Using WiretapCentral

About WiretapCentral

WiretapCentral is a flash-based application for remotely browsing, reading, and writing media using a standard web browser. WiretapCentral is installed by default on Autodesk workstations.

Use WiretapCentral to:

• Browse projects and material located on a creative finishing workstation or other system, and manage clip libraries, reels and directories.
• Encode media into a number of file formats including H264, Mpeg1, Mpeg2, Mpeg4, QuickTime, DV PAL, DV NTSC, and FLV at various resolutions.

Main Interface

The WiretapCentral main interface is comprised of three areas:

• The Network Tree area for navigating to connected systems and storage.
• The Main View area for viewing folders and their contents.
• The Details area, which shows information about the currently-selected node or clip.

Use these areas to navigate to media, and to select and apply actions to clips.

Menu Bar

The Menu bar offers the following options:

Click:	To:
Selection	Perform any of the following options on clips: Refresh All, Refresh Selected, Expand Children, and Select All.
Layout	Change the interface layout. The options are Normal, Extended, and Full Screen.
View	Change the current view. The options are Thumbnails, List, and Player.
Bookmarks	Create, manage, and navigate bookmarked media locations.
Tools	Open Backburner monitor, create new reels, libraries, and directories, as well as delete selected items.
Export	Export selected media or the entire list, or view packages or presets.
Help	Open application help.

Player

Use the player to view clips and play them back with more options. The player shows all clips at a width of 720 pixels, normally at 100% JPEG quality. In addition, the player offers controls for stepping through the action, looping, and playing backward.

Double-clicking a clip opens the player. WiretapCentral automatically generates and downloads the high-resolution version from the clip before streaming a playable version. For long clips, this may take a few seconds depending on the network interface and processing power of the WiretapCentral server. If the clip has an NTSC or PAL proxy on the volume, the process is often close to real-time. As with thumbnails, the clip begins playing as soon as it begins downloading.

Clips can also be panned and zoomed in WiretapCentral even while playing.

To pan and zoom:

• To pan the clip, drag it using the mouse.
• To zoom in and out, click the [+] and [-] buttons or use the wheel on the mouse.
• To reset the player’s default pan and zoom settings, click Home.
• To fit the clip to the available player canvas, click Fit.

Export

After selecting media and choosing Export from the Menu bar, use the Export dialog to specify input and output settings. Settings may be saved as presets and reloaded using the Presets button.

If any media has not been rendered or cannot play back in realtime, black frames and empty audio will be generated. When Wiretap Central detects this before starting an export, a warning will appear, asking the user to cancel or continue.

In addition, if any source or rendered clips are moved, modified or altered, the export will fail.