Destination Locations

Aspera's fasp™ technology dramatically speeds transfer time over public networks making it a perfect compliment for cloud based video encoding. Transferring your video to and from an Aspera Enterprise Server or Aspera Connect Server to Encoding.com over fasp™ will provide accelerated and encrypted file transfer as well as support for extremely large source videos.  

For soure files, format your URL for AddMedia and AddMediabenchmark requests from an Aspera Enterprise Server or Aspera Connect Server™

fasp://[user[:password]@]hostname/[path]/[filename]

For destination files format as follows for deliver to an Aspera Enterprise Server or Aspera Connect Server™

fasp://[user[:password]@]hostname/[path]/[filename]

If you would like to user Microsoft Azure Blob storage as a source or destination, please follow these simple steps:

- Use a standard URL to access a source or destination locatlon: http(s)://[access_key]@[account].blob.core.windows.net/[container]/path
- Ensure to URL encode any special characters within the access_key 

Here is one example of a properly constructed URL:
http://P9DM47UTCF%2BQJZXl0uWy28J4jBdgnYv0SJPh%2FR%2AWCFOLPTBHuyeXtMfDOU75Wd0Yl2xm67vVTYGVAWSEDRdcw%3D%3D@[account].blob.core.windows.net/encoding/file.ext

Special notes for Azure Blob Storage:

- Your container name must consist of 3-63 characters, digits or sign "-". Please make sure to not have a "-" at the beginning or end of your container name.  
- If you do not include the access_key within your URL, they will be interpreted like casual urls. files in such urls should be public readable.

Setting up for streaming from CloudFront with Encoding.com is easy. Once you've enabled your clips for access by authenticated users or public use, follow these steps in the AWS console under CloudFront:

1 - Create a new Distribution. Set the delivery method to 'Download' - Selecting 'streaming' will not work for this workflow 

2 - Customize the next screen, or just click 'Continue' / 'Create Distribution'

3 - Deliver as normally to the bucket specified for CloudFront and you're ready to go.

For more information on CloudFront streaming, please see AWS's documentation here: http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/

You've encoded your file and now would like to save a copy, right? In your original request, if you didn't specify a destination URL, S3 / Rackspace / FTP, Encoding.com will store your videos free of charge for 15 days on our servers. Please note, the limit for this storage is 100 GB and your files will be deleted after 15 days.  You can easily download your encoded files by logging into http://www.encoding.com/login --> Selecting 'Encoding Queue' and browsing to the file you wish to download. Expand the task and right click on 'Download.' Your encoded file will now be saved locally. 

Want to use S3 as a source location for your material, but you don't want to hand out secret or access keys? Give this a try! Use your canonical ID at the end of the URL string to pass the ownership from Encoding.com to yourself. Alternately, give your source location access via Encoding.com's canonical ID so that we have access to your files. 

Here's a few scenarios of where canonical IDs come into play with our platform.

+ To send us source videos, without passing keys, ensure that you are giving Encoding.com's canonical ID full access on the destination bucket through the S3 interface. Here's how to accomplish that:

1) Select the bucket you wish to source from in the S3 console. Right click on it and select 'Properties'

2) Under the Permissions tab at the bottom, select the plus button and grant upload/delete access to Encoding.com. Our ID is: 1a85ad8fea02b4d948b962948f69972a72da6bed800a7e9ca7d0b43dc61d5869.  Once you have entered this ID, it will resolve to fastencoding in a few seconds. Just hang in there. This allows Encoding.com to use its credentials to pull your source files on that particular bucket.

+ To deliver files from Encoding.com to your bucket and make ownership solely yours, please use the following syntax for your destination URLS:

http://your_bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/path/file.ext?acl=private-read&canonical_id

Sample of what an actual canonical S3 output path looks like:

http://mybucket.s3.amazonaws.com/video/output/clive_waterski.mp4?acl=private-read&canonical_id=5ecaabaxaf9da27db13630cedde7f7a652d00a63f3407aa4c21c318d6bdf2dc0

Once this passes into the system, the canonical ID will be restricted from view. Neat, huh? 

Here's an example of what we see on our end:

http://ksc.target.s3.amazonaws.com/test.flv?acl=private-read

Have many destinations for one workflow? No problem! 

To add multiple destinations to a watchfolder, here's what to do:

1) Select 'Watch Folder,' then 'Add New."

2) Under the destination field, click the [ + ] icon to add in new destination locations. 

3) Ensure that your destination paths are valid across the board.

Want to submit via API? No worries, just add another <destination> tag to your XML. Cool, huh?

That's it! You've just created a simple, easy to edit workflow that can scale up or down to meet the needs of your company.

We test video playback on a variety of devices, from Mac and Windows PCs, to all the various mobile phone platforms available today. One critical issue that comes up often is that the hosting server has not set the MIME types for the video type. A typical error message for this would be "unknown application/octet-stream". Here is a list of many common formats we encounter.

IMPORTANT: You will need to configure your ftp server to these MIME types for them to be properly recognized by their respective playback devices.

