Faculty Recruiting System: Video Uploads

These instructions are for an administrative user to process raw videos to add to the Faculty Recruiting system.

Setup

First, there should be a desktop shortcut set up to access the CS-GENERAL home directory for user 'cs-recru' via the program 'winscp'. Talk to Daniel Allen to have this set up.

Second, there should be a process so the raw video files are supplied by CSCF (or if necessary by IST) on a Secure Digital card. The process for obtaining a video file is documented here: ComputerScienceVideography. The SD card will contain a directory named PRIVATE which will contain sub-directories, one of which will contain a number of raw video files named 000000.MTS through 000005.MTS.

Third, the administrative user should have access to the https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/faculty-recruiting/, in order to look up the userid of the job applicant.

With these pieces in place, the process is simple.

Process

1) In the https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/faculty-recruiting/, find the job applicant and note their userid. You can do this by mousing over their download files and viewing the URL. As an example, "Fred Applicant" might have a CV recorded as "https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/faculty-recruiting/html/upload/applicant01_cv.pdf" - the userid is "applicant01".

2a) Open the winscp shortcut for "cs-recru". It will open with a view on the directory, raw-video.

2b) Open the SD card. There will be a directory named PRIVATE. Drag this directory on top of raw-video. It may take a few minutes to copy, because the raw video is about 10 gigabytes.

3) When it has finished copying, rename the directory from PRIVATE to the applicant's userid (such as applicant01 in the example in step 1)

4) In normal operation, it will start processing, and move the output video file when it's done, which will be at least an hour later. (it processes approximately 1 minute of video per minute). You'll know it's done when the directory which you just renamed, is automatically removed.

5) At that point, if you re-log into the Faculty Recruiting app and find the same person, you can click on the link next to "Video" and check that that it plays properly.

Problems

Video doesn't finish processing

If you are concerned that it has taken over an hour without finishing, you can open the directory which you renamed, and check for a few things. 1) If there is a file named "Processing_in_progress", the system thinks it's still working. If it's been at least 90 minutes, proceed to step 2.

2) If there is a file named "ERROR", report this to Daniel Allen (drallen@uwaterloo.ca) and he'll look into the situation.

Video is garbled

If the video appears garbled when viewed in the web app, please try the process again- there might be a file upload problem. Start from uploading the PRIVATE directory again. (If the old PRIVATE directory is still there, you can delete it. This may take a few seconds to complete).

If there are still video problems, report this to Daniel Allen (drallen@uwaterloo.ca) and he'll look into the situation.

Other issues

If there are issues, check with (drallen@uwaterloo.ca) and he'll look into the situation.

For technical details see /RT#928668. The script is running on linux.cs.uwaterloo.ca:

ubuntu1804-104:~> crontab -l
* * * * * /u/cs-recruiting/bin/recruiting_video_to_mp4

-- DanielAllen - 2019-01-16