Media Groups can be used on a variety publishing platforms such as TV Apps (Roku, FireTV, AppleTV, etc.), mobile apps and Web Apps as subcategories within your On-Demand Channels, adding an additional navigation level to your publishing properties.
With the LightcastAPI (included in larger packages as seen on www.lightcast.com/packages/) you can place your media groups on your website through dynamic feeds.
Please note that some smaller packages might not include Media Groups and require an upgrade to a larger package (see www.lightcast.com/packages)
You can use Media Groups to:
1. Group videos in a channel by topics or themes
2. Create and manage sub-categories in your TV Apps, mobile apps or on your website
3. Tag videos with a specific topic or theme (a "common denominator" of a specific number of videos within a channel)
4. Organize your videos within a Channel and make the navigation in your TV Apps and mobile apps more user friendly. Especially if you have more than 20 videos in a VOD Channel, the Media Groups feature helps viewers to better find their content of interest.
Media Groups don't belong to a specific VOD Channel. They are independent from VOD Channels. Videos can be assigned to one or multiple Media Groups and all your Media Groups are available for assignment for all your videos. The advantage is, that videos from across multiple VOD Channels can be assigned to one or multiple Media Groups.
There are 2 options for Media Groups to be displayed as sub-category within a VOD Channel:
1. If a Media Group like e.g. "My Sub-Category 1" should be displayed only within one VOD Channel, only assign videos from that specific VOD Channel to the "Sub-Category 1" Media Group.
2. If the Media Group "My Sub-Category 1" should be displayed across multiple VOD Channels, e.g. to "My VOD Channel 1" and "My VOD Channel 3", you would have to assign videos from "My VOD Channel 1" and "My VOD Channel 3" to that specific Media Group.
Watch a video on how to create a Media Group - ADD LINK TO THE MEDIA GROUPS TIP OF THE WEEK!
Learn the difference between Media Groups and SubChannels: What is the difference between Media Groups and Sub Channels?