Release Notes for Flix 6.5.0

Release Date

18th January 2023

For a detailed guide on upgrading to Flix 6.5.0, refer to the Upgrading to Flix 6.5.0 section at the bottom of this page.

New Features

Flexible Group and User Management

Flix 6.5 brings a new permission system based on groups and roles, allowing admin users to manage, access, and share information with the most relevant team members. Users can now be assigned roles within multiple projects and groups. The new, fully customizable permission system is integrated with the LDAP setup so that studios can incorporate Flix into their own company-wide permission and security system.

See Control User Access with Group and Role Permissions for more information.

Studio Wide Contact Sheets

Streamline your review process and easily share work from story to editorial, production or external stakeholders with Flix 6.5. Contact sheets are now more flexible and diverse, allowing users to have access to multiple templates and to select which template to use from either the Publish modal or the Export modal. Adaptable to every studio’s needs regardless of its size and easily customizable, the improved contact sheets allow for better cross-pipeline integration.

See Customizing Contact Sheet Templates for more information.

Related Panels Implementation

Currently in Flix the user can only see one of the panels involved in the new composition, and they have to manually figure out what the other panels are and where they are, or the editor needs to make a note for story.

It's very frequent for the editors to create new panels in editorial using existing panels and comping them together (i.e. "Picture in picture"). Those panels are then sent back to story artists to be properly re-created. So they need to know all the panels that the editors used to create the new one.

Flix 6.5 is now able to record, store the correct data, and correctly and precisely show all the related panels used when editorial creates new panels. This feature gives easy access to all the panels used to compose a REF panel. Artists can now easily see them all and easily recreate that composition in the original PSD files. This feature guarantees smoother collaboration and feedback and allows full trackability of panels used in any new boards, and compositions, made in editorial.

See View Related Panels from Editorial in Flix for more information.

Media Relinking for Panels in Flix

Adopt and implement Flix in your pipeline at any time regardless of the stage of the production process with the new media relinking and versioning system in Storyboard Pro for panels originated in Flix. Whether a panel is ingested for the first time manually or from editorial, Flix can maintain tracking and versioning, allowing for a smooth round-trip from one department to another. The improved versioning system and its interoperability with Storyboard Pro gives more freedom to artists who can now open their workflow to more apps.

See Flix for Story for more information.

New Panel Versioning System for Files Originated in Flix

Smooth out inter-software processes within the story department with the new panel versioning system for manual import. In Flix 6.5, users can now have their panels automatically versioned when they manually import them from apps other than Storyboard Pro, Photoshop, Avid, and Adobe Premiere. This release allows artists to make the most out of an even stronger versioning and asset tracking system Flix offers.

See Flix for Story for more information.

Managed Source File Support for Storyboard Pro

Make the review process and data management easier with the introduction of managed source file support for Storyboard Pro. Brought to you in Flix 6.5, this feature enables users to store their .sbpz projects in the server and use them as source files for easy retrieval. Having to remember the locations or names of the files is now a thing of the past thanks to the easy access to main source files this addition facilitates. Collaboration between story and editorial is improved and artists can focus on creativity rather than administrative work.

Panel Browser Search

A sequence can contain hundreds of boards and in Flix 6.5 you can search by panel ID in the dedicated search bar. Enter a string and press enter and Flix selects any matches in the sequence. It does not filter out the other panels in the revision.

See Using the Panel Browser for more information.

API Implementation and New Documentation

In Flix 6.5, user experience is massively improved as artists have easier API access and a more comprehensive documentation. Finding the exact match for a panel ID in the panel browser is only one click away. This release welcomes wider scripting and opens infinite possibilities of customization.

The more complete and comprehensive documentation provides a great guide to technically savvy users (especially TDs), and allow for infinite customization possibilities.

See http://docs.flix-dev.com/ for more information.

Webhook System

Eliminate repetitive work and save time with the Webhooks System brought in Flix 6.5. The power of custom event-based triggers helps users automate standard processes and take action when a certain process happens, from importing and publishing to exporting and creating a new entity. This new system allows for increased capacity and effectively reduces costs.

See https://pypi.org/project/flix-sdk/ for more information.

