Video video

This section describes working with video in Dynamic Media.

Quick Start: Videos quick-start-videos

The following step-by-step workflow description is designed to help you get up and running quickly with adaptive video sets in Dynamic Media. After each step, there are cross-references to topic headings where you can find more information.

Work with video in Dynamic Media working-with-video-in-dynamic-media

Video in Dynamic Media is an end-to-end solution that makes it easy to publish high-quality Adaptive Video for streaming across multiple screens, including desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. An Adaptive Video Set groups versions of the same video that are encoded at different bit rates and formats such as 400 kbps, 800 kbps, and 1000 kbps. The desktop computer or mobile device detects the available bandwidth.

For example, on an iOS mobile device, it detects a bandwidth such as 3G, 4G, or Wi-Fi. Then, it automatically selects the right encoded video from among the various video bit rates within the Adaptive Video Set. The video is streamed to desktops, mobile devices, or tablets.

In addition, video quality is dynamically switched automatically if network conditions change on the desktop or on the mobile device. Also, if a customer enters full-screen mode on a desktop, the Adaptive Video Set responds by using a better resolution, improving the customer’s viewing experience. Using Adaptive Video Sets provides you with the best possible playback for customers playing Dynamic Media video on multiple screens and devices.

The logic that a video player uses to determine which encoded video to play or to select during playback is based on the following algorithm:

For detailed technical information about the algorithm, see https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/av/+/master/media/libstagefright/httplive/LiveSession.cpp

For managing single video and Adaptive Video Sets, the following is supported:

Adaptive video streaming is supported on various iOS platforms. See Dynamic Media Viewers Reference Guide.

See Dynamic video playback sample.

See also Viewers for Experience Manager Assets and Dynamic Media Classic and Viewers for Experience Manager Assets only in the Dynamic Media Viewers Reference Guide.

Best practice: Using the HTML5 video viewer best-practice-using-the-html-video-viewer

The Dynamic Media HTML5 Video viewer presets are robust video players. You can use them to avoid many common issues that are associated with HTML5 video playback and issues associated with mobile devices. For example, a lack of adaptive bitrate streaming delivery and limited desktop browser reach.

On the design side of the player, you can design the video player’s functionality using standard web development tools. For example, you can design the buttons, controls, and custom poster image background using HTML5 and CSS to help you reach your customers with a customized appearance.

On the playback side of the viewer, it automatically detects the browser’s video capability. It then serves the video using HLS or DASH, also known as adaptive video streaming. Or, if those delivery methods are not present then HTML5 progressive is used instead.

You can combine into a single player the ability to design the playback components using HTML5 and CSS. It can have embedded playback, and use adaptive and progressive streaming depending on the browser’s capability. All this functionality, means you can extend the reach of your rich media content to both desktop and mobile users and ensure a streamlined video experience.

See also Viewers for Experience Manager Assets only in the Dynamic Media Viewers Reference Guide.

Playback of video on desktop computers and mobile devices using the HTML5 video viewer playback-of-video-on-desktop-computers-and-mobile-devices-using-the-html-video-viewer

For desktop and mobile adaptive video streaming, the videos used for bit rate switching are based on all MP4 videos in the Adaptive Video Set.

Video playback occurs using either HLS or DASH, or progressive video download. In prior versions of Experience Manager, such as 6.0, 6.1, and 6.2, videos were streamed over HTTP.

However, in Experience Manager 6.3 and on, videos are now streamed over HTTPS (that is, HLS or DASH) because the DM gateway service URL always uses HTTPS as well. There is no customer impact in this default behavior. That is, video streaming will always occur over HTTPS unless it is not supported by the browser. See the following table.

Therefore,

DASH is the international standard and HLS is an Apple standard. Both are used for adaptive video streaming. And, both technologies automatically adjust playback based on network bandwidth capacity. It also lets the customer “seek” to any point in the video without the need to wait for the rest of the video to download.

Progressive video is delivered by downloading and storing the video locally on a user’s desktop system or mobile device.

The following table describes the device, browser, and playback method of videos on desktop computers and mobile devices using the Dynamic Media HTML5 Video Viewer.

