Fixing Worker Command Failures

This document provides some guidance about troubleshooting Worker actions that use command lines for their operation, i.e. where “Execute Command” fields in a Worker action are used.

If a Worker action fails, double clicking on the failed action itself in the Worker interface will give some idea of what happened. However when using the command line the feedback is often of the type “Failed with Status 1”, ie the status supplied by the external program. This can be unhelpful.

As a result CatDV Worker logging has some valuable tools to help debug “Execute Command” actions.

Press the View Log button to see the worker logs. Then choose to view a “CatDV Worker Helper” log. There may be more than one depending on how many Workers are running on the machine at the time.

These Worker Helper logs show clearly what command was supplied to the command line. Which means the same command can be recreated in the operating system Terminal / Command Line to debug.

For example:

First turn off “Refresh Automatically” in the Log viewer. This will keep the view port static.

Now search for “arg[“. This will find an occurrence of a command line execution. For example:

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[0]: /Applications/REDCINE-X Professional/REDCINE-X PRO.app/Contents/MacOS/REDline

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[1]: --i

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[2]: /Volumes/Media/RED Footage/J010_C023_0722DL.RDC/J010_C023_0722DL_001.R3D

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[3]: --o

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[4]: J010_C023_0722DL

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[5]: --outDir

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[6]: /Volumes/Media/RED proxies/

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[7]: --format

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[8]: 11

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[9]: --QTcodec

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[10]: 2

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[11]: --res

[14;07:09:29.815] arg[12]: 4

[14;07:09:29.815] Status: Executing REDline ...

[14;07:09:30.167] setProgress REDline Build 31.34738 64bit Public Release

[14;07:09:30.167] setProgress REDCINE-X PROFESSIONAL Build 31.34738 64bit

Here we can see the arguments being sent to the command line, expanding out any CatDV Worker variables (sending unexpected data to a command line program is a common cause of failures). This enables the command line to be recreated manually and run in Terminal / on the Command Line, providing more feedback on the failure itself.

When the root cause of the failure is found, the worker action can be adjusted accordingly.