Understand SPE processing priority

SPE has a simple built-in system of task prioritization. This allows for flexible management of processing queue, which is useful especially in mass audio processing.

For example, if there is a long queue of files waiting to be processed, and one needs to urgently process another bunch of files, these files can be sent for processing using higher priority… and they get processed as soon as possible, without waiting in the queue.
Similarly, if one has a bunch of “not so important” files for processing, these can be sent for processing using lower priority… and they will get processed only later, after the higher-priority tasks in the queue get processed.

To use task prioritization, you need to have

• task priorities enabled in SPE configuration file (enabled by default, see server.task_priorities_enable option) and default priority value set
• the prioritize role enabled for SPE user creating the processing task

If prioritization is enabled and processing task is started by a user without the “prioritize” role, task is started with default priority.

Task priority is defined by a number from 0 (highest priority) to 99 (lowest priority) and can be set using X-Priority HTTP header when starting the asynchronous task. The PendingInfoResult response contains information about task priority.
Priority can be set only when starting the task, it’s not possible to modify it afterwards.

For additional info and example, see Task prioritization section in REST API documentation.