Setting Task Type

the_greg

I just got asked if there was an easy way for a user creating tasks to flag their ask and either a retrieval or insertion task, so that it would only show up in the task drop down for its type, and not the other.

Anyone know off-hand? I couldn't find it in the docs I have right now.

Thanks again

Chris

lyman

Okay the tasks (None) and (Insert Unmodified) are special cases (you do not want to know how they get sorted out).

Aside from those, the rule is the following. The tests are effectively negative.

1. If a task has an explicit decoder primitive (that means it can only operate on a single incoming format; these are mainly used for filtering if you want to avoid ingesting unexpected asset types), it cannot be a retrieval task. Note that insertion tasks usually do not specify a decoder and MediaBin determines the appropriate format at run-time (the above case is the only thing I can think of). The other task that uses an explicit decoder is the (Insert as Non-image) because it forces use of the Generic decoder when another decoder might have worked.

2. If a task contains an explicit encoder, it cannot be an insertion task. If the encoder is left out, the format out is the same as the format in. It is not unusual for tasks to consist only of "middle" or "transformation" primitives.

I can definitely see a use case in which it ould be nice to restrict how a task is used even if it could theoretically be used for the other purpose, but at the moment that is not possible. However, it is a pretty simple customization to the web client if that is the usual interface.

Cheers,

Lyman