Media Sharing with FTP Batch Provisioning

Media sharing is a feature of Video Cloud that lets publishers share videos with other publishers, enabling you to more easily manage videos across multiple accounts. This topic describes how to share videos using the the Video Cloud FTP batch provisioning feature. For introductory information, read:

• Media Sharing
• Using FTP Batch Provisioning
  

Media sharing is available only for Video Cloud Pro and Enterprise customers. If you are interested in upgrading your Video Cloud account, please contact Brightcove for more information.

You can share videos using the Video Cloud batch provisioning feature. With batch provisioning, you can create or modify videos by describing them in an XML manifest, and then transmit the videos and the manifest to the Video Cloud FTP servers. You designate videos as shared either when you first upload them, or after upload by updating an existing video.

Note: If you are using Video Cloud to transcode your videos, do not attempt to share videos until the transcoding process is complete (which could take several hours). If you share videos before transcoding is complete, your affiliates will receive videos that are incomplete and which may consist solely of metadata with no video files. Therefore, you should share videos in a separate XML manifest from the manifest in which you create and upload the videos, and verify that the videos have been completely transcoded before you submit the XML manifest in which you share them. You can verify that transcoding is complete by selecting the video in the Video Cloud Studio Media module and looking at the Multi-bitrate Renditions section of the Details pane, on the right.

Sharing elements in the FTP batch provisioning manifest

Sharing is implemented in the FTP batch provisioning manifest with these three XML elements:

• shared attribute in the title element
• share-to-id sub-element of the title element
• auto-accept-shared attribute in the title element

Note, however, that your FTP batch provisioning manifest must be a valid XML document that includes the elements required by the FTP batch provisioning DTD. In particular, the <title> element for each video that you are sharing must include a name and refid attribute and a <short-description> child element. Read more about the <title> element.

shared attribute

Each video is described in the batch provisioning manifest by a title XML element. You mark a video as shared by using the shared attribute in the <title> element. To specify that a video is eligible for sharing, use shared="true". For example:

<title shared="true" />

share-to-id element

To specify the affiliates with whom you are sharing the video, use one or more <share-to-id> sub-tags within the <title> element for the video and specify the Video Cloud account IDs of the affiliates. For example:

<title refid="gibbous104" shared="true">
  . . .
  <share-to-id>45345</share-to-id>
  <share-to-id>44444</share-to-id>
</title>

auto-accept-shared attribute

By default, when you share a video with an affiliate, the video does not become part of the affiliate's Video Cloud media library until it is explicitly marked as accepted in the Media module. If instead, you want a shared video to be automatically accepted, use the auto-accept-shared="true" attribute in the <title> element. For example:

<title shared="true" auto-accept-shared="true" />

The affiliate must also have configured its Video Cloud account to automatically accept videos shared from your account.

Sharing existing videos

If you are using FTP batch provisioning to share a video that already exists in your Video Cloud media library, take care that you do not unintentionally overwrite any of the video's existing metadata. In most cases, you should use the overlay-update="true" attribute in the video's <title> element. Read more about Modifying existing videos with FTP batch provisioning.

Media sharing error messages

The FTP batch provisioning system can produce the following error messages in connection with media sharing: