Strawberry Manuals

1.2. Strawberry 6.0 Upgrade Information

General Upgrade Information

What are the System Requirements?

What Needs to be Updated?

Strawberry 6 is a major version upgrade and therefore requires all software parts to be updated. This includes…

  • the server software (including VIEW proxy encoder nodes)
  • macOS & Windows client applications
  • Adobe CC panels

You can find the latest versions of the client and the Adobe CC panel extension in the related section on our website.

How Long will the Update take?

The server update to version 6 is a 2-step update and therefore requires more time than usual. Please check out the “Server Update Procedure” section below for more details.

Server Update Procedure

Strawberry 6 aims to increase overall IT infrastructure security by reducing the number of server-side processes that are allowed to run in the Linux Superuser (root) context to an absolute minimum. This measurement will benefit all customers, regardless if they are operating Strawberry solely on-premise or through the SKIES cloud-infrastructure. For Strawberry to be able to run with fewer Superuser privileges, the update to version 6 will be performed in two steps.

Step 1: The Preparation Update (Version 5.6.11 or 5.6.12)

In the first step, we will update your Strawberry server to version 5.6.11 or 5.6.12. These versions include scripts that will change the storage-level permissions (chmod) of all existing Strawberry proxy files to “664” and their parent directories to “775”. Depending on the number of existing proxy files, this process can take several days and will run as a background operation. This means that you will be able to use Strawberry normally during that period. Also, the proxy permission changes will not affect any user access rights within the Strawberry database & user interface. Keep in mind that this is a low-level measurement to prepare Strawberry to be able to operate with fewer Superuser privileges.

Step 2: Upgrade to Version 6

Once “Step 1” has been completed, and all proxy files have the proper storage permissions, we can proceed to upgrade your Strawberry system to version 6. Please note that the permission changes described in “Step 1” can take several days. If you want to schedule the second update before the permission adjustments have been finished, we recommend waiting at least a week between the two updates.

Important Changes to User Roles

New Role Capabilities

Strawberry 6 has the following new role capabilities:

Please make sure to adjust existing roles if you want them to have these capabilities.

Changes to the “Share” User Role

Strawberry 6 reduces the configurable capabilities of the Share user role. From now on, users with this role will only be able to access assets that have been shared with them via Email. They will however, no longer be able to access the Strawberry PAM user interface from either a client application or a web browser.

When sharing an asset via email, the email receiver will automatically obtain the Share user role. If you have subscribed to the Skies cloud infrastructure, users with the “Share” role can access it without occupying a Skies seat. They get a free pass.

Changes to the “Track Down Assets” Role Capability

The role capabilities “Can track down assets but not delete” and “Can track down assets and delete” are now obsolete. Instead, there is a single capability called “Can track down assets.” The decision if a user should be able to delete assets or not is determined by the role capability “Can delete assets and folders via the user interface.” Please adjust these settings in your roles if required.

Important Changes to Proxy Files

Proxy Bitrate Changes

Strawberry 6 increases the visual quality of streamable proxy previews by introducing hard-coded variable proxy bitrates (VBR). All proxy files that will be created after the version 6 update will use these new bitrates. Existing proxy files will not be affected by these changes unless they are re-encoded manually. Depending on the current proxy resolution defined in the Strawberry Admin panel, the proxy bitrate will be changed as follows:

  • 1920×1080: 5000k max. (VBR 1-Pass)
  • 1280×720: 2500k max. (VBR 1-Pass)
  • 640×360: 800k max. (VBR 1-Pass)

If you already have configured Strawberry to create proxy files to be encoded in either 1920×1080 or 1280×720, then the resolution will remain as is, and the new bitrate settings will be applied automatically. No further action is required. If your current proxy resolution is set to 640×360, then the Strawberry 6 update will automatically increase it to 1280×720. This change will ensure that all new proxy files will be ready for approval workflows via the SKIES cloud infrastructure. if you don’t want your proxy files to be encoded in a resolution higher than 640×360 you can manually downgrade the resolution from the Strawberry Admin panel after the update.

If you would like to keep the new resolution and have “Visual Watermarking” enabled, please make sure that your watermark image has the correct size. Please also note that higher resolution proxy files will also require more space on the shared storage. Here are the maximum proxy sizes per minute for each resolution:

  • 1920×1080: 1 minute of proxy video = ~28MB
  • 1280×720: 1 minute of proxy video = ~15MB
  • 640×360: 1 minute of proxy video = ~7MB

To increase proxy encoding speed, Strawberry 6 automatically disables “Timecode burn-in for downloadable proxies”. You can re-enable this feature from the Admin panel if required.

Creation of Encrypted Streaming Proxies

Starting with the Strawberry 6 update, Strawberry will create two streaming proxies for each HighRes media asset. The first proxy is the standard proxy that is used for internal (LAN) streaming while the second proxy is an encrypted version used when streaming via the Skies cloud infrastructure. The encrypted proxy is created from the standard proxy, meaning that no additional video encoding is required to create it. Since the encryption process is extremely fast it has close to no impact on the time of the overall proxy creation process.

Important API Changes

The Strawberry API has been extended and slightly modified. Custom HTTP headers have been changed to:

  • X-PAM-CLIENT
  • X-PAM-EDIT
  • X-PAM-UIDGIDS

Please check out the API overview for more details.

Last modified: Nov 20, 2020

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