Hello all. I am a Post and VFX producer on TV series. Using the legacy API for Frame IO, I have built systems for my past two season where VFX shots would be delivered into FrameIO, and then Zapier would manage the api integration with Airtable. Airtable is the database where we track the status and notes for all of our VFX shots that we receive from multiple vendors. On our last season, we received over 10K files that were uploaded into FrameIO, with over 10K comments added on those assets in FrameIO, and nearly all of those items were automatically added to airtable without any issues. And because the legacy API allowed for developer tokens (rather than OAuth 2.0), we were able to solve a lot of the annoying limitations that we had with the available Zapier triggers. I understand that the security for OAuth 2.0 is better, which is the need for the shift to V4.
With my new show, I had to rebuild the entire system to be compatible with the FrameIO API v4. There are a number of issues:
- the Zapier triggers for “New Asset Uploaded / Ready” and “New Comment” do not work. => solve: I created webhooks in FrameIO that gets sent to a Zapier Webhook catch whenever a new file is ready or a new comment is created. Downside, I need to add three steps in Zapier to handle what used to be handled by one step. When we do 10K versions, that is an extra 30K Zapier steps that are run => $$$ three times the cost that we are paying. What is the ETA for fixing the native FrameIO v4 triggers?
- Once I have the webhook info in Zapier, I need to run a FrameIO v4 api call to retrieve the Asset or Comment metadata. When I test the FrameIO V4 “Show File” or “Show Comment” steps, everything works. Then when I run a test upload, while watching Zapier, everything works. Then, I leave the automation on, and new version are uploaded by vendors overnight, and the step fails saying: “The Frame.io V4 step hit an error. Request failed with status unknown. Please try again or contact support”. See screen grab below. Then I located the failed Zap Run, and click “Rerun error step only” and the FrameIO V4 step runs fine and the version metadata is published to Airtable as planned. This seems like an authorization issue. This is not a workable situation if the authorization fails every time I am not watching it. What is the ETA for fixing this?
- When a we get the information for a new Asset, there is a “Parent ID” that is filled in, with the FrameIO ID that is connected to the Parent Folder for where the Asset has landed on FrameIO. However, there is no “Parent Name”. This forces us to create additional steps to pull the folder name through an additional API call and then try to match that information up with each new file from batches of 1-100’s of files at once. Again => $$$ for additional zap steps. Is there any way to add the Parent Name as a field that is sent with the New Asset and Show Asset responses?
- Zapier does not have a “Show folder” API call currently for the FrameIO v4 API. I was previously using a custom API call that I coded with Javascript in inside the Airtable Automation Custom Code block. But since V4 does not allow developer tokens without OAuth, I am not able to work around this issue any longer, and my Airtable batches of uploads (based on the parent folder that is uploaded by the vendors) do not have matching names to what hits FrameIO. I am having to manually past the folder name from FrameIO into Airtable every time we have an upload. Can we “Show Folder” Zapier step be created?
I’ve asked FrameIO for help, and they keep routing me here to the forums. It seems like everyone is posting how nothing is working, and the responses don’t seem to offer confidence that this is being resolved on a reasonable timeline. I did all of these things to prop up FrameIO V4 as a tool for our team because I believed in FrameIO as a product, and I was trying not to be forced into using Flow Capture (Autodesk). Honestly, I do not have the time to make this work, and my business ($50-$100K/season) is going elsewhere unless this gets resolved now.
Here is a screenshot of what I am seeing in Zapier. the first “Run Javascript” step is pulling the key information out of the webhook that is received from FrameIO to be fed to the later steps. The “Path” step is reading the FrameIO Project ID, so that the automation only happens for our our VFX Vendor project (currently we have only one project but on previous builds, I have had 10+ vendor projects, which each get a path). the last “Run Javascript” step, formats a JSON that is sent to and Airtable Automation via the “Post” step:
