Knowledge Base

The reason why you are seeing a video still flash before the preroll ad or between videos is because it is giving the Player something to display while it is fetching the next Video clip. This is a design functionality.

While faster connections may see the Video Still quicker than others, slower connections will remain on the Video Still with a Loading Video animation while waiting for the Player to retrieve the next Video.

If this is a serious problem for you, replacing all video stills with a blank image is one way to work around this.

To obtain the FLV urls of your Videos, you will need to use our Universal Delivery Service and the Media APIs. To do this, you need:

1. An account that is enabled for universal delivery service. You can read more about this here.

2. A Media API token that enables URL access to your media

Once you have set up your account for universal delivery service and enabled delivery of media by HTTP, you can use the Media API to deliver videos by HTTP. To do this, use the Media API read methods with the optional media_delivery=http argument. For example:

http://api.brightcove.com/services/library?command=find_all_videos&token=[INSERT YOUR TOKEN HERE]&media_delivery=http&output=mrss

You can also download videos directly via the Video Cloud Media Module. Please see this page for further instruction.

It is very difficult to determine how long it will take to transcode a video from one format to another.

The codec, format, length, bit rate, and complexity of the source video file all have varying affects on the overall time required to transcode a video. The format you select to encode to also plays a role in the required time.

In order to provide a better level of service for uploads, if you upload a video in the Media Module that needs transcoding, Brightcove maintains two separate queues:

• The first queue transcodes for single renditions of videos, user-generated content videos, and the lowest bit rate rendition of multi-bitrate videos. Thus, when you upload a file for dynamic delivery, Brightcove transcodes the 480x360 360kbps rendition in this first queue. As soon as this 480x360 360kbps rendition has been processed, the video becomes available in the Media module and can be added to a player. 
• The higher bit rate renditions are transcoded in a second queue, so that they do not interfere with the higher priority transcoding in the first queue. As the transcoding of the other renditions is completed in the second queue, they too become available to the players in which the video is programmed. 

If you would like to read more about using Multi-bitrate Streaming in the Media Manager, please review our help center documentation here.

In the video industry, a logo overlay is commonly referred to as a digital on-screen graphic (DOG), bug, or watermark. When a viewer clicks the logo overlay, a new browser window opens at the URL specified when you configure the logo overlay. You can use the Media module to set a logo overlay for any of your videos:

Creating Logo Overlays - Video

You can also use the Brightcove Video Cloud to set a default logo overlay to use for all of the videos in your account:

Creating Logo Overlays - Account

A logo overlay travels with and serves to brand the video. If your video is virally distributed, the logo overlay is distributed with it and provides another way for viewers to find their way back to your site.

We have a guide here to walk you through creating your Logo Overlay file.

Check out some ideas, tips, and examples about how to use logo overlays to promote your brand.

The documented character limits of 60 and 250 characters correspond to the maximum limit for a field that can be stored in our database. The number of characters that will actually display will vary depending on the player template a video is being displayed in, and the characters the field contains.

Each player will display as many characters as will fit in the area allotted to that field in its template.

The specific number of characters that fit will vary depending on the content, since some characters take up more space than others. For example, a field will accommodate more letter I's than letter M's, because the M is wider.

Some larger templates will accommodate far more characters than others, and a particular video can be provisioned to multiple players with different templates.

For these reasons, the character limit in the Description should be considered distinct from what will be visible in a particular published player. Visible characters in a template do not correspond to any fixed value.

The "This video asset could not be parsed for the necessary meta-data" error message indicates that there is a problem with your FLV file. The necessary information cannot be extracted from your FLV by our servers.

This issue can generally be resolved by re-encoding and re-uploading this video.

Please note that you may need to alter settings in your FLV encoder. Re-encoding with the same settings may result in the same problem.

Although the cause may vary, the issue may be encountered if the tool used to encode your files to FLV has added additional descriptive information (for example: "Author", or a flag for "Last Second"). You may want to avoid injecting custom meta-data into your file when re-encoding.

