3.2

Table Of Contents
Avid Interplay Engine Servers and Services
261
Description of Preview Generation Settings in workgroup.xml
CacheRoot: Path where previews and thumbnails generated by the preview server are stored.
This location is used by the preview server to create a cache of converted images. The
preview server can reuse those images for subsequent requests from any client. To ensure
best performance, this path should reside on a disk that has enough free space available to
hold a reasonable working set of cached images. While the default is inside of the database
directory of the Avid Interplay Engine, it is a good idea to place it on a different disk.
IconRoot: Path to a directory where a set of icons is stored, usually pointing into the Avid
Interplay Engine installation directory. The icons stored here are used by the Preview Server
if, for example, a thumbnail generation failed or if an asset has an unknown format or is not
an image/video file.
ServerEnableDiskGuard: If “yes”, the free space on disk is constantly checked and cache
files are purged if necessary. If “no”, cache files are never deleted. “1” and “0” are other
possible notations.
ServerCacheMinFreeDiskSpace: If the disk guard is enabled it tries to ensure that the disk
cache leaves at least this amount of space free on the disk. The disk guard cannot always
ensure this limit because it works in parallel to the normal preview server operation and
other applications might store data on the same disk. Use a value that is high enough to
overcome spike usage on your disk. The disk guard removes the oldest cached files first.
Values are by default (no suffix) in megabytes, but can be specified in gigabytes ('gb'), or
terabytes ('tb'), respectively ('1gb' == '1024').
ThumbnailImageFormat: This is the format used by client application to request thumbnails.
This should always match the requests made by the client application. It is advisable to set
this to “png.” Note: The client does not change the request format if this setting is changed.
ThumbnailsUseAlpha: If “yes,” generated thumbnails use the alpha channel to let a white
background shine through the normal image. Use “no” to ignore alpha channel information.
n
Generated thumbnails never contain any alpha information. This setting only renders the alpha
channel into the normal image data.
PreviewsUseAlpha: If “yes,” generated preview images are delivered to the client with the
alpha channel included (if it is actually displayed is a client option). Use “no” to generate
previews without any alpha channel information.