Clarification about how media is accessed and stored

[DakvasBuilds]

In the readme, it says that the containers must be able to access the media in a mapped /video file. I get this part and I assume that this means that this is where it will be accessing the files to open in handbrake, but for storing files how does that work with the container? Will these also be stored in /video somewhere so they're available to the outside system, and in a way that can be distinguished from the original media being converted from?

I would highly recommend adding some screenshots of the application somewhere to where you can show basic usage of the application as I think this would be helpful in better understanding what is needed in the setup rather than having to blindly go through the setup before getting to the actual application to play around with it and see what needs to change in the docker file for it to work properly.

I genuinely like the idea of this tool, but I do hope that you're able to put some focus on documentation sooner rather than later since I saw you mention this needs documentation over 6 months ago in another issue. It's a great tool and if new users have a way to see how the application works before even setting it up, it'll make the setup for them much easier.

[TheNickOfTime]

Hey, something similar to this was expressed in #316. I have a PR open to hopefully add some clarification for how volume mappings works - #387 - let me know if you feel this clarifies things somewhat.

In terms of the location of input files vs output, that is currently under user control. You can have separate default directories for your input files vs output files (that you can configure in the settings page) or just have everything default to one place (I wouldn't do that personally). The application is designed to have all video files mounted under /video, so as long as you output files there, they will be accessible outside of the container. So basically, where things end up is entirely determined by what you are mounting to /video in your docker compose file, and influenced by how you have configured the application and/or an individual job's input/output locations.

I suppose I should emphasize in the readme that you will need to have some means of externally accessing the directory you map to /video, since currently there is no way to upload/download files within the application (though I hope to address this soon^tm (more like eventually).

[DakvasBuilds]

@TheNickOfTime Thanks for the response! I just responded to your PR with something that I think will do a bit better job explaining the volume mapping for /video. I am curious what the mapping for /data is used for. Is this runtime data for the server unrelated to the conversions that must persist between runs of the container? I notice that /data isn't used on the workers, so I figured it wasn't specific to the conversion process so I'm curious what this is used for.

[TheNickOfTime]

/data is where the server application's persistent data is stored. Off the top of my head, some of the things stored there are:

• The server's configuration file
• The server's database - used for the storing information about jobs and various other information
• User uploaded presets
• Logs from the server and the worker

The server sends all necessary information for a given job to the relevant worker, so workers don't need access to anything in /data. Video files are too large to send along with the job information conveniently, which is why using a shared /video mount is necessary.

[DakvasBuilds]

That makes sense! Thanks for the info!