Creating Logo Overlays

In the video industry, a persistent transparent logo is commonly displayed in a corner of the video. This logo is sometimes referred to as a digital on-screen graphic (DOG), bug, or watermark. Video Cloud offers two different approaches to adding a logo to your videos: logo overlays and burned-in logos. A burned-in logo is added to the actual video file when the video is transcoded. A logo overlay is a separate image file that is added to the video during playback. A logo travels with and serves to brand the video. If your video is virally distributed in a Video Cloud player, the logo overlay is distributed with it and provides another way for viewers to find their way back to your site.

Check out some ideas, tips, and examples about how to use logos to promote your brand.

Methods of adding logos

Video Cloud gives you many ways of adding logos to your videos:

• You can use the Media module to set a logo overlay for any of your videos
• You can add a logo overlay to a video using the Media API.
• You can also set a logo to be burned into all of your videos when they are uploaded
• You can set a default logo overlay to use for all of the videos in your account.
• You can also use the Flash-only Player API to set and control a logo overlay.
  

Logo overlays and burned-in logos

In Video Cloud, a logo added to a video can take one of two different forms: logo overlay or burned-in logo. A burned-in logo is added to the actual video file when the video is transcoded. A logo overlay is a separate image file that is superimposed on the video during playback. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages:

• Only publishers with Video Cloud Pro or Enterprise accounts can use burned-in logos.
• A burned-in logo, since it becomes part of the video file, travels with the video and is displayed wherever the video is played. A logo overlay is only displayed in a Video Cloud player and is not displayed if the video is played back in a YouTube player or a mobile app.
• Ordinary overlays support an optional click-through URL, but burned-in overlays do not.
• A logo overlay can be set at the account level and apply to all videos in the account. You can also assign a logo overlay for an individual video, and that video will use its own logo overlay, not the logo overlay set for the account. If you set up a burned-in logo, it applies to all the videos you upload to your account from that point forward.
• Since a burned-in logo is added during the transcoding process, it won't appear in any video renditions that Video Cloud doesn't transcode. If you select Add an H.264 source as a rendition when you upload in the Media module, that source rendition won't be transcoded and therefore won't have a burned-in logo. Remote assets also won't have a burned-in logo, unless you burn it in yourself.
• A video shared with media sharing keeps its burned-in logo, but not a logo overlay. Depending on your business case, this can be an advantage or a disadvantage.
• Thumbnail and video still images made from a video with a burned-in logo, whether they are created automatically during transcoding or manually using the Media module, will also include the burned-in logo.
• You can change a logo overlay whenever you want. This makes logo overlays available for temporary promotions, for example. Changing or removing a burned-in logo requires you to re-encode your video.
• When a viewer clicks the logo overlay, a new browser window opens at the URL specified when you configure the logo overlay. A burned-in logo does not have this click-through capability.
• When a video file is transcoded with a burned-in logo, the transcoding process takes a noticeably longer time.

You can use the same image file for either logo overlays or burned-in logos, and you create and upload the logo image file in the same way.

How logo overlays and burned-in logos interact

In most cases, you don't want to use both a logo overlay and a burned-in logo for the same video. If you enable a burned-in logo for your account, you automatically disable using a logo overlay for your account. However, any logo overlays assigned to individual videos will still display. A video with both a burned-in logo and a logo overlay may look odd, especially if the two logos are trying to display in the same corner.

Creating a logo image file

You can use the same image file for either a logo overlay or a burned-in logo. The image file you use for your logo must be a GIF or PNG format image file, not larger than 300kb. For best results, use these styles:

• Logo color: white @ 25% opacity
• Drop shadow: black @ 35% opacity

These styles emulate the watermark logo overlays seen on major television channels and allow the logo to be seen on most background colors. You can download a PSD template for a logo.

Logo dimensions

The recommended size for a logo is no more than 25% of the height or width of the playback window. For a 480x360 playback window, 25% of the width is 120px and 25% of the height is 90px). If you select a mostly transparent image, a viewer will be able to click anywhere in the area of the logo overlay to open the specified link in a new browser window. An image of this size works best with the logo alignment options.

