Modifying Existing Videos with FTP Batch Provisioning

If you use FTP batch provisioning to modify videos that already exist in your Media Library, whether they were added using the Media module or using FTP batch provisioning, you need to be aware of how the FTP batch provisioning system overwrites existing data. Otherwise, you could unintentionally lose video metadata.

Suppose you have a video in your Media Library with the following information:

• name: My Video
• refid: myVideo
• active: true
• video-full-refid: "asset2"
• short-description: "Moon over Chichen Itza."
• long-description: "Our adventurers share a romantic moment as a gibbous moon shines down on Chichen Itza."

The long-description field is optional; it could have been set when the video was created or it could have been added in the Media module afterwards.

Now suppose you want to change this video's name. You included this tag in your XML manifest:

<title name="My New Video Name" refid="myVideo" 
    active="TRUE" video-full-refid="asset2">

  <short-description>Moon over Chichen Itza.</short-description>
</title>

However, this does more than just change the video's name. The batch provisioning system takes all the information in the title tag and overwrites the existing information about the video. Because you didn't include a long-description field, that optional information was overwritten and lost.

To get around this, you can do one of two things:

• Include all of the existing information for the video from your records so nothing is lost. Set every attribute and sub-element, even the ones you aren't changing.
• Use the overlay-update attribute in the title tag. Setting overlay-update to true tells the batch provisioning system to update only the information you explicitly include and to keep the information you did not change.

Here is an example of a title tag using the overlay-update attribute:

<title name="My New Video Name" 
    refid="myVideo" active="TRUE" 
    video-full-refid="asset2" overlay-update="TRUE">

  <short-description>Moon over Chichen Itza.</short-description>
</title>

With overlay-update="TRUE", your long description is preserved. Only the information you explicitly include is used to overwrite the existing record.

You can also use FTP batch provisioning to re-encode your existing videos. Learn more about this in Re-encoding Existing Videos.

Modifying existing playlists

The lineup element, which is used to create and modify playlists in an FTP batch provisioning manifest, also includes an overlay-update attribute, which you can use to update a playlist's metadata. However, you can't use overlay-update to append new videos to an existing playlist. If you want to add videos to an existing playlist, you need to include the entire list of videos, each in its own title-refid element.

Related topics

In addition to this document, check out these other articles to help you understand and use the Video Cloud FTP batch provisioning feature:

• Using FTP batch provisioning
• Reference for the XML manifest
• Sample XML manifest
• The DTD for the XML manifest
• Troubleshooting
• Re-encoding existing videos