For Infradox Flex version 32.17 and later
This article describes how to configure the video ingestion settings and how to upload video files with FTP. This article is not about uploading video files with the HTTP uploader. Note that the Infradox multi media module is required. Uploading video does not affect the recurring hosting fees.
Page last updated: 10 April 2022
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Granting permissions
A staff member must have been granted permissions to be able to access the video ingestion page. To do this, log in with your Super admin account and find the staff member in User management. Open the user dialog and click on the “admin” tab. Configure the permissions and click Save.
Video ingestion configuration
The settings that best suit your needs depend on how you will be supplying metadata for your video files. Go to Site configuration and click on the “Video ingestion settings” icon. The settings are described below.
Supplier matching
Each file must be linked to a supplier which can be achieved in different ways.
- Create subfolders (with your FTP account) in the video ingestion folder and use the unique supplier id’s as folder names. This will allow the system to automatically link the video files to the supplier, and the metadata does not need to have any supplier info (i.e. an id or name or credit). Select the radio button “Subfolder names are supplier id’s” if you want to use this method.
- If you want to upload metadata containing the supplier id’s, then all video files can be uploaded to the same folder without having to create subfolders. The metadata must have a tag with the name “supplierid” and the id value must be a supplier id (that you can find in Supplier management). Note that you upload xml sidecar files for each video file, but you can also upload bulk XML or CSV files – which is explained in this article.
- If you want to upload metadata with values that can be used to match the supplier by name or code, then select the radio button “Metadata contains matching code or name”. In this case the metadata repository must be configured for supplier matching.
If a submitted file can’t be linked to its supplier, then the file will appear in the “Unmatched files” overview that you can access via Supplier management in Back office.
Processing requires
You can configure the ingestion workflow to automatically process and add video files to your website, or you can configure the settings so that you can “flight check” your uploads first, or so that you can upload bulk XML or CSV data separately.
If you want to control the thumbnail that shows on e.g. search results and preview pages, then you can upload jpeg files that will be used as so called “poster” files. Normally, videos will play when you hover over the thumbnails and preview clips will automatically play. This default behaviour can of course be changed.
- Poster file
Select this setting if you want to use poster files. Processing will not start until the poster file is found. Untick this setting if you don’t want to upload poster files. In this case, a poster file (jpg) is automatically created from the video file. - Metadata file.
If you want to be able to process video files without any metadata, then untick this setting. Normally this must on, i.e. processing can’t start if there’s no metadata for the video files. - XML validation.
It is recommended to tick this setting. If however you want to enable automatic/unattended processing to start as soon as the metadata sidecar file is found, then untick this setting. XML will not be checked first. - Enable automatic submission for processing
Tick this setting to have files submitted for processing automatically as soon as all required files are found (also see above settings). - Poster file found and Metadata file found
If “Enable automatic submission for processing” is on, then these two settings will determine when the video file will be automatically submitted for processing.
XML id tag
This input field should be empty unless you have been instructed otherwise by support.
External storage
If you upload low resolution files only – and your high resolution files are stored on a 3rd party storage solution (for example Amazon S3), then enter the tag (field) names that your metadata uses to specify the id and the container/bucket of the high res file on your remote storage solution. Your website will use this information to automatically fetch the high resolution file from remote storage on-the-fly. E.g. if a user wants to download the high res file.
If you use Infradox storage for your high res video files, then leave these to input boxes empty.
XML tag to database mappings
The video ingestion procedures read XML sidecar files. These files have the metadata for the video files that you upload. You can upload the sidecar files, but you can also have these files created for you by uploading bulk XML or CSV files – i.e. files that contain the metadata for all the video files that you upload in a single file. This process is described further down in this article.
You can configure the mappings that you want to use, i.e. which field value that is read from your metadata file goes into which field in the database. In addition to the standard fields that your metadata can contain, you can add up to 10 custom tags/field names at the bottom of the list.
Bulk XML defaults
If you want to upload XML metadata files that have metadata for multiple video files, then configure the defaults for your XML file. If the default settings are not configured, then you’ll have to input the tag names every time you import a metadata file.
Configuring an FTP account for the video ingestion workflow
To upload your files for the video ingestion workflow, you’ll need to create an FTP account. Go to Site configuration and click on FTP accounts.
Click “New” in the toolbar to open the FTP account dialog. Enter a user name and tick the “FTP account for video ingestion” checkbox and select the “Upload by staff or 3rd party” radio button. The “allowed extensions” input box must have the extensions of files that you want to accept, e.g. mp4,mov,webm for video files, xml for your metadata files and jpg for your poster files. Configure the rest of the settings and save the account. Note that the FTP login must be unique (i.e. you may not create more than one account with the same FTP login), and your password must contain both letters and numbers, at least one other character and at least one upper case letter.
You will now be able to connect to the FTP server with the login and password that you have entered.
FTP accounts remain valid for one year, and you can renew the account for another year (a reminder will be sent seven days before the account licence will expire). There are no costs for the video ingestion FTP account licence, it is included with the Multi Media module.
Video ingestion workflow
Click on “Video ingestion” in your dashboard to go to the video processing page.
