As a publisher, you will want to properly manage and utilize the amount of storage that you have available within your Media Cloud. This week, we will like to cover a few points that we think you should keep in mind while uploading content for all your viewers to see!
Reducing Storage Usage:
To free up storage space, you can delete video/audio files from your Media Archive. Please keep in mind that only if the files are deleted from the Media Archive, they are deleted from your account and free up storage. If you decide to “deactivate” or “delete” videos from a VOD Channel, they will be unpublished from the Channel, but not deleted from your account, thus those files remain on your CDN storage. See How to delete files! (Links to delete files video)
Optimizing Storage Usage:
A common question among publishers is "How can I save on transcoding and storage, but at the same time sending a high quality video stream to my viewers in various different file formats to make the video viewable across all of my connected apps and platforms?"
Try to optimize the file size/quality ratio of the video files before uploading. You can do this through the use of optimized export/codec settings in your editing suite or video compression software. In general, we recommend the use of H.264 video codec (MPEG-4 AVC) which provides a good quality at substantially lower bitrates and is one of the most common codecs.Compression rate, resolution, bitrate and frame rate (true for both VOD and live-streams) are four factors balancing quality and file size. It is all about getting the most balanced “mix” of these values in order to output the best quality at the lowest file size.
Increasing Storage Usage:
And if you ever need more storage, you can either add more storage to your existing package by purchasing a monthly storage subscription or you can upgrade to a larger Lightcast package with more storage included (see a comparison of packages at https://www.lightcast.com/packages/).
Your Lightcast Success Team