A/Side, the helper

The small app on the computer your cards and drives are plugged into — installing it, signing it in, the window and what every part of it does, updates, and what it sends to B/side.

A/Side is B/side's helper on your computer. It runs where your cards and drives are plugged in, reads the files where they are, makes small previews and sends the previews up. Your original files never move: nothing on a card or a drive is changed, renamed or deleted, and the originals are not uploaded unless this production has chosen that.

Installing it

The first time you open an empty project, B/side shows First, set up A/Side with the download for your computer. It is also at Media ▸ Connect A/Side… and in the empty bin. On a Mac, open the download, drag A/Side into Applications and open it. It brings everything it needs with it — there is nothing else to install. Opened from anywhere else — the disk image, or Downloads — it offers to move itself into Applications and reopens from there, because that is where it starts at login and keeps itself up to date.

Later (not recommended) puts the question away for that project. Without A/Side nothing can come in, so B/side asks again the next time you open an empty project.

Signing it in

The first time A/Side runs it opens B/side's sign-in in your browser. Sign in the usual way and choose the project this computer's cards are for. There is no key to copy and no address to type.

The window

A/Side lives in the menu bar as a small cube. Click it to open the window; close the window and A/Side keeps working. When a card is plugged in, or a folder is dropped on B/side, the window opens by itself to ask.

• Home is the four things worth knowing at a glance. Working says what it is doing right now — which card, how many files, how long is left. Needs your attention holds anything waiting for you: a card that appeared, a folder somebody dropped on B/side, or something wrong, each with its button. Cards and folders is what is plugged in, each with Ingest…. Ingested is what A/Side keeps reading, each with **Stop reading**.
• Activity is what A/Side is doing and what it is using:
• Now: each file being worked on, with what is happening to it (reading it, making the preview, sending it), how far along it is, and its size.
• Waiting: how many files are queued, how much they come to, and about how long they will take, then the same for each card. Files still being written to a drive join the queue when they stop changing.
• So far: how many files are done, were already in B/side, or could not be done, and how much has been sent.
• What A/Side is using: the computer's processor and memory, and how fast it is reading and uploading.

With several projects connected, all of this covers every one of them.

• Settings is who it is connected to, the copy drive, whether new cards are ingested without asking, how much of the computer it may use, updates, and starting and stopping it.

Ingest… never does anything on its own: it opens a page with the card's size and the two choices, each described in full, and nothing happens until you press Ingest. See Ingesting footage.

More than one project

A/Side can feed several projects at once. In a project with no A/Side yet, Connect hands that project to the A/Side on your computer, which adds it, and the projects already connected carry on. A/Side's window lists every connected project, each with Disconnect, and Connect another project… adds one from there.

With more than one project, Ingest asks which project the card goes into. Footage you drop on a project in the browser is offered for that project first. Your copy drives are shared by all of them.

Presets

Ingest the same way every day with one click. On the Ingest page, choose how (copy to your drives first, or previews straight from the card), tick which copy drives, pick the project, then tick Save these choices as a preset and name it, for example "Preset A". From then on the Ingest page shows it as a button at the top, and hovering it says exactly what it will do: "Copy to SHUTTLE_1, check every file, then previews into Sour Ones." Presets are listed in A/Side's window, each with Remove.

Recordings from OBS

Watch a folder for recordings (OBS)… in Settings makes A/Side ingest every recording you finish in that folder, into the project you choose, without asking each time. Only new recordings, only files directly in the folder, and only once OBS has finished writing them; every audio track stays its own track. See Recording with OBS.

Updates

A/Side checks for a new version every two hours and installs it by itself, restarting in a couple of seconds. Settings ▸ Check for updates asks now and says what happened.

What it sends to B/side

The previews, and what B/side needs to know about each file — its length, frame rate, timecode, sound channels and where it is on the drive, so the project can find the original again.

And its own log, every half a minute, so a problem can be seen and fixed while it is happening. File names, folder names and drive names are taken out before the log is kept, along with anything that looks like a key or a password; what is kept is what A/Side did and whether it worked. Logs are kept for a week.

Stopping it

Settings ▸ Stop A/Side stops reading and uploading until you open it again. Nothing is lost: what was already sent stays in the project, and a card part-way through carries on where it stopped.