Quick Start User Guide¶
Before uploading content¶
Here are some tips and tricks to organize your content uploading anything to the platform.
It will be very helpful if you follow the same structure on your computer as the one on the platform. You can start with creating a simple text document where you include the Categories organization, keep them 2 levels. The parent level will represent your “Category groups”, and the second the actual “Categories”. Each video belongs to only one category. The parent level is called “Category Groups”, they serve to avoid folder overload in the “Videos On Demand” screen. Content cannot be assigned to them, their only purpose is to be a parent element for the “Categories” and help declutter content-rich channels.
Since we have already seen that this platform organizes everything in two levels, the best way to be prepared for it, is to organize the content the same way on the computer from which we are going to upload the content.
The next step is organizing videos and images. The easiest way to get started is by creating one main folder for videos, and another one for images. Inside both of them, stick to the two-level hierarchy (same as in your simple text document), and you will end up with an easy way to spot any differences between your computer and the platform.
In the images folder, there are a couple of more folders to be added. One, named “Identity” where you will put all of the images related to the channel's brand - logo (light and dark), favicon, fallback image, etc… Another, named “Categories” for all of the OVP video folders (only visible in the platform). The last one, named “Pages”, there you will be adding all of your Events and Pages images. Note that if you name the images/thumbnails with the same name as the videos, you will be able to find them very easily from the search bar.
Start creating content¶
Create another user account¶
Create another account in your channel.
Categories¶
Once you have everything prepared on your computer you are ready to go. Start by creating the “Category Groups” and “Categories”, copying the defined structure from your simple text document. It is highly recommended that you start and finish the whole hierarchy right away. Of course, you can add new categories at any point, but if you start by doing it at once is faster.
Images¶
The next step is adding the images. Images can be uploaded in bulk by “Drag&Drop”. Go to OVP → Images and click on the plus icon at the top to add all of the images you have already prepared. You can add them one by one, or all of them at once. Keep in mind, image files are limited to 1MB size and are presented in only one image library screen. Once you have uploaded all of them, you will have to use the search function to locate them separately. The previous organization of the files that you did on your computer will come in very helpful now.
VODs¶
Now, you can proceed to the VODs. Videos are uploaded one by one. For the first step of the upload form, you have to fill in the required information such as Title, Description, Tags, Thumbnail, and Category (This is why we started with the categories and images before). The second step is attaching the actual file, and the bitrates you want to transcode it to. When all of this is completed, you will see a pop-up screen that tells you: “Uploading Resources. Please, do not close the page” You will have to wait until it closes on its own. Once this is done, you can go on uploading videos following the exact same steps.
LIVE¶
Creating a LIVE stream follows the same steps as the videos on-demand. The first step is setting up a Title, Thumbnail, Description, Tags, and Category. The second step is where everything is different because you don’t actually have the video. You need to set the schedule for your live event, for example, “Channel’s Morning show”, you set the schedule dates:
- Start date: February 15th
- Starting time: 6:00 am
- Ending time: 9:00 am
- End date: February 15th
Next, you need to select the Bitrate presets for your stream. Turn on the switch ON AIR, otherwise, the live event will not be publicly available. This switch allows you to test the stream before the actual air-time. For example, if your morning show needs to start at 6:00 am, you will set up the LIVE EVENT starting at 5:55 am and will have those 5 minutes to test if everything is correct. If it is, you can turn the ON AIR switch on, and your live stream is going to be publicly available.
You can Add to archive the stream, which means save the LIVE event to your VOD library once it is over. You can also allow DVR for your live stream starting at 60 seconds up to 43200 seconds (12 hrs).
When everything is set up, click on the SAVE button, the platform generates “Server” and “Server Key” URLs for your streaming software set up. You can copy them by clicking on the “copy URL” icon on the video preview screen, or from the actions menu.
LINEAR PLAYLIST¶
LINEAR playlist in our OVP means a loop lineup of VoDs that can be interrupted at any point in time by a LIVE event. To set one up, first, you need to already have some videos uploaded to the platform. The first step is exactly the same as the other two video types - add a Title, Description, Tags, Thumbnail, and Category.
The second step is setting up Start date & time, and End time and date.
The third step is playlist management. On the screen you see two columns, the left one is a search bar, and the right is the playlist.
- In the search bar you can locate a specific video only once and add it to the playlist. The search function starts looking for videos from the first character you add to it. Here one video can appear only once. Every video you select here from the results will be added to the playlist.
- In the playlist you see the original order of the videos that you generated from the search column. Here, you can change the order by dragging the video row to a desired new position. You can also duplicate already added video to your playlist.
If a video status is set to HIDDEN and not publicly visible any other way, it will be included and played from a linear playlist. This may be useful for you, if you want to include a new episode from a show, and you don’t want it to be available on demand.
PAGES¶
There are several types of pages that every website should have, such as About, Our Story, Privacy policy, etc… There are two types of pages that exist in this platform - simple text pages and events.
You may be thinking what an event is?
Events have their own order and are automatically organized as an UPCOMING and PAST events, depending on the publishing date. Event publications are usually used to announce future live streams and share them on social media. Once its date has passed, it is automatically added to the “Past Events” section. In both pages and events, you have everything you need to categorize and cross-reference your content, using your global categories, tags, and images.
Set up the site¶
If you already have a website and you are looking for an online video platform that manages your videos, you can use our embedded players and it works perfectly. You can also use an automatic native website generated for all of your videos and customize it in a lot of ways.
Identity¶
Starting from the Identity part, you can add Light and Dark logos to be able to switch through both of the modes just with a switch.
In this screen, you set up the favicon of your website, select a different font and color combination for your links and headings for the home page. If you want to include Google Analytics, you can do it here by Copy & Paste the GA-identifier code in the form field.
When there is no content available in your channel you can set a default image that serves as a placeholder, and ideally, it is representing your brand. You can add a PNG (transparent background), GIF (some movement), or a JPG.
The next section is setting up social media profiles. You can include them in the header and/or footer of your website. Also important to notice that you can select what social media websites enable for automatic sharing of your content.
Menus¶
Menus are lists of links that you can create and include in the header or footer of your website. You can select from:
- Automatic Links
- Categories
- Category Groups
- Custom Links
- Pages/Events
- Tags
You can create a new customized mix of different links for your main navigation. You can also edit the default header menu.
Templates¶
With the platform’s website templates, you can customize your website in a variety of different ways.
Think about horizontal parts that build up your website, starting from the header and ending with the footer.
There are three different types of headers. Select the one that makes more sense for your brand.
In the footer section, you can select if your footer has two, three, or four columns, and then you add or remove the content in it. There are lots of combinations to be achieved here. For example, you can leave columns blank to displace content.
On the Home page, you can add an unlimited number of rows of content and each row can be customized. You can select the building row criteria: category, tag, latest videos, most viewed, or handpick specific videos by name. You can edit the number of elements that are included in the row and if they overflow the viewport. You can show or hide the row title, increase/decrease the gaps between the elements, etc …
On the global VIDEOS page, the content is organized by category. You can change the order and if a specific category is visible or hidden on that page.
There are two different layouts for a single video page. They apply to LIVE events as well.
The automatic EVENTS page is similar to the VIDEOS gallery, but its order is based on UPCOMING and PAST EVENTS. In the same way, as in the video gallery, you can customize the number of elements and what exactly is included in the global view. There are two different layouts for an EVENT page and only one layout for a text page.