Your hosted content (so live streams are not concerned here) will not be monetizable until they are encoded and stored, but your encoding choices also determine how you are billed; It is then essential to understand the process of uploading and encoding!

 

1. Upload of hosted content

When creating a new hosted content, you will first need to upload your file (“source” module of the content creation page). You have 2 options to upload a source file:

  • Either locally (from your computer or a hard disk), in this case you are limited to 5 Gigas in source file.

  • Either from an online server (file on Amazon S3 for example), you just have to paste the url on which the content is hosted. In this case you can have a file of 30 Gigas maximum. PLEASE NOTE: Dropbox and Google Drive links are not accepted.

Note also that you can upload a single file containing multiple video or audio tracks, our system will identify and separate them.


2. Encoding of your content

When the content is uploaded, the system displays the different tracks of the content: (video tracks, subtitles files, audio tracks) in the left panel Source.

Then select the ones you want to use for your content. Click on  and they will be added in the right panel Streams.

 

Once on the right panel, your tracks are ready to be encoded! Choose the languages and qualities of the tracks you want to offer to your users. As a standard feature we recommend creating 3 video streams resolutions and 1 audio resolution (unless you have multiple multilingual audio tracks).

 

You can also rename your tracks to identify them quickly; to do so, modify the “displayed name” field.

Note that in the case of subtitle files or multilingual audio tracks, it is also the name that will appear for your viewers when choosing the language (so you must rename the track accordingly with the right language):


  • When you’re ready to create the encoding, click . Once the encoding is complete, you can always add new tracks, or delete them.
  • To view the rendering of your content, click

 

3. Encoding status of your streams

  •  = stream on the encoding waiting list
  • 35% = stream in the process of encoding
  •  = encoding full
  • = encoding not started / problem while trying to encode (hover over  for more information about the error)

4. Billing

Your OKAST package is linked to a number of hours of content that you can upload. This quota of hours is called the encoding package.


Each time you encode a video or audio track, they use part of this package (subtitle tracks and thumbnails do not enter this quota). You can find this package and the percentage already used in :


From your home page :

- You have used up 193 hours and 39 minutes of encoding time.

- Your package allows you to upload 106 hours and 21 minutes of content

From the top of the menu: CONTENT MANAGEMENT > Hosted Content :

- Your Hosted Content catalogue contains 137 items of content.

- You have used 193 hours and 39 minutes of encoding out of 300 hours.

- Your quota is 64.6%

However, the encoded streams will not use the same credit! Depending on their type and quality, they may impact differently your uploading credit. OKAST provides a system of ratios, specific to each stream you choose to encode:

  • Subtitles= 0 hours of credit used
  • Thumbnails = 0
  • Audio 160 = 0,125
  • Audio 320 = 0,125
  • Video 360p = 0,125
  • Video 480p = 0,125
  • Video 576p = 0,125
  • Video 720p = 0,25
  • Video 1080p = 0,5
  • Video 4096p = 1
  • Video in live streaming 3 resolutions (RTMP) = 2


To avoid unpleasant surprises, we will inform you by e-mail when you reach the 10%, then 5% and finally 0% of encoding time remaining.


To add encoding time, you need to send us an email with the volume you want.


For one video of 1 hour duration, here are 3 examples of encoding choices you could make, and their different impacts on your quota *:

*(These are 3 suggestions, but you are free to do the encoding choices you want!)

  • Option 1 = This content will be available in English and in the lowest quality, with French and Spanish subtitles. These encoding choices will use 15 minutes on the 300 hour credit.

  • Option 2 = This content will be available in English, with three different video qualities, and with subtitles. These encoding choices will use 1 hour on the 300 hour credit.

  • Option 3 = This content will be available in English, French, Spanish, 4K video quality and 320 audio, with subtitles. These encoding choices will use 2 hours 07 minutes and 30 seconds on the 300 hour credit.

 

⚠ Warning: once you have reached your quota, you will not be able to encode new content. You will need to upgrade to a higher rate. Also, deleting already encoded content will not reduce your encoding package (because the encoding credit will have already been used)