Architecture of Dynamic Media video solution architecture-of-dynamic-media-video-solution

The following graphic shows the overall authoring workflow of videos that are uploaded and encoded by way of DMGateway (in Dynamic Media Hybrid mode) and made available for public consumption.

Hybrid publishing architecture for videos hybrid-publishing-architecture-for-videos

Best practices for encoding videos best-practices-for-encoding-videos

The Dynamic Media Encode Video workflow encodes video if you have enabled Dynamic Media and set up video Cloud Services. This workflow captures workflow process history and failure information. If you have enabled Dynamic Media and set up video Cloud Services, the Dynamic Media Encode Video workflow automatically takes effect when you upload a video. (If you are not using Dynamic Media, the DAM Update Asset workflow takes effect.)

The following are best-practice tips for encoding source video files.

Source video files source-video-files

When you encode a video file, use a source video file of the highest possible quality. Avoid using previously encoded video files because these files are already compressed, and further encoding creates a subpar quality video.

The following table describes the recommended size, aspect ratio, and minimum bit rate that your source video files must have before you encode them:

Obtain a file’s metadata obtaining-a-file-s-metadata

You can obtain a file’s metadata by viewing its metadata using an editing tool for videos, or using an application designed for obtaining metadata. Following are instructions for using MediaInfo, a third-party application, to obtain a video file’s metadata:

Aspect ratio aspect-ratio

When you choose or create a video encoding preset for your primary source video file, make sure that the preset has the same aspect ratio as the primary source video file. The aspect ratio is the ratio of the width to the height of the video.

To determine the aspect ratio of a video file, obtain the file’s metadata and note the file’s width, and height (see Obtaining a file’s metadata above). Then use this formula to determine the aspect ratio:

width/height = aspect ratio

The following table describes how formula results translate to common aspect ratio choices:

For example, a video that is 1440 width x 1080 height has an aspect ratio of 1440/1080, or 1.33. In this case, you choose a video encoding preset with a 4:3 aspect ratio to encode the video file.

Bitrate bitrate

Bitrate is the amount of data that is encoded to make up a single second of video playback. The bitrate is measured in kilobits per second (Kbps).

When selecting a bitrate encoding, there are two types you can choose:

When do you use VBR versus CRB?
When selecting VBR versus CBR, it is almost always recommended that you use VBR for your media files. VBR provides higher-quality files at competitive bitrates. When you use VBR, be sure you use with two-pass encoding, and set the maximum bitrate to be 1.5x the target video bitrate.

When you choose a video encoding preset, be sure you account for the target user’s connection speed. Choose a preset with a data rate that is 80 percent of that speed. For example, if the target user’s connection speed is 1000 Kbps, the best preset is one with a video data rate of 800 Kbps.

This table describes the data rate of typical connection speeds.

Resolution resolution

Resolution describes a video file’s height and width in pixels. Most source video is stored at a high resolution (for example, 1920 x 1080). For streaming purposes, source video is compressed to a smaller resolution (640 x 480 or smaller).

Resolution and data rate are two integrally linked factors that determine video quality. To maintain the same video quality, the higher the number of pixels in a video file (the higher the resolution), the higher the data rate must be. For example, consider the number of pixels per frame in a 320 x 240 resolution and a 640 x 480 resolution video file:

The 640 x 480 file has four times more pixels per frame. To achieve the same data rate for these two example resolutions, you apply four times the compression to the 640 x 480 file, which can reduce the quality of the video. Therefore, a video data rate of 250 Kbps produces high-quality viewing at a 320 x 240 resolution, but not at a 640 x 480 resolution.

In general, the higher data rate you use, the better your video appears, and the higher resolution you use, the higher data rate you must maintain viewing quality (compared to lower resolutions).

Because resolution and data rate are linked, you have two options when encoding video:

When you choose (or create) a video encoding preset for your primary source video file, use this table to target the correct resolution:

Fps (Frames per second) fps-frames-per-second

In the United States and Japan, most video is shot at 29.97 frames per second (fps); in Europe, most video is shot at 25 fps. Film is shot at 24 fps.