When you receive a "Video(s) failed to delete" message, a red exclamation mark icon will appear a few seconds later in the bottom-right of the Media Module. You can click this icon for more information about why you are unable to proceed with deleting your videos.

Clicking the icon will bring up a window that includes an error, as well as a list of the videos you are attempting to delete. Select one of the videos from this window to pull up a list of playlists the video is currently assigned to. Please remember that to successfully delete a video, it must be removed from all playlist instances first.

A bumper can belong to a player or a video. Often times, the reason why your bumpers are not displaying on your videos is because you have assigned video level bumpers to your videos, but your player is set to display 'player level' bumpers.

To enable video level bumpers to playback:

1. Navigate to the publishing module
2. Select the player, and click settings
3. On the 'video player' tab, select the 'display all video-level bumpers' option
4. Click 'Save Changes'.

We have a few security measures you can enable when creating your Players:

A) Turning off the 'Get Code' button.

The 'Get Code' button is used for viewers to virally syndicate your video content. What this means is that, when a video is loaded into the Player, a viewer is able to click the 'Get Code' button to receive a code snippet that will embed the video content onto external websites.

Please take the following steps to turn off the 'Get Code' button in your Player:

Player-level

1.) Go into your "Publishing Module"
2.) Select your Player and click the 'Settings' button
3.) Under the 'Video Player' tab, uncheck the 'Blog This & Get Code' option
4.) 'Save Changes'

Video-level

1.) Go into your "Media Module"
2.) Select your Video and click the 'Edit' button
3.) Click to the 'Distribution' tab
4.) Under 'Distribution', select the 'No' radio button for 'Allow viral distribution for this video'
5.) 'Save Changes'

B) Domain Restriction

Another type of security prevention we offer on our Player is Domain Restriction. This secures users from viewing your website's source code to embed your Player onto other websites.

For example, if you choose to domain restrict your Player to 'http://yahoo.com/' and the publishing code is placed on 'http://google.com/' the Player on Google will receive an error message rather than loading successfully.

Here are the steps to set up domain restriction on your Player:

1.) Go into your "Publishing Module"
2.) Select your Player and click the 'Settings' button
3.) On the 'Global' tab, you will find the 'Domain Restrictions' edit box
4.) Type the top-level domain along with the "http://" protocal (for example: http://google.com/) into the text field and click the 'Add' button to add it to your list of allowable domains for where the Player can be published
5.) Add multiple domains, if necessary
6.) 'Save Changes'

C) Disabling the 'Get Link', 'Share' and 'E-mail' buttons

These buttons provide hyperlinks for viral syndication of your Player. The link that these buttons provide can be set to redirect to a webpage of your choice. For example, you can set this URL to redirect to a page that does not contain the Player, or perhaps to a page that requires a user to sign-in to access video content.

This redirect URL is set under the 'Settings' tab when creating/editing your Player. Choose the 'Host at a web address of your choice radio button' and enter the URL of the webpage where your Player will be embedded.

You can also just disable each of the Buttons altogether. This can be done in your Players by taking the following steps:

1.) Go into your "Publishing Module"
2.) Select your Player and click the 'Settings' button
3.) Under the 'Video Player' tab, uncheck the 'E-mail', 'Share' & 'Get Link' checkboxes as you see fit
4.) 'Save Changes'

D) Geo-Restriction

When creating players, you have the ability to restrict which countries you would like your Player to be viewed in. This can be set on the 'Security/Filtering' tab when creating or editing your Player.

All accounts come with the ability to restrict to the following countries:

1) US
2) UK
3) Canada
4) Japan

For an additional fee, we also provide services from Quova to choose from a larger list of countries. Please contact our Sales department if you are interested in acquiring this feature:

http://www.brightcove.com/about-us/contact/

The rendering of a player embedded via HTML code within an email body depends on how the given email client handles the rendering of the html code. The results may be unreliable, as Brightcove does not know how the code may function in hosted services such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail.

A better option, rather than putting the embed code in the email, is to use the "host a player on Brightcove URL" setting for the player upon its creation. You can then put an image of your video player in the email and link to it in the email so that people can click the link to view the player.