The maximum size for a logo is 464x344 (which is the size of the playback window minus an 8px border on each side). If you select a graphic of this size, you will need to place it within the 464x344 space on your own; you will not be able to position it using the logo alignment options in the Media module edit video settings dialog.

Some Video Cloud players can be resized at run time or are by default smaller then the standard 480x360 pixels. If the player is set to a different size, the logo will scale proportionately. For example, if the player is resized down to 50%, a 120x90px logo would display at 60x45px. Therefore, you should select images for logos that can be scaled down; logos are never scaled above 100%.

Setting a logo overlay at the account level

You can set a default logo overlay for your account in the Video Cloud Studio's Account Settings page. This logo overlay will display for any video in your account, unless a different logo overlay is set specifically for that video.

To set a default logo overlay for your account:

1. Sign in to the Video Cloud Studio.
2. On the Video Cloud Studio Home page, click the Account Settings link at the top right, under the navigation bar. You must have Administrator privileges to access this area of the Studio.
3. On the Account Settings page, click Publishing Settings and under Logo Overlay / Burn-in, select Overlay.
   
4. Click Add Image or Change Image to add a new logo or to change your existing logo. Next, either select from the images you've already uploaded and click Select, or click Upload to browse to a new image, select it after it uploads, and click Select. Logo images must be either a GIF or PNG format; follow the logo overlay guidelines when you create this image file. 
5. Under Logo Link URL, you can enter a URL to which viewers will be sent if they click on your logo overlay. This is optional.
6. Under Logo Tooltip, you can enter a text to be displayed when the viewer's mouse hovers over the logo overlay.
7. Under Logo Alignment, you can specify where the logo overlay is positioned in the player. Select one of: bottom right (the default), bottom left, top right, or top left.
8. Click Save Changes when you are done.

Setting a logo overlay for a video in the Media module

You can set a logo overlay for an individual video using the Media module. For information about how to do this, see Editing Videos with the Media Module. Logo overlays can also be set at the account level using the Video Cloud Studio's Account Settings page. If you have a logo overlay set at the account level and also set a logo overlay for a video, the logo overlay set for the video will display and the account level logo overlay will not display.

Using burned-in logos

You can set your account so that a burned-in logo gets added to all of your video files when they are uploaded and transcoded. Using burned-in logos is an alternative to using an account-level logo overlay; if you enable one, you disable the other. Read Logo overlays and burned-in logos for a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of these alternative logo features.

Logos are burned into your videos when you upload your videos and Video Cloud transcodes them. This means that a video will not have burned-in logos if:

• It was uploaded before you enabled burned-in logos and was not re-encoded since.
• It uses remote assets.
• It was uploaded as a single-rendition video FLV or H.264 file, rather than using multi-bitrate renditions.
• It is the 'extra' rendition created by using the

To add logos to your existing videos you can either:

• re-encode your videos, which will add a burned-in logo if you have enabled that feature, or
• set a logo overlay for each of the videos in the Media module.

You can check whether a video has a burned-in logo by previewing it in the Media module.

Enabling burned-in logos

To enable burned-in logos for your account:

1. Sign in to the Video Cloud Studio.
2. On the Video Cloud Studio Home page, click the Account Settings link at the top right, under the navigation bar. You must have Administrator privileges to access this area of the Studio.
3. On the Account Settings page, click Publishing Settings and under Logo Overlay / Burn-in, select Burn-in.
   
4. Click Add Image or Change Image to add a new logo or to change your existing logo. Next, either select from the images you've already uploaded and click Select, or click Upload to browse to a new image, select it after it uploads, and click Select. Logo images must be either a GIF or PNG format; follow the logo guidelines when you create this image file. 
5. Under Logo Alignment, you can specify where the logo is positioned in the video. Select one of: bottom right (the default), bottom left, top right, or top left.
6. Click Save Changes when you are done.