Choose a video encoding preset that matches the fps rate of your primary source video file. For example, if your primary source video is 25 fps, choose an encoding preset with 25 fps. By default, all custom encoding uses the primary source video file’s fps. For this reason, you do not need to explicitly specify the fps setting when you create a video encoding preset.

Video encoding dimensions video-encoding-dimensions

For optimal results, select encoding dimensions such that the source video is a whole multiple of all your encoded videos.

To calculate this ratio, you divide source width by encoded width to get the width ratio. Then, you divide source height by encoded height to get the height ratio.

If the resulting ratio is a whole integer, it means that the video is optimally scaled. If the resulting ratio is not a whole integer, it impacts video quality by leaving leftover pixel artifacts on the display. This effect is most noticeable when the video has text.

As an example, suppose that your source video is 1920 x 1080. In the following table, the three encoded videos provide the optimal encoding settings to use.

Encoded video file format encoded-video-file-format

Dynamic Media recommends using MP4 H.264 video encoding presets. Because MP4 files use the H.264 video codec, it provides high-quality video but in a compressed file size.

View video reports viewing-video-reports

Video Reports display several aggregate metrics across a specified period to help you monitor that published individual and aggregate videos are performing as expected. The following top metrics data are aggregated for all published videos across your entire website:

A table of all published videos is also listed so you can track the top viewed videos on your website based on total video starts.

When you select a video name in the list, it shows you the video’s audience retention (drop-off) report in the form of a line chart. The chart displays the number of views for any given moment of time during video playback. When you play the video, the vertical bar tracks in synchronization with the time indicator in the player. Drops in the line chart data indicate where your audience drops off from disinterest.

If the video was encoded outside of Adobe Experience Manager Dynamic Media, the audience retention (drop-off) chart and the Play Percentage data in the table are not available.

By default, the first time you enter Video Reports, the report displays video data starting at the first of the current month and ends with the current month’s date. However, you can override the default date range by specifying your own date range. The next time you enter Video Reports, the date range you specified is used.

For video reports to work correctly, a Report Suite ID is automatically created when Dynamic Media Cloud Services is configured. At the same time, the Report Suite ID is pushed to the Publish server so that it is available for the Copy URL feature when you preview assets. However, this functionality requires the Publish server be already set up. If the Publish server is not set up, you can still publish to see the video report. However, you must return to the Dynamic Media Cloud Configuration and select OK.

To view video reports:

Enable DASH, multi-subtitle, and multi-audio track support on your Dynamic Media account enable-dash

About enabling DASH support on your account
DASH (Digital Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) is the international standard for video streaming and is widely adopted across different video viewers. When DASH is enabled on your account, you get the option to choose from either DASH or HLS for adaptive video streaming. Or, you can opt for both with automatic switching between players when auto is selected as the playback type in the Viewer preset.

Some key benefits from enabling DASH on your account include the following:

Enabling DASH support on your account is done by way of an Adobe Customer Support case that you create and submit.

About enabling multi-subtitle and multi-audio track support on your account

At the same time that you create an Adobe Support case to have DASH enabled on your account, you can also benefit from having multi-subtitle and multi-audio track support automatically enabled. After enablement, all subsequent videos that you upload are processed with a new backend architecture that includes support for adding multi-subtitle and multi-audio tracks to your videos.

To enable DASH, multi-subtitle, and multi-audio track support on your Dynamic Media account:

About multi-subtitle and multi-audio track support for videos in Dynamic Media about-msma

With multi-subtitle and multi-audio track capability in Dynamic Media, you can easily add multiple subtitles and audio tracks to a primary video. This capability means that your videos are accessible across a global audience. You can customize a single, published primary video to a global audience in multiple languages and adhere with accessibility guidelines for different geographical regions. Authors can also manage the subtitles and audio tracks from a single tab in the user interface.

Some of the use cases to consider for adding multi-subtitles and multi-audio tracks to your primary video include the following:

All video formats supported in Dynamic Media and all Dynamic Media video viewers—except the Dynamic Media Video_360 viewer—are supported for use with multi-subtitles and multi-audio tracks.

Multi-subtitle and multi-audio track capability is available for your Dynamic Media account by way of a feature toggle that must be enabled (turned on) by Adobe Customer Support.