Apple M1 Native and Windows 11 Support

Flix will now run on Native M1 Apple Silicon and Windows 11.

See System Requirements for more information.

Feature Enhancements

Under the Hood

In Flix 6.4, transitions between two panels in Storyboard Pro caused the duration of the panels either side of the transition to change when imported back into Flix. Flix incorrectly updated the marker position of the first panel to the start of the transition between panels.
In Flix 6.5, transitions do not affect panel duration, but the marker denoting the start of the second panel is not displayed in the Flix UI, so you'll only see one marker at the start of the first panel with the transition. Marker and transition data is still available in editorial and Storyboard Pro when you export from Flix, but Flix does not currently support transitions natively.
ID 460165 - The property marking sequences as OOP (Out of Picture) is now the hidden database column in the sequence table rather than being a field in the sequence's metadata.
ID 502569 - Updated the Python version used by Flix to 3.9.10.
ID 504083 - The API now has the same minimum requirements for new shows as the Flix Client form.
ID 509737 - The API has been updated to reflect the user and group permission feature so endpoints do not return data for any action a user does not have permission to perform.

ID 511957 - You can now specify in the Flix Server configuration file what LDAP groups should be mapped to what roles within Flix groups.

ldap:
              roles:
                - role: Show manager
                  group_suffix: "Manager"
                - role: View only
                  group_suffix: "Readonly"
                - role: Regular user
                  group_prefix: "Flix"
                - role: View only # fallback - matches all groups, if no role above matched. The first matching role will be picked for each group

ID 511966 - You can now click on the button to the left of any group to edit the details of that group.
ID 512142 - You can now set the Store Source File option in the preferences under Third Party Apps > Storyboard Pro to set the default state for the source file import on .sbpz files.
ID 513086 - New directives have been added to the LDAP section of the server config file allowing more fine-grained control over log in permissions.
ID 513209 - Users now only see the shows to which they have access. Inaccessible shows no longer appear on the Flix Client home page and cannot be accessed using the API.
ID 513561 - A REST API endpoint for getting a user's permissions for a given show has been added.
ID 514240 - You can now delete groups individually using the kebab menu on the left of groups.
ID 515161 - The transfer utility now authenticates all connections, preventing users uploading or downloading files belonging to shows they do not have access to.
ID 516278 - Users can now only send emails via the API if they have explicit permission to do so, and/or they have permission to publish a sequence revision.
ID 516293 - Job chains now belong to shows and access to job chain results are restricted to only users who have rights to access the respective shows.
ID 517908/517909 - Webhooks can now be registered with the server via the API. Webhooks are triggered by the following actions in Flix:
Publish to editorial
Publish to Flix
New panel revision (this will be a very frequently triggered action)
Error logged
Sequence revision sent to SBP
New sequence revision
ID 517910/527153 - Webhooks can now be added and managed using a script that comes with the flix-sdk Python package, available to install using:
pip install flix-sdk
Note: Requires Python 3.10 or higher.
After installation, webhooks can be managed by running:
flix webhook
See http://docs.flix-dev.com/#tag/Webhook and https://pypi.org/project/flix-sdk/ for more details on Flix's API and the flix-sdk package.
ID 517911 - Webhooks can be created with a retry strategy. If sending the payload to the webhook server fails, the registered webhook in Flix is then retried as many times as configured, and optionally sends an email to all admins if all retries fail.
ID 517912 - REST API endpoints for adding and managing webhooks have been added.
ID 517931 - Webhooks can be configured to post to a TLS configured server without verifying the TLS certificates. This can be used if the receiving server has been setup with self-signed certificates.
ID 518218/518219 - Webhooks can be enabled, disabled, and deleted via the API. Disabled webhooks only post ping actions and must be triggered manually.
ID 518222 - Webhooks can be triggered manually to send a ping request to the configured server via the API.
ID 518646 - The webhook system can be disabled via the Flix Server config webhooks option. This does not stop you creating or editing webhooks, but it prevents all triggers.
ID 521412 - A new command line option, --no-cache, has been added to Flix Server that disables all internal data caches. In no-cache mode, data is fetched from the database every request, rather than relying on time-limited internal caches.
Note: The --no-cache option is intended for testing/diagnostic purposes and is not suitable for production as it significantly reduces the efficiency of the server.
iD 522799 - Updating a user now immediately invalidates the user cache ensuring consistency with user data.

