Creating and Managing Playlists

This topic explains how to create and publish playlists in the Video Cloud Studio. You will learn about creating a playlist, adding videos manually or creating a smart playlist, adding a playlist to Favorites, changing the order of videos in a playlist, deleting a playlist, and removing videos from a playlist.

A playlist is a collection of videos that are grouped together in a particular order for playback in a Video Cloud player. The Media module makes it easy to select the videos that make up a playlist. After you've created your playlist, you can assign a playlist to a player. For more information about playlists, including best practices and tips for using them effectively, read Using Playlists.

You can also create playlists using the Media API, as described in Creating and Modifying Playlists with the Media API, or with FTP batch provisioning.

You can create two kinds of playlists: manual or smart.

When you make a manual playlist, you assign specific videos to the playlist and re-order them manually.
When you make a smart playlist, the list of videos in the playlist is constructed automatically, based on video tags or other video properties. Smart playlists are dynamic, and automatically update based on what's currently available in your media library and what rules define the playlist.

This topic includes the following sections:

Creating a playlist
Adding videos to a manual playlist
Adding a playlist to Favorites
Changing the order of videos in a playlist
Deleting a playlist
Removing videos from a playlist

Creating a playlist

To create a playlist:

Click the New Playlist button at the bottom of the navigation pane:
Select the type of playlist you want to create: Manual or Smart.
In the Name textbox, enter a name for the playlist. This name will be displayed in your Video Cloud player for the playlist.
Optionally, click Show additional information and enter a description of the playlist and a reference ID. You can also check Add to Favorites to cause this playlist to appear in the Favorites list for your account.
If you choose to create a smart playlist, additional playlist options will appear. Read more about creating a smart playlist below.
Click Create Playlist. Your new playlist is added to the Playlists folder on the left and is selected. If it is a manual playlist, you can now add videos to it.

Creating a smart playlist

You can create a smart playlist that includes all the videos marked with one or more tags. To create a smart playlist:

Click New Playlist at the foot of the navigation pane.
Select Smart for the type of playlist you want to create.
In the Name textbox, enter a name for the playlist. This name will be displayed in your Video Cloud player for the playlist.
Optionally, use tags to define the videos that will appear in the playlist. From the Tags menu, select contain all to require that all the videos in the playlist have all the tags you list. Select contains one or more to include in the playlist videos that have at least one of the tags you list. In the tags text field, enter one or more tags (separated by commas) that you want to use to define the playlist.
Use the Order menu to specify the order in which videos are displayed in the playlist. Select one of:

order	description
alphabetical	By video name.
scheduled start date (newest to oldest)	Available only to Video Cloud Pro or Enterprise accounts with video scheduling features enabled. If a video does not have a start date specified, then it will not appear in a playlist ordered by scheduled start date.
scheduled start date (oldest to newest)	Available only to Video Cloud Pro or Enterprise accounts with video scheduling features enabled. If a video does not have a start date specified, then it will not appear in a playlist ordered by scheduled start date.
activated date (newest to oldest)	Based on the most recent date the video was activated.
activated date (oldest to newest)	Based on the most recent date the video was activated.
most viewed (total plays)	The data for the most viewed videos can be as much as 48 hours old. If you are a new publisher, none of your videos will have 'views' counts until they are watched.
most viewed (trailing week plays)	The data for the most viewed videos can be as much as 48 hours old. If you are a new publisher, none of your videos will have 'views' counts until they are watched.

Creating a playlist
Selecting the order in which your videos play.

Optionally, use the Limit field to limit the number of videos included in the playlist. A playlist can have a maximum of 100 videos, even if your Video Cloud media library includes additional videos that would fit the criteria for the playlist.
Optionally, check Add to Favorites to display the playlist in the Favorites list for your account.
Click Create Playlist.

You can also create a smart playlist without using any tags. In that case, the playlist consists of all the videos in your account, limited by either the size limit you choose or the maximum 100 video limit, and selected according to the order you choose (alphabetical, newest to oldest, oldest to newest, most viewed).

Adding videos to a manual playlist

You have several options for adding videos to manual playlists:

For manual playlists on your Favorites list, select, drag, and drop videos from the videos data grid onto the playlist in the Favorites list of the navigation pane.
Select videos, then click the Add to Playlist button in the toolbar, which provides a few more options.
Select playlists, then click the Add Videos button in the toolbar.

You can add up to 100 videos to a playlist.

Using drag and drop

With drag and drop, you can add one or more videos to the beginning of a single manual playlist that is on your Favorites list. If you want to add videos to the end of a playlist, or add videos to more than one playlist, use the Add to Playlist button. To add one or more videos to the beginning of a manual playlist on your Favorites list using drag and drop:

Select one or more videos from the data grid of the All Videos or Recently Uploaded workspace. Use standard Windows functionality (Ctrl-click and Shift-click) to select more than one video.
Drag the selected videos onto a manual playlist in the Favorites list of the navigation pane on the left. Manual playlists are identified by a blue playlist icon. The white plus sign in the green circle indicates that you can drop the videos into the playlist.
Release the mouse button to drop the videos into the playlist. The playlist will be updated automatically in all players where it appears, so be careful!

Tip: You can drag and drop videos from one playlist into another. To do so, open the source playlist (either a smart playlist or manual playlist). Then click and drag videos from it into a manual playlist in the Favorites list on the left. The videos are copied to the second playlist and remain part of the source playlist as well.