With TAR output is set to OFF, and should see .m3u8 pointers and .ts segment files populate your output directory. The trick is correctly formatting the output filepath. You have to make sure your output filepath has a filename WITHOUT a 3-character file extension. I had this same problem because I either defined only the output directory, or had an output filename with .m3u on it. In both cases that will force a TAR output even if you have set it to off. SAMPLES: To get your segments, a correct output filepath should look something like this: http://yourbucket.s3.amazonaws.com/iphonetest/outputfilename ftp://username:password@ftp.yourserver.net/iphonetest/outputfilename

The most common error is specifying incorrect SFTP URLs for files located in your home directory. You must specify full directory path in your URL: sftp://user:password@your-host.com/home/user/video/file.ext Another common issue is missing files! Check the file is there, and the path for encoding.com is correct. If you continue to experience issues, don't hesitate to email helpdesk@encoding.com.

Encoding.com offers three different ways to encode your video. Chose the integration method that is most appropriate for your technical skills and needs. At a minimum you will need a video library hosted on a publicly available FTP / Rackspace or Amazon S3 storage account and a basic understanding of URL protocol.

Web Interface - Within our client interface we have tab called Media List. This tool will allow you to quickly and easily encode individual videos through your browser and it's a great way to test our system. Just follow the step by step instructions at the top of the Media List page.

Watch Folder - Also within our client interface, the Watch Folder allows you to specify an FTP / Rackspace or Amazon S3 directory for encoding.com to "watch" at any frequency for new videos. After each watch interval all new videos added to this folder will be processed using the encoding setting you selected. You can have as many watch folders as you like, making it possible to encode a large video library with little or no setup or integration work. Please see our collection of articles about the Watch Folder for more details.

XML API - Our most flexible and sophisticated integration method, the encoding.com XML API allows you to completely automate your encoding workflow and integrate our system seamlessly into your own video application using any common programming language. Custom file naming, multiple output formats and real time encoding status updates are just a few of the powerful features available via our API. Please see our API documentation for complete details.

Once you have logged into encoding.com's web interface, click on the 'Watch Folder' tab on the left side of the screen.

1) In the Folder URL field enter a valid FTP, S3 or Rackspace location folder in the dialogue box. Replace the contents there. They are for suggestion only! Please note if you are using Rackspace or S3 as source or destination locations, there are specifics to the formatting of the URLs that must be followed in order for the URLs to be valid. Please refer to the two following articles explaining the proper syntax.

Rackspace: http://www.encoding.com/how_do_i_use_rackspace_cloud_files_as_the_source_or_destination_location

Amazon S3: http://www.encoding.com/how_can_i_use_a_amazon_s3_file_as_a_source

2) Add an email address in the Notify URL field form "email@yourdomain.com."  Alternatively you can enter a http URL of the script the result would be posted to

3) Select a time frequency you would like our system to check your folder for new video files. If you have large files, set a higher poll time.

4) Enter one or more destination URLs in the format: http://myusername:password@myftpserver.com/video_out. FTP is also valid here, if you're using that type of location.

6) Click Save and enter a encoding profile for this watch folder.

The wikipedia article linked here provides an excellent resource to check against for purposes of this article here.  When using encoding.com with your hosted (ftp, http, etc) source files, often times passwords, usernames, or even filenames will have what is known as a 'reserved character'. Most common for many users is the; @ characters, ! characters, or - characters. These characters need to be URL Escaped or Percent-encoded in order to pass through the system in your string. When sending a path to encoding.com, it may look something like this: ftp://user%40domain.tld:password@ftpserver.tld/path/file You replace the @ character with %40 in the username just like shown. That reserved character, once properly escaped, will let our system know how to hand off the proper credentials to the hosting service in question.

Common special characters and their percent encoded equivalent:

@ = %40

& = %26

+ = %2b

/ = %2f

The Rackspace Cloud Files platform does not offer the FTP method to send files to their service. Encoding.com added support for our customers to send encoded videos directly to their platform.To specify the source file or output file(s) to be put in a Rackspace Cloud Files folder, you can specify your source or destination URL in a few different ways different ways:

1) Virtual URL: http://RS_USER:RS_KEY@storage.cloudfiles.com/actual_container_name/file.ext - Please note the usage of the word 'Virtual' as this formatting is not going to be visible as your browse your Rackspace account. You must create this formatting by following the steps below:

a) Browse to 'Your Account' on your Rackspace control panel and select 'API access'

b) Pull your username and API key and use them to format your URL as listed below.

For example's sake, lets use Encoding123 for the user name and XYZ as the shortened version of what the API key would be.

http://Encoding123:XYZ@storage.cloudfiles.com/actual_container_name/file.ext

Please make sure to fully swap out the information if your URL looks like this: http://c44729.r29.cf2.rackcdn.com/Test.mov Change it to: http://Encoding123:XYZ@storage.cloudfiles.com/Source/Test.mov

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2) If you select 'Publish to CDN' on the container that you have the source files stored in, Rackspace will generate a unique URL, like http://c12345.r01.cf2.rackcdn.com/test.mov. This URL is now available to the public via this link, and is also simultaneously published to Akamai's CDN. 

You can use encoding.com's cloud storage location as temporary storage for your encoding output. To accomplish this you leave the "Destination" field empty using any integration method Web Interface. Desktop Application, or the API. To retrieve the direct http url of your you can login to the client interface, click Encoding Queue, expand the job ID and click on the "Download" link. If you are using our notification feature the http url will be available in the field of the email or XML notification we send once the job is complete. Encoding.com will store your encoding ouptut temporarily for up to 15 days or 100GB, which ever comes first. If you reach your 100GB limit we will automatically delete the oldest files first.

Please note that this is not available for .m3u8 files, aka Apple iPhone / iPad Streaming HLS files.