Add multi-subtitles and multi-audio tracks to your video add-msma

Before you add multi-subtitle and multi-audio tracks to your video, be sure you already have the following in-place:

Added subtitles and captions are supported with WebVTT and Adobe VTT formats. And, added audio track files are supported with MP3 format.

To add multi-subtitles and multi-audio tracks to your video:

About adding subtitle and audio track files to a video that is already published

When you upload additional subtitle files or audio track files to a video that is already published, it means that those files will have a Processed status after they are prepared, following upload. At that point, you can preview the video in Dynamic Media to see or hear the newly uploaded files.

Following preview, however, you must publish the video again for the newly added subtitle or audio track files to be published, too. After publishing, the subtitles or audio becomes available with the public Dynamic Media URL.

In the scenario where you have configured Dynamic Media for immediate publish, the uploading of additional subtitle or audio files immediately triggers a publish of the video following the upload of subtitle or audio files.

Add multiple captions to a video that has an existing URL with caption modifier

Dynamic Media supports the addition of a single caption with video by way of a URL modifier. See Add captions to video.

Multiple caption changes take precedence over a caption added by way of a URL modifier for published videos.

To add multiple captions to a video that has an existing URL with caption modifier:

View the lifecycle status of uploaded subtitle and audio track files lifecycle-status-video

You can observe the lifecycle status of any subtitle or audio track file uploaded to your primary video from the Subtitles & Audio Tracks tab of Properties.

To view the lifecycle status of a video:

Lifecycle status of each uploaded subtitle and audio track file.

Set the default audio for a video that has multiple audio tracks

By default, a video’s original audio is set as the default audio to be played.

However, any uploaded audio track files can be set as the default audio to play after a video is loaded into the viewer. In the Properties user interface, under the Subtitles & Audio Tracks tab, the Default label is applied to the right of the audio track file for video playback.

To set the default audio for a video that has multiple audio tracks:

Preview a video that has multiple subtitles and audio tracks preview-video-audio-subtitle

After subtitle files and audio track files are uploaded to a video and processed, you can use the Dynamic Media video viewer to preview all the different tracks. Doing so helps you to see what your video looks and sounds like to customers and ensures that it is behaving as expected.

When you are satisfied with the video, you can publish it using any one of the following methods.

See Embed the Video or Image Viewer on a Web Page.
See Link URLs to your web application. The URL-based method of linking is not possible if your interactive content has links with relative URLs, particularly links to Experience Manager Sites pages.
See Add Dynamic Media Assets to pages.

To preview a video that has multiple subtitles and audio tracks:

Delete subtitle or audio track files from a video

You can delete subtitle or audio track files from a video. Deletion of published subtitle or audio track files is automatically reflected in the video’s published URL.

The original audio track extracted from a primary video cannot be deleted.

To delete subtitle or audio track files from a video:

Download subtitle or audio track files that were uploaded to a video

You can download one or more subtitle or audio track files that you uploaded for use with a video. You have the option of either downloading all selected files as a .zip, or creating a separate download folder for each file.

The original audio track extracted from a primary file cannot be downloaded.

To download subtitle or audio track files from a video:

Add closed captions or subtitles to video adding-captions-to-video

You can extend the reach of your videos to global markets by adding closed captioning to single videos or to Adaptive Video Sets. By adding closed captioning, you avoid the need to dub the audio, or the need to use native speakers to rerecord the audio for each different language. The video is played in the language that it was recorded. Foreign language subtitles appear so that people of different languages can still understand the audio portion.

Closed captioning also allows for greater accessibility for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

See also Accessibility in Dynamic Media.

Dynamic Media can convert caption files to JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format. This conversion means you can embed the JSON text into a web page as a hidden but complete transcript of the video. Search engines can then crawl/index the content to make the videos more easily discoverable and give customers more details about the video content.

See Serving static (non-image) contents for more information about using the JSON function in a URL.

To add captions or subtitles to video:

Follow the onscreen instructions from a site to author and save your WebVTT file. When you have finished, copy the caption file contents and paste it into a plain text editor and save it with a VTT filename extension.

