Introduction
Media is lies at the heart of the New Spark Media Platform. This section describes how media is consumed, stored and transcoded.
The following diagram displays a high-level overview on the flow of intake of files:
Intake
New files are submitted to the New Spark Media Platform in a variety of ways. The most common one is by a straight HTTP upload to the upload api. Additionally it is possible to add video to the New Spark Media Platform through a flash-based webcam recorder, email or through our developer API (webservice). These files are referenced as 'originals'.
Filetypes
The New Spark Media Platform has 4 major categories for filetypes:
- Image
- Video
- Audio
- Text
These number associated to these filetypes are used in a lot of places, such as the Media components, widgets and API's.
Uploader file size limitation
While the maximum size of a file that will be accepted by New Spark Media Platform is 1GB, you can customize your application to reject files that are smaller. This limit can be changed as follows in default white label applications installed via New Spark Media Platform:
- Open the 'sub_uploader.html' subtemplate from the Application Templates.
- Search for the uploader setting 'file_size_limit' and change its value to the required maximum file size limit.
- Save the 'sub_uploader.html' file.
Transcoding process
After a file is uploaded, it is not instantly ready for usage. Every media-file with the exception of text-files are placed in a transcoder queue. Depending on the size and type of the file and how busy the transcoder is, it can take from a second up to a few minutes for files to be ready. A file's status is indicated by a status number.
| Status code | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Uploading | Uploading means the file is currently being uploaded, or processed right after uploading. In most cases this status is never seen, as it is only set to uploader for a split setting. Occasionally files that are cancelled or failed during uploading will stay on this status. |
| 1 | Queue | When a file is set to status 1, it means it is currently queued for transcoding. |
| 2 | Converting | The file is being transcoded as you're looking at it. |
| 3 | Converted | The file is transcoded, and ready to be used. |
| 4 | Failed | Sometimes a file could not be transcoded, because we don't support the format or we couldn't recognize what format the file was in. In these cases the statuscode '4' will be assigned. |