Using the Video Ingester
The main window
| Area | What it is |
|---|---|
| Connected (top-left) | Internet connection status. Green Connected means the Ingester can reach the network. It turns red and warns you when the connection drops. |
| WATCHER / WORKER | Switch the two roles on and off. Blue means on. |
| SETTINGS | Opens the Settings dialog. |
| ? | Opens this documentation in your browser. |
| Job grid | One row per job that still needs attention. |
| Watch folders | The folders currently being monitored. |
| Show all jobs | Also show finished and cancelled jobs. |
| Open logs | Opens the log folder in Windows Explorer. |
| Refresh Job List | Refreshes the grid immediately. |
| Rescan folders | Scans the watch folders now instead of waiting for the automatic scan. |
| Log | What the Ingester has been doing, most recent at the bottom. |
| Statistics bar (bottom) | Current upload speed in Mbps, and how many jobs are done out of the total, with the number remaining. |
The job grid columns
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Num | Row number. |
| Priority | Job priority 1–10 with an arrow and colour. See Job priority. |
| Job status | Current status. While uploading, the progress percentage is shown here. |
| File name | The video file this job is for. |
| Deinterlace | Whether the encoder will deinterlace this video. |
| Inserted at | When the job was created. |
| Playable | The identifier of the video record on the platform, once it exists. |
| Id job | The internal job identifier. Quote it when reporting a problem. |
Rows with status error or failed have a coral background so they stand out. Jobs that are currently processing are shown at the top of the grid, and the grid scrolls to keep them in view.
The statistics bar
The bar at the bottom refreshes every 30 seconds and shows:
- the upload speed in Mbps, measured across the whole program;
- a progress bar and a count such as
48 / 120 (Remaining: 72)— jobs finished out of the total, ignoring cancelled and errored jobs.
This is the quickest way to answer "how far along are we?" during an event.
Earlier versions had a Show upload speed for dropdown where you picked a network adapter. It has been replaced by this statistics bar, which measures the Ingester's own traffic rather than the adapter's, and therefore does not need to be configured.
Working modes
The Ingester can be used in two ways. They are not settings you switch between — they simply describe whether a human has to supply the contest data or not.
Automatic mode
This is how the Ingester is used during a normal event, together with the Video CutterV2.
The Video CutterV2 cuts each contest into its own file, writes it into a watch folder, and writes a small companion file next to it with the same name plus .json. That companion file carries everything the Ingester needs: the contest code, the camera name, the partner, the backend system, whether to keep the original, and whether the recording was progressive or interlaced.
The Ingester then:
- Notices the file.
- Reads the companion
.jsonfile. - Waits if the cutter is not finished — while the companion file says
FinishedCutting: false, the video is deliberately skipped and the log says so. - Creates the job directly as new and starts uploading.
No human input is needed at any point.
If a video appears without a companion .json file, or the companion file has no contest code, the job is created as pending and waits for you to fill in the details by hand — see Entering contest data for a pending job below.
Manual mode
Use this when you need to upload a file that the Video CutterV2 did not prepare — a recording from a memory card, a re-export, or a fight that was cut by hand.
Get the file into the Ingester. Either copy it into a watch folder, or drag and drop it onto the job grid.
A new job appears with status pending. Now fill in its contest data, as described in the next section.
Entering contest data for a pending job
A pending job is one the Ingester cannot upload yet, because it does not know which contest the video belongs to. It sits in the grid and nothing happens to it until you tell it. This is true whichever way the job got there — a file you dropped in yourself, or a file that arrived without a usable companion .json file.
1. Open the Contest Data form. Click the pending job's row in the grid to select it. There are then two equivalent ways to open the form — use whichever you prefer:
- A Contest Data button appears above the grid while the row is selected. Click it.
- Or right-click the selected row and choose Set Contest Data from the menu that pops up.
Both the button and the menu entry appear only when exactly one row is selected and that row's status is pending. If you cannot see either of them, check that you have selected a single row and that its status really is pending — a job that is already uploading cannot have its contest data changed, because the file is being sent as you watch.
2. Fill in the form.
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Contest Code | The code identifying the fight this video belongs to. It must match an existing contest in the backend you are configured for. |
| Camera name | Which angle this recording is: Front, Side, Side Left, Side Right, Rear, PGM Clean, PGM Dirty, Crane. This is how several angles of the same fight are told apart. |
| Partner | Only shown when the Backend System is JudoManager. The federation or organisation that owns the event. Mandatory for JudoManager, not used for Judobase. |
| Keep Original | When ticked, the original file is kept in cloud storage alongside the encoded version. |
| Deinterlace | Overrides the deinterlace decision for this one job. |
The form remembers the partner used for the previous job and preselects it, so you do not have to choose it again for every file at the same event.
Double-click the file name at the top of the form to copy it to the clipboard — useful when you need to look the fight up somewhere else.
3. Save. The job status changes from pending to new and the upload starts as soon as a worker is free.
If the contest code does not exist in the backend, the upload fails with a clear message — see Troubleshooting.
Inspecting a job
Right-click a job and choose Show payload for … to see the full JSON payload stored with that job: the file path, contest code, camera name, deinterlace flag, overlay URL and so on.
This is the fastest way to answer "what exactly is this job going to send?" and is worth including when reporting a problem.
Pausing the uploads
Switch WORKER off. Jobs keep being discovered and queued but nothing is uploaded. Switch it back on to resume.
This is the correct way to free the venue connection temporarily — for a live stream, a medal ceremony broadcast, or a network problem. Nothing is lost; the queue simply grows.
While the worker is off and jobs are waiting, the WORKER button blinks amber and the taskbar icon flashes, so an accidentally paused Ingester does not go unnoticed.
Closing the Ingester
If jobs are still processing, the Ingester refuses to close and tells you so. Either wait for the uploads to finish, or cancel the jobs individually first.
This is deliberate: stopping the program mid-upload leaves a partial multi-part upload in cloud storage that has to be cleaned up.