Generally, you want to name the caption VTT file the same name as the video file, and append it with the language locale, such as -EN, or -FR, or -DE. By doing so, it can help you with automating the generation of the video URLs using your existing web content management system.

Add chapter markers to video adding-chapter-markers-to-video

You can make your long-form videos easier to watch and navigate by adding chapter markers to single videos or to Adaptive Video Sets. When a user plays the video, they can select the chapter markers on the video timeline (also known as the video scrubber). They can easily navigate to their point of interest, or immediately jump to new content, training, and demonstrations.

You create a chapter list for your video in much the same way that you create captions. That is, you create a WebVTT file. Note, however, that this file must be separate from any WebVTT caption file. You cannot combine captions and chapters into one WebVTT file.

You can use the following sample as an example of the format you use to create a WebVTT file with chapter navigation:

WebVTT file with video chapter navigation webvtt-file-with-video-chapter-navigation

WEBVTT
Chapter 1
00:00.000 --> 01:04.364
The bicycle store behind it all.
Chapter 2
01:04.364 --> 02:00.944
Creative Cloud.
Chapter 3
02:00.944 --> 03:02.937
Ease of management for a working solution.
Chapter 4
03:02.937 --> 03:35.000
Cost-efficient access to rapidly evolving technology.

In the example above, Chapter 1 is the cue identifier and is optional. The cue time of 00:00:000 --> 01:04:364 specifies the start time and end time of the chapter, in 00:00:000 format. That last three digits are milliseconds and can be left as 000, if preferred. The chapter title of The bicycle store behind it all is the actual description of the chapter’s contents. The cue identifier, the starting cue time, and the chapter title all appear in a pop-up in the video player when a user hovers their mouse pointer over a visual cue point in the timeline.

Because you are using an HTML5 video viewer, ensure that the chapter file you create follows the WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks) standard. The chapter filename extension is .VTT. You can learn more information about the WebVTT captioning standard.

See WebVTT: The Web Video Text Tracks format.

To add chapter markers to video:

About video thumbnails about-video-thumbnails

A video thumbnail is a reduced-size version of a video frame or an image asset representing the video to the customer. The thumbnail should serve to encourage a customer to select the video.

All videos in Experience Manager must have an associated thumbnail; you cannot delete a thumbnail without replacing it. By default, when you upload a video to Experience Manager, the first frame is used as the thumbnail. However, you can customize the thumbnail for branding purposes or visual search, for example. When you customize a video thumbnail, you can either play the video and pause on the frame you want to use. Or, you can select an image asset that you have already uploaded and published in your digital asset manager.

When the thumbnail is changed for a video, thumbnail generation by way of Asset Compute Service on reprocessing the video is skipped.

The ability to customize a video thumbnail is only available after you have applied a video profile to the folder where the video is located.

Adding a custom video thumbnail adding-a-custom-video-thumbnail

Change the Dynamic Media URL for Dynamic Media assets

Videos processed in Dynamic Media can be used by way of out-of-the-box viewers and also by directly accessing the manifest URLs and playing them through your own custom viewers. The following is the API for fetching manifest URLs for a video.

About the getVideoManifestURI API

The getVideoManifestURIAPI is exposed through cq-scene7-api:com.day.cq.dam.scene7.api and can be used to generate the following manifest URLs:

/**
* Returns the manifest url for videos
* @param resource video resource
* @param manifestType type of video streaming manifest being requested
* @param onlyIfPublished return a manifest only if the video is published
* @return the manifest url for videos
*
* @throws Exception
*/
@Nullable
String getVideoManifestURI(Resource resource, ManifestType manifestType, boolean onlyIfPublished) throws Exception;

getVideoManifestURI API parameters

This API takes in the following three parameters:

To fetch the manifest URLs for videos using the method above, add a video encoding profile to an “upload videos” folder. Dynamic Media processes these videos based on the encodings found in the video encoding file that was assigned to the folder. Now you can invoke the above API for fetching manifest URLs for the uploaded videos.

Error scenarios

The API returns null if there are errors. Exceptions are logged in Experience Manager error logs. All such logged errors start with Could not generate Video Manifest URI. The following scenarios can make such errors occur: