Video Technical Guide
From KickApps API Reference
Here's your official technical resource for all of your questions about video on the KickApps platform. If you think something's missing or unaddressed, jump over to the Tutorials Talk forum and let us know.
The KickApps platform allows video uploads of up to 100MB per video file. Members may upload as many videos as they like, and all videos are available nearly instantaneously within the community. KickApps supports a wide variety of video formats, including the popular .mp4, .flv, .mov, .asf, .avi, .wmv, .mpg, .mpeg, and .3gp formats. (To keep things simple, these are the only ones listed on the member-facing video upload page.)
When a member uploads a video, we check to see whether it is in .flv format. If so, we do not transcode it. We pass it through our system to pull thumbnails, but the original video file remains intact at its native quality and dimensions. If you want to preserve the original quality of your video, upload it as an .flv. Additionally, if you don't want letter-boxing (black bars around the left and right and/or top and bottom sides of your video, make sure to set your video player's aspect ratio to the aspect ratio of your video (or Auto), and size your video player either at the same dimensions as your video or at dimensions of the same aspect ratio (so for a 16:9 video you'd want a player at 480 x 270px, rather than something like 400 x 300px, as you would for a 4:3).
If the original video is not an .flv, we transcode it into an MP4 file with the following specifications:
- Bitrate: 800kbps 25 frames per second (fps)
- Width: 420px
- Height: Calculated dynamically to preserve the video's native aspect ratio at a width of 420px
- Codec: h264
- Audio codec: AAC
- Audio bitrate: 96kbps
- Audio sample rate: 44.1 mhz Stereo
The KickApps video player uses Flash version 9. It delivers video content as progressive downloads by default, and can also be provisioned to deliver live streams in the App Studio. Some compression occurs during the transcoding process, which may affect the image and audio quality. The original video file is stored by KickApps in case it is needed, but it is no longer accessible to you or your community members.
Many of these settings can be reconfigured on request. For example, KickApps can integrate with your own CDN or write logo watermarks directly into uploaded videos. Custom configurations are available to affiliates who choose the KickApps Ad Inventory Buyout. The Ad Inventory Buyout also allows you to run advertisements within your video content (as pre-roll, post-roll, or overlay content).
When a user searches videos within your community, the search is actually checking the video's title, description, and tags, (also called the metadata) not the video content itