Using the fpod.conf file for advanced administration

[This information is for more advanced administrators.] The Xinet fpod.conf file provides a mechanism to control the amount of time allowed in generating FPO and Web previews. If you have evidence that too much CPU is being used in their creation, turn to the fpod(8) man page and read more about the -t timeout option. Similarly, you may also want to set time outs for other processes such as syncxmp, pdfsync, movsync(1M) and officesync. You can set time outs for these by editing the /usr/etc/venture/var/fpod.conf file on Unix systems or the C:\Program Files\Xinet\Venture\var\fpod.conf file on Windows systems. Comments in the fpod.conf file provide further details.

Please note, that when upgrading your system, fpod.conf will not be changed during the upgrade. The fpod.conf.dist file, which resides in the same directory, will be upgraded. Comments about the file content may be found in the fpod.conf.dist file.

Processing multiple video, audio and interactive files simultaneously

[This information is for more advanced administrators.] Xinet also provides a mechanism to control the number of video and audio files that will be processed simultaneously. Like time-out options for generating FPO and Web previews described in the previous subsection, the mechanism resides in the fpod.conf file. By default, Xinet software will process only a single video file at a time, as most servers will not have the extra hardware, for example., many CPUs, needed to support processing multiple video files simultaneously. Here is the entry which controls this in the fpod.conf file:

19(250) $v/bin/movsync -fid$i -volflags$f -n$r

The number in parenthesis, (250) in this example, gives the time-out value (in minutes) for movsync(1M). It is also possible within the parenthesis to include a multiples value for the number of files to process simultaneously. Here’s an example of a system configured to process three video assets at the same time:

19(250,3) $v/bin/movsync -fid$i -volflags$f -n$r

Simply separate the value for simultaneous processing from the time-out value by a comma, with no space between. If you don’t want a time-out set in the fpod.conf entry, but do want multiprocessing, still use the comma within the parentheses.

With the capacity of servers varying greatly and with each workflow processing a different mix of files, there isn’t an easy rule about what’s appropriate for any given host; but, do take care to never ask your machine to do more than it is capable of doing. If processing video files is your server’s main focus, also refer to the fpod(8) man page for details about the -j option. It may be wise to lower the -j setting when raising the number of video files that can be processed in parallel.

Notice that there is a second movsync(8) entry in the fpod.conf file:

21(100) $v/bin/movsync -fid$i -volflags$f

This queue also uses movsync(8), but to process Web Browser documents (based on their .htm or .html file extensions). Unlike the first movsync(8) queue, it does not employ the -n$r escape, because when that escape is used with the Web Browser documents queue, it can intermittently break Web-preview generation. What does -n$r do? It counts how many times movsync(8) has tried to process a given file, and when that number reaches a specified limit without movsync(8) seeing a result, movsync(8) will cease trying to process the file and move along to the next file in its queue.