Using the Add to Playlist button

When you add videos to playlists using the Add to Playlist button, you can add videos to more than one manual playlist at a time and you can control whether the videos are added to the beginning or the end of the playlist. To add videos to playlists:

In the data grid of a videos workspace (All Videos or Recently Uploaded), select one or more videos that you want to add to one or more playlists. You can use the search field to find the videos you want to add.
Click Add to Playlist in the action toolbar (this button is only enabled if you have at least one video selected).

Figure 3. Using the Add to Playlist button to add videos to a playlist.

The Add to Playlists dialog opens, displaying all of your playlists. A message at the top of the dialog tells you the number of videos that you have selected.
Select one or more of the playlists to which you want to add all of the selected videos. Smart playlists are disabled because you use these steps only for manual playlists. Depending on the number of playlists in your account, you may need to sort or search to find the playlists you want:
- To sort, click a column head to sort playlists by that column. Note the triangle at the end of the header that identifies the current sort.
- To search, enter a search term in the Search Playlists field at the upper right, enter a search term, and click the magnifying glass.
- Playlists are presented in pages, 50 playlists to a page.
Once you have identified the playlists you want, you can click Show Selected to display only those playlists. If you have selected a number of non-contiguous playlists from a long list, this feature can help you verify your selection of playlists before you add the videos.
At the top of the Add to Playlists dialog, select Beginning to add the selected videos to the beginning of the playlists you've selected, or End to add them to the end of the playlists.
Click Save & Close. All of your selected videos are added to each of the playlists you selected.

Using the Add Videos button

You can add videos to a manual playlist from the All Playlists workspace:

In the All Playlists workspace, select the manual playlist to which you want to add videos.
In the action toolbar, click the Add Videos button.

Figure 4. The Add Videos button.

The Add Videos dialog opens, displaying all of your videos. A message at the top of the dialog tells you the name of the playlist you have selected.
Select the videos you want to add, select whether you want to add the videos to the beginning or end of the selected manual playlist, and click Save & Close.

Adding videos to a smart playlist

To add videos to smart playlists, you need to edit the rules used to find videos for the playlist. You cannot add videos manually to smart playlists. To change the rules for a smart playlist:

Select the smart playlist from the All Playlists workspace or the Favorites list. Smart playlists are identified by a blue playlist with a gear icon. Note the videos currently in the playlist, and the information provided about the playlist.
Click Edit in the action toolbar to open the Edit Playlist dialog. If the playlist is in the Favorites list, you can open the Edit Playlist dialog by right-clicking the name of the selected playlist and selecting Edit Playlist, or clicking Edit Settings in the playlist details pane at the top.
In the Edit Playlist dialog, modify the name, tags, order, or number of videos limit and click Save Playlist.

Adding a playlist to Favorites

You can mark the playlists that you work with most frequently as Favorites. When a playlist is a favorite, it appears in the list of Favorites in the left navigation pane of the Media module. This lets you add videos to a favorite playlist by using drag and drop. You can mark as many playlists as you want as favorites. Favorites are set per account: all users for an account will see the same playlists marked as favorites.

You can mark a playlist as a favorite by:

Clicking the left-most cell in the All Players datagrid, which marks the playlist with a star
Selecting Add to Favorites when you create the playlist
Dragging the playlist from the All Players datagrid onto the Favorites list in the navigation pane

Once you have marked a playlist is as a favorite, a star appears in the cell in the datagrid.

Remove the favorites mark from a playlist by using the following steps:

Click the star in the All Players datagrid
Edit the playlist and deselect Mark as favorite
Right-click the playlist in the Favorites list and select Remove From Favorites

Changing the order of videos in a playlist

How you change the order of videos in a playlist depends on whether it is a manual or a smart playlist.

Changing the order of videos in a manual playlist

To change the order of the videos in a manual playlist, select the videos you want to move and drag and drop them to the spot you want them to appear in the playlist. If you select more than one video to move, be aware that after you move them, they will appear in the playlist in the order you selected them, not their original order.

You can make a video appear more than once in a manual playlist. To do this, select the videos you want to appear and hold down the Control key while you drag the videos to another position in the playlist.

Changing the order of videos in a smart playlist

Smart playlists can be ordered by scheduled start date or activation date (either newest to oldest or oldest to newest). You can change the position of a video in a date-based smart playlist by changing the video's scheduled start date or activation date.

A video's activation date is when the title was created, or when it was last activated. Note that a video's activation date is different from the Last Updated date. If you want to move a video to the beginning of a newest-to-oldest activation date smart playlist, deactivate the video and then reactivate it. This same approach will also work in reverse for an oldest to newest smart playlist.

A video's scheduled start date is relevant only if the video has a scheduled availability. If you want to move a video's position in a scheduled start date smart playlist, edit the video's start date in the Availability tab of the Edit Video dialog.

Deleting a playlist

To delete a playlist, select the playlist in the All Playlists workspace and click the Delete button in the action toolbar. If the playlist is in the Favorites list, you can also select the playlist in the Favorites list, right-click the playlist, and select Delete Playlist. At the prompt, click Delete.

Removing videos from a playlist

To remove videos from a manual playlist:

Select the playlist.
Select one or more videos to remove from the playlist, and click Remove in the action toolbar.

Removing a video from a playlist does not delete it from your Media Library.

You cannot directly remove a video from a smart playlist. Instead, you can do one of these things:

Modify the tags of the video so that the video no longer has any of the smart playlist's tags.
Modify the tags of the playlist so that they no longer include any of the video's tags.
Deactivate or delete the video.

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