Managing Formats

Article Topics: Formats, Sets, Worker

Before uploading your videos to the CMS, you should consider the video quality you want to present to your visitors. If you wish to display 720p videos only, 1080p and 720p, or any other combination of video quality, you will need to specify to NATS which video formats you want to make available. This is done in the Content Management Admin's Formats section.

Available Formats

When viewing the Formats in the admin, you will be presented with a list of your available Formats. To use the CMS Worker to transcode a video, you must have the format available in the CMS.

Adding a new Format

New Formats can be added by clicking the "Add New" button at the top right of the Formats page.

When adding a new format, you will be presented with several fields to fill, including:

• Name - The name of the format. When naming videos to skip the transcoding process, this name must be appended to the video name.

  • See File Name Convention for further details.

• File Container - Choose between MP4 and WEBM videos.

• Video Codec - Choose between H264, H265, VP9, or copy from the source video directly.

• Video Preset - Determines the quality and speed of the video processing.

• Video Tune - Adjust various filters for the format.

• Video Bitrate - Video Bitrate for the format.

• CRF - Constant Rate Factor for use with H264 or H265, sets the quality. The higher the CRF value, the worse the quality you'll have.

• Audio Codec - Choose between AAC, MP3, or copy from the source video directly.

• Audio Bitrate - Audio Bitrate for the format.

• Y Resolution of Video - The height of the video resolution in pixels.

Transcoding

Transcoding in NATS is done by the Worker that can be placed on any server of your choice, although we recommend using a server separate from your NATS installation for better performance.

You can use a server capable of transcoding your content, or you can take advantage of your local hardware and have your video editing software transcode your videos. If you opt for this option, you'll have to ensure the files are named appropriately.

File Naming Convention

When uploading videos, appropriately naming files can help avoid the transcoding process, which you might want to do if you have content in bulk and wish to put less strain on your workers' server.

For example, suppose you have a 1080p video titled "video.mp4" that you wish to upload, and you have 720p and 480p formats available in your NATS install. To avoid using the worker's transcoding process, you would use your video editing software of choice to export the 720p and 480p versions of your video and rename the 720p and 480p versions of the video to "video-720p.mp4" and "video-480p.mp4" respectively.

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