# multi robot /video/thumbs problem **URL:** \ **Category:** Transloadit\ **Tags:** tender-archive\ **Created:** [May 29, 2014, 9:41am UTC](https://community.transloadit.com/t/multi-robot-video-thumbs-problem/18308 "2014-05-29T09:41:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Francisco\_Azevedo](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/community.transloadit.com/francisco_azevedo/32/1632_2.png) [@Francisco\_Azevedo](https://community.transloadit.com/u/Francisco_Azevedo)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 9:41am UTC](https://community.transloadit.com/t/multi-robot-video-thumbs-problem/18308/1 "2014-05-29T09:41:00Z")
> Archived from the Transloadit support forum. Originally posted on May 29, 2014; details may be outdated, see [our docs](https://transloadit.com/docs/) for current behavior. [Original thread](https://web.archive.org/web/20140612022117/http://support.transloadit.com/discussions/problems/15081-multi-robot-videothumbs-problem) Hi all, I found that if you define 2 “/video/thumbs” robot, only 1 is processed. The other “/video/thumbs” are just ignored. I tested extracting 2 thumbs with different sizes from a video because and found that one of the “/video/thumbs” robot was just ignored. I changed my assembly so that i use only one “/video/thumbs” to extract the bigger thumb and then a resize robot to create a smaller thumb. So, my problem is solved.. but anyway i send this bug report. best, Francisco Azevedo ---
**Author:** ![kvz](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/community.transloadit.com/kvz/32/606_2.png) [@kvz](https://community.transloadit.com/u/kvz)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 10:57am UTC](https://community.transloadit.com/t/multi-robot-video-thumbs-problem/18308/2 "2014-05-29T10:57:00Z")
Hi Francisco, How are your steps named? Also `/video/thumbs`? If so, in Javascript, object keys need to be unique, so you’d better name your steps thumb-200, thumb-400, or whatever makes sense for your usecase. However, I’m assuming all of this as you haven’t provided the template or an assembly\_id of where this happened. If I’m wrong indeed, please provide these so I can have a closer look. Kind regards, Kevin ---
**Author:** ![Francisco\_Azevedo](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/community.transloadit.com/francisco_azevedo/32/1632_2.png) [@Francisco\_Azevedo](https://community.transloadit.com/u/Francisco_Azevedo)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2014, 10:30am UTC](https://community.transloadit.com/t/multi-robot-video-thumbs-problem/18308/3 "2014-06-04T10:30:00Z")
Hi Kevin, This is very simple to check. You only need to create 2 robots for thumbs. Here goes an example i create to specifically test this problem. After processing file, you can see that “upvideo2” robot is ignored: ```auto { "steps": { "upvideo1": { "robot": "/video/thumbs", "offsets": [ 1 ], "width": 680, "height": 480, "resize_strategy": "crop", "format": "jpg", "quality": 90 }, "upvideo2": { "robot": "/video/thumbs", "offsets": [ 3 ], "width": 100, "height": 100, "resize_strategy": "crop", "format": "jpg", "quality": 50 }, "ofile": { "robot": "/cloudfiles/store", "path": "${file.id}-${file.url_name}", "container": "originals", "account_type": "uk", "user": "----myuser----", "key": "REDACTED", "use": [ "upvideo1", "upvideo2" ] } } } ``` best, Francisco Azevedo ---
**Author:** ![kvz](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/community.transloadit.com/kvz/32/606_2.png) [@kvz](https://community.transloadit.com/u/kvz)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2014, 10:41am UTC](https://community.transloadit.com/t/multi-robot-video-thumbs-problem/18308/4 "2014-06-04T10:41:00Z")
Hi Francisco, I think the problem is you did not specify a `use` parameter for the first 2 steps. Hence the behavior is to default to the previous step. Can you add `use: ":original"` to both steps? Best, Kevin ---
**Author:** ![tim-kos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tim-kos](https://community.transloadit.com/u/tim-kos)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2014, 10:43am UTC](https://community.transloadit.com/t/multi-robot-video-thumbs-problem/18308/5 "2014-06-04T10:43:00Z")
Hey francisco, You need to specify the use parameter. The video thimbs robot emits inages and you are piping them into the second video thumbs bot, which expects a video and ignores images. Kind regards, Tim Koschuetzki Co-Founder Transloadit @tim\_kos ---
**Author:** ![Francisco\_Azevedo](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/community.transloadit.com/francisco_azevedo/32/1632_2.png) [@Francisco\_Azevedo](https://community.transloadit.com/u/Francisco_Azevedo)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2014, 10:48am UTC](https://community.transloadit.com/t/multi-robot-video-thumbs-problem/18308/6 "2014-06-04T10:48:00Z")
Hi Kevin, With `"use": ":original"` it works as expected. But.. I thought that if we don’t specify a `"use"` it is same as specify a `"use":":original"`. This sounds very strange.. is this a bug? Or is “by design”.. and we should always specify a `"use"` parameter is **every step** so that we don’t have unexpected results? best, Francisco Azevedo ---
**Author:** ![kvz](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/community.transloadit.com/kvz/32/606_2.png) [@kvz](https://community.transloadit.com/u/kvz)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2014, 10:52am UTC](https://community.transloadit.com/t/multi-robot-video-thumbs-problem/18308/7 "2014-06-04T10:52:00Z")
Hi Francisco, Please always specify a `use` parameter. The default is to plug in the previous step, but that’s not airtight as ecma does not guarantee order inside javascript objects. There’s information in our documentation should you want to learn more about all this. Kind regards, Kevin ---
**Author:** ![Francisco\_Azevedo](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/community.transloadit.com/francisco_azevedo/32/1632_2.png) [@Francisco\_Azevedo](https://community.transloadit.com/u/Francisco_Azevedo)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2014, 10:56am UTC](https://community.transloadit.com/t/multi-robot-video-thumbs-problem/18308/8 "2014-06-04T10:56:00Z")
Hi Kevin, I will update all steps so that always include `"use"` parameter. Thanks for your time. best, Francisco Azevedo ---
**Author:** ![tim-kos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tim-kos](https://community.transloadit.com/u/tim-kos)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2014, 11:31am UTC](https://community.transloadit.com/t/multi-robot-video-thumbs-problem/18308/9 "2014-06-04T11:31:00Z")
Hah, looks like Kevin and I typed a reply at the same time. 😃 You are getting some extra attention here, Francisco. ; ) One thing to note is, that in the future we will make it mandatory to include a use parameter in every step. So while you are doing this for this template, you might also want to do it already for all your other templates. Kind regards, Tim Co-Founder Transloadit @tim\_kos ---
**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/uploads/transloadit/original/1X/04ee57da0cb7ac8728a9ac5965c288164f4ce280.svg) [@system](https://community.transloadit.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2026, 10:55am UTC](https://community.transloadit.com/t/multi-robot-video-thumbs-problem/18308/10 "2026-10-07T10:55:30Z")