Moho Forum

Minor issue but its possible to have the same scene open in ASP5.6 and 6 at the same time: This has implications for studios where two animators could have the same file open at the same time, erasing each other's work.

There should be a file lock to prevent this.

Rhoel

I think that is OS specific isn't it? I often have that problem with AS files shared over my network. I can't save AS files on the PC because the same file was opened on the Mac. This goes for lots of other applications that don't specifically have a "lock" feature. The Mac gets all annoyed about opening files because it's "already in use".

I believe you can set up some sort of CMS in the "OS" that would "lock" files. I built something like that some years ago with files on a server logged in and out through a web based intranet.

-vern

There are several flock options: The CMS route is possible but far from ideal.

One of the simplest is for ASP (or whatever program which is opening a file) is to write a temporary file back to the directory, saying file open. When the program closes, it removes the temp file. If a program crashes and leaves a temp file, the program can simple inform the user, "this file might be in use by another user, do you wish to break the lock?" Up to them if they break the lock or go ask if someone else is using the scene.

It's not a killer bug, its an inconvenience but one which has dangers for network users.

Rhoel

Is there some file management program that would give a head up if the file is in use?

Or could you use a change name system?

Where if a file is in use, or working on it would have the tag: Thisworkingfile_working. Where who ever opens a file to work on it changes the name immediately before working on it. Then when the are done they would save it as: Thisworkingfile_open. Or Thisworkingfile_complete. Letting others know that it's done.

This should keep people from working on the same stuff at the same time, and now those looking for a new file to work on they can see what is open, what is being changed, and where the work is.

Dale

dueyftw wrote:Is there some file management program that would give a head up if the file is in use?

Or could you use a change name system?

Where if a file is in use, or working on it would have the tag: Thisworkingfile_working. Where who ever opens a file to work on it changes the name immediately before working on it. Then when the are done they would save it as: Thisworkingfile_open. Or Thisworkingfile_complete. Letting others know that it's done.

This should keep people from working on the same stuff at the same time, and now those looking for a new file to work on they can see what is open, what is being changed, and where the work is.

Dale

This is an option up to a point: However, if there are CMS in operation, it needs to keep track of scenes, the take-1, take1.1 etc. On large systems where you have 20 or more people, even the scene-complete option doesn't work as the edit team and composite might have the same scene open, one for minor changes, the other for rendering. On Animo, it had a good file lock system and although it never occurred often, it was good to know who had a file open (often when they shouldn't have - ie, changing colour style files when they really shouldn't have been).

A lot of the thinks I look at are studio issues. This is one of them, albeit a minor one.

Even if AS itself could send some kind of "message" that a file was "open" if the network goes down that system fails. The "open/closed" status of a file needs to be stored in the CMS. There are ways around "locking" the file. Something linked to file permissions or users/groups.

The CMS must have it's own file system that tags those files in a database. For example would you only be using Anime Studio? What about Photoshop files? Illustrator files? Audio files? etc etc. Would all of those applications also need a "file lock" built in? Those files could be modified by more than one person as well.

How does "Animo" deal with other files like images and audio? Their "built in" system is obviously based on some sort of network moderating "thingy" that is programmed in somehow. You could do something similar using a lua script in each AS file or a custom menu script or button.

Lua can talk to the system and could "tell" your application that a file is open.


-vern

heyvern wrote:How does "Animo" deal with other files like images and audio? Their "built in" system is obviously based on some sort of network moderating "thingy" that is programmed in somehow.

Animo never tracked external files such as audio or images - it only told you if an attempt was made to double open one of its files. It did keep track of image sizes and audio data, and gave a warning if the re-imported file was different from the original saved. So if someone edited an audio clip and it was now 7.5 seconds not 7.9 seconds, it let you know .. the program normally wouldn't crash out with an error, just a message saying "hey, that's different". Graceful degradation I think its called.

The commonly flagged Animo files were

• ink & paint - so no two painters worked on the same layer.
• composite/director files - for obvious reasons.
• Colour model editing - though any number of colour models could be open at anytime without any problem.

Personally, I cannot see how a CMS could handle the lock file issue as the ASP files are launched independently of the CMS. I can rewrite part of my PMS code but I cannot think of a way tonight which would stop this.

Coincidentally, I tried this with Photoshop tonight ... that wouldn't even let me have two different versions open at the same time, CS4 or 5.5 - I'm not on the network tonight so I cannot test it with two CS4 programs on different machines.

Rhoel