command listener (3515). This value must be changed if running on same machine as legacy FA
folderAttendant.configFile	Fully qualified path for FA configuration file (c:\program files\Cisco\Media Experience Engine\Folder Attendant\bin\faConfig.xml)
folderAttendant.xmlExtensions	File extensions for XML files (.rdf, .xml, etc.)
folderAttendant.fileExclusionRegex	Regular expression for file names to exclude from processing (i.e., ^\. to ignore files that start with a period)
ecs.host	Default ECS host name (localhost). This value must be changed if the ECS is installed on a different machine.
Ecs.port	Default ECS port (3501)
ecs.receiveTimeout	Timeout in milliseconds for receiving response from ECS
plannersFile	Planner/XSLT transform configuration file
plannersAssemblyPath	Root directory for configured planner assemblies
transformsPath	Root directory for configured XSLT transforms
profileTypesFile	Config file containing list of profile types
settingsDefinitionFile	System setting definition file
basePath	Fully qualified path to API root directory (c:\program files\Cisco\Media Experience Engine\API)

Submitting Media and XML Files

Once a directory is monitored by the Folder Attendant for a given set of file extensions, if a new or updated (change in file size or last modified date) media or XML file, with a matching file extension, is copied to the directory, the Folder Attendant will submit a job to the Cisco MXE 3500 platform.

For media files, a <jobPackage> XML document containing a <jobList> of nested <jobPackage>s each containing <planner-submit> XML for each matching directory watch will be submitted to the Cisco MXE 3500 platform. Each nested <jobPackage> will contain the system settings configured for the given directory watch. The <planner-submit> XML will include the media file name and configured job parameters (meta data, priority, etc.) for the given directory watch.

For example, consider a directory that has been configured for 2 directory watches, each watching for .MOV files and assigned a different job profile and meta data. The following plan XML will be generated by the Folder Attendant and submitted via the API to the Cisco MXE 3500 platform:

<jobPackage>

    <submitParameterList>

          <jobData>

                <folderAttendant>

                           <fileName>filename of .MOV file</fileName>

                </folderAttendant>

          </jobData>

      </submitParameterList>

      <jobList>

       <!— job package for directory watch #1 ->

       <jobPackage>

              <submitParameterList>

                       <setting name="setingName">watch1 settingValue</setting>

...

               </submitParameterList>

               <jobList>

                         <planner-submit>

                                 <profile-dir>watch1 configured job profile</profile-dir>

                                 <source-name>filename of .MOV file</source-name>

                                 <meta-title>watch1 meta title</meta-title>

                                  ....

                         </planner-submit>

                </jobList>

         </jobPackage>

         <!— job package for directory watch #2 ->

         <jobPackage>

                <submitParameterList>

                      <setting name="setingName">watch2 settingValue</setting>

...

               </submitParameterList>

               <jobList>

                     <planner-submit>

                             <profile-dir>watch2 configured job profile</profile-dir>

                             <source-name>filename of .MOV file</source-name>

                             <meta-title>watch2 meta title</meta-title>

                              ....

                    </planner-submit>

               </jobList>

         </jobPackage>

     </jobList>

</jobPackage>

For XML plan files, a <jobPackage> XML document containing the contents of the XML file and any system settings configured for the given directory watch will be submitted to the Cisco MXE 3500 platform for each matching directory watch. Note that any job parameters (such as meta data, job priority, etc.) configured for the directory watch are ignored. A file is processed as an XML file if the file extension is configured in the following application configuration file parameter (folderAttendant.xmlExtensions). Currently (.xml and .rdf ) are configured as default XML file extensions.

The XML document can support any plan XML format supported by the API including:

•<planner-submit>

•<job>

•<jobPackage>

•<multiPackage> (if licensed)

•Custom plan XML if supported by configured API planners and transforms