Story/Production

ID 368798 - Dragging a panel now immediately selects it, preventing you from accidentally dragging the wrong panel.
ID 509767 - Panels can now be related to multiple other panels and all related panels are displayed in the panel revision dropdown.
ID 511462 - You can now store .sbpz files as a source file when importing from Storyboard Pro. The .sbpz file is uploaded to the server and can be downloaded again from the sequence revisions page.
ID 511708 - Panels that are manually versioned up now retain related panel information.
ID 520283 - Flix Client now uploads annotation and saves the revision after autosave, save on existing revision, and save on exiting the application.
ID 520676 - Flix now auto-discovers the path to Photoshop 2022 if it is present on the system in the default location.
ID 520957 - Flix Client now only allows artists to annotate one panel at a time in order to avoid transfer issues and loss of data.

Editorial/Production

ID 516301 - Flix now supports multiple contact sheet templates which can be viewed from the Templates tab in the management console. A set of standard templates are provided by default.
ID 516326/517790 - You can now select the contact sheet template to use when exporting and publishing contact sheets.
ID 525558 - Flix now stores what sequence revision a panel revision was published in, rather than simply a binary published/not published status.

Bug Fixes

Under the Hood

ID 399083 - There were unnecessary blank items in the Window menu.
ID 399661 - Improved the readability of text in the Aspect Ratio dropdown in the Create Show wizard.
ID 399996 - Removed JobNum and MaxPublishWorkers from the Flix Server config.
ID 495198 - The Create Show wizard now correctly resets when it is closed.
ID 495711 - We've improved the error message when you use a server name that points to the server but isn't the registered server name.
ID 500236 - Panel revisions can no longer be added to a sequence revision with a duration of 0 via the API.
ID 514813 - API endpoints returning 204 No Content used an incorrect content type of application/json. They now correctly return text/plain.
ID 515033 - The API endpoint to create panels incorrectly returned 204 Created, rather than 200 OK.
ID 515387 - The Flix Client auto-updater did not download the Arm version when running on a Mac with an Arm processor.
ID 518209 - Backing up very large databases occasionally caused Flix to crash due to lack of memory.
ID 518380 - Downgrading a large database (6 GB+) to 6.4.1, or earlier, occasionally failed.
ID 518397 - Slow MySQL queries caused dialogue exports to time out with very large sequence revisions.
ID 519649/519662 - API users could read comments and reference assets from shows to which they did not have access.
ID 520589 - Users could accidentally delete themselves.
ID 520590 - Deleting a user did not immediately revoke their access key.
ID 522308 - Show and studio settings were accessible to users without permissions to those settings.
ID 522382 - Downgrading the database to version 48 failed and displayed an invalid SQL error message.

Story/Production

ID 358927 - Windows only: The Delete key did not delete panels as expected.
ID 502259 - Selecting a single day in the library date filter did not show any panels from that day.
ID 513704 - Sliding the player timeline marker to a different time in the sequence did not update the selected panel or the playhead.
ID 518031 - Pasting panels into an empty revision did not work as expected.
ID 519821 - Navigating panels using the arrow keys in the panel browser was occasionally unresponsive.
ID 524938 - Replace Current Image from Photoshop marked the panel revision as published if it had been published before the replacement.
ID 525555 - Panels that had been published, deleted in Flix, and then added again to a subsequent sequence revision were marked New if they had not been versioned up.