Scanning
To reduce processor time, the video ingestion folder is not scanned for new files. Before or after you have uploaded new files with your FTP account, you will need to enable scanning by clicking on the “Scanning” button in the toolbar. It is recommended to switch scanning off again when you’re done.
It may take up to 5 minutes for scanning to start after you enable scanning. Once started, the server will scan your video ingestion folder once every minute.
The list will show you the video files that have been found in the ingestion folder. The order in which you upload your files (video, metadata and poster files) does not matter, but metadata and poster files will only appear after the video file is found. Note that poster files must have the same file name as the video file, but with the jpg file extension. This is also true for the metadata XML files if you upload separate sidecar files. These must have the same as the video file but with the xml file extension.
Automatic refresh
If you are monitoring new uploads, then you can click the “Automatic refresh” button. This will automatically refresh the list every minute.
Automatic processing or manually submitting files for processing
If you have configured automatic processing, then found files are automatically marked for processing if all conditions are met. The list will show all found video files, and it will indicate which other files are found for each of the video files (poster and data files). Use the filter radio buttons at the top of the list to e.g. show files that are still waiting, that are currently processing, that are missing data and so on.
Upload bulk data files
You can upload bulk data files before or after you have uploaded your video files. The order is not important. To upload either XML or CSV files, open the File manager (in the toolbar at the top) and click on the “Videoingestion” folder in the sidebar. Then click on the subfolder (bulkxml for XML, or bulkcsv for CSV files). Click on the upload button to upload your data file. When you are done, close the File manager dialog. You can now click on “Process bulk XML” or “Process bulk CSV” in the toolbar of the video ingestion page.
Bulk XML
Click on the “Process bulk XML” button.
In the dialog, select the file that you want to process in the dropdown box. The box lists files that you have uploaded with the File manager as described above.
If you have not already configured the defaults for this, enter the XML settings. The tag names that you need to enter depend on the tags used in the metadata file. The file name tag must have the name of the video file. E.g. if your metadata file has <source>myvideofile.mp4</source>, this would require “source” in the “Filename tag name” input box.
Finally click on “Submit” to process the file. A separate XML sidecar file will have been created for each “container” (row) in your bulk data file.
Click on the Refresh button in the toolbar to update the list.
Bulk CSV
Click on the “Process bulk CSV” button.
In the dialog, select the file that you want to process in the dropdown box. The box lists files that you have uploaded with the File manager as described above.
Enter the exact name of the column that stores the video file names, and if your data file has supplier id’s, then enter the exact name of the supplier id column.
Configure the rest of the settings and finally click on “Submit” to process the file. A separate XML sidecar file will have been created for each row in your bulk data file.
Click on the Refresh button in the toolbar to update the list.
Validating the XML before processing
To check the metadata of found files before you submit the video files for processing, select the files that you want to check (click in the box in the header bar to select all files on the page) and click on the “Validate XML” button. The list will be updated with the status of the metadata files. Whether or not the XML files are found valid depends on the video ingestion settings. E.g. if you have configured the settings for processing with supplier id’s in the metadata and the supplier id is missing, then the XML file is not valid. If you have configured the settings for high resolution storage on 3rd party solutions and the metadata is missing the storage id, then the metadata is marked as not valid. Et cetera.
Submitting the files for processing
Once everything is ok, select the files that you want to submit for processing and click on the “Submit files” button in the toolbar.
Monitoring the status
Refresh the list to see the updated status of your files.
The video ingestion page will list processed files for one day (both successfully and unsuccessfully processed files), after which the entries are moved to the log. Click on “View log” in the toolbar to see the processing history.
Recommended workflow
It is recommended to disable automatic submission for processing – so that you can check your uploads and metadata before the files are being processed. We also recommend that you configure the settings to require a poster file, a metadata file and XML validation. For supplier matching, it is recommended to supply the unique Infradox supplier id in the metadata.
Trouble shooting
If your video files don’t appear in the list:
- Check the log (View log button in the toolbar) to see if the file has already been processed.
- If there are multiple video files with the same file name but with different extensions, only the first encountered video file will appear. You should not upload different video formats with the same file name.
- Make sure that the files have valid file names and file extensions.
- Make sure that the files are valid video files of the correct video format.
If your video files show that the metadata side car file is missing:
- If you have uploaded bulk XML or CSV to the video ingestion folder, remove it and upload it with the File manager as described in this article.
- If you have uploaded a bulk metadata file, make sure to process it with either the “Process Bulk XML” or “Process bulk CSV” buttons in the toolbar.
- If you have uploaded separate sidecar metadata files (XML), make sure that the file names match the video files.
- If you have uploaded bulk data files, make sure the file names are in the data, that the file names are exact and valid.
If your video files aren’t marked as “Can submit”:
- Make sure all the required files are in the ingestion folder. The list will show if all files are found.
- Make sure that you have used the “Validate XML” function for all the files that you want to submit.
- Make sure that the metadata contains either a supplier id or a value for supplier matching (if you haven’t configured subfolder based processing).
If your processed video files do not appear on your website:
- Check the log (View log button in the toolbar) to see if the file didn’t process because of errors.
- Check Supplier management, Unmatched files to see if there are files waiting for user action.