Editorial/Production

ID 428652 - Contact Sheets: New lines, including empty new lines, were not respected when exporting a contact sheet.
ID 443549 - Reconforming an FCP XML SBP export from Flix in SBP incorrectly displayed a sequence names not matching warning message.
ID 453276 - Exporting large numbers of layer comps from Photoshop to Flix on Windows did not always create panels in Flix as expected.
ID 505780 - Non-overlapping but neighboring clips were incorrectly considered related when publishing from Avid.
ID 515097 - Publishes to Avid with Flix preferences set to new clip color = None caused the publish to fail.
ID 518043 - Publishing a sequence revision with a very large number of duplicated panels took longer than expected.
ID 519635/521533 - QuickTime exports from the Flix Client did not display panels in the correct order or use the correct panel duration.
ID 520758 - Round-trips from and to SBP failed if the revision contained single frame panels or clips with camera-moves.
ID 522807 - Contact sheet PDFs did not label panel revisions as New when they were versioned up by Photoshop.
ID 523056 - QuickTime exports didn't include audio if the panels were not sequential.
ID 526143 - Importing an AAF containing a panel from a different show occasionally versioned up a panel within the new show, or incorrectly marked the panel as a duplicate of a panel in the same show, but a different sequence. Flix now tracks the source show of all Flix-originating AAF clips using a new flix_show_id column visible in the Avid bin.

System Requirements

Flix Server

Note: Flix Server is built and tested exclusively on Intel processors. Running the Flix Server on AMD processors may lead to unexpected runtime errors.

Linux

Note: The volume where the /tmp directory resides should have at least twice as much free space as the largest AAF imported into Flix. We recommend at least 8 GB, which is the minimum storage requirement.

Item	Requirements
Operating System	CentOS 7 64-bit
RAM	At least 16 GB
CPU	A 64-bit Intel processor @ 3.2 GHz, or higher 8 cores, or more

Item

Requirements

Operating System

CentOS 7 64-bit

RAM

At least 16 GB

CPU

A 64-bit Intel processor @ 3.2 GHz, or higher

8 cores, or more

Flix Client

Note: Flix Client is currently not available on Linux. Other operating systems may work with Flix Client, but have not been fully tested.

macOS

Article: For more information on Foundry products and supported macOS versions, see Foundry Knowledge Base article Q100592.

Item	Requirements
Operating System	10.15.x (Catalina) 11.x (Big Sur) 12.x (Monterey)
RAM	4 GB
Processor	ARM-based Apple Silicon M1 processor or Intel processor with 64-bit support 2 GHz or faster processor with SSE 4.2, or later

Item

Requirements

Operating System

10.15.x (Catalina)

11.x (Big Sur)

12.x (Monterey)

RAM

4 GB

Processor

ARM-based Apple Silicon M1 processor or Intel processor with 64-bit support

2 GHz or faster processor with SSE 4.2, or later

Windows

Item	Requirements
Operating System	Windows 10 or Windows 11
RAM	4 GB
Processor	A 64-bit processor @ 2 GHz, or higher

Third-Party Application Support

Application	Supported Versions
Adobe Photoshop	CC 2021, 2022
Adobe Premiere	CC 2021. 2022
Toon Boom Storyboard Pro	Storyboard Pro 2020
Avid Media Composer	2019, 2020

Note: Photoshop 2022 support requires some extra set up before you install the plug-in, see Flix for Story for more information.

Upgrading to Flix 6.5.0

This update requires end users to upgrade Flix Client to version 6.5.0.

If you're running a Mac with an ARM-based Apple Silicon M1 processor and you want to switch to using M1 natively, you must download and install the M1-specific Flix Client manually from:
https://www.foundry.com/products/flix/download

Note: If you use the Flix Client auto-update feature in a version earlier than 6.5.0, the client will be updated to the latest Intel version using Rosetta emulation.

Additionally:

The new Transfer Utility port must be accessible on each server and all clients. The default port number is 9091, but the port can be changed by setting the client_transfer_port parameter in the config.yml file to a different port number. See Flix Server Options for more information.
If any server is running CentOS 6, it must be upgraded to CentOS 7.

From Flix 6.3.7

DB upgrade (v29 -> v41) - see Upgrading Flix for more information.
Photoshop Plugin update - see Manually Installing the Photoshop Plug-in for End Users for more information.

From a pre-6.3 version (e.g. 6.2.2)

DB upgrade ( -> v27) - see Upgrading Flix for more information.
Asset migration is recommended, but not required.

Note: Although not required for 6.3, we recommend performing the asset migration eventually, as future minor (e.g. 6.5) and major (e.g. 7.0) releases may not support assets stored outside of show subdirectories.
PS Plugin update - see Manually Installing the Photoshop Plug-in for End Users for more information.
Server configuration - see Upgrading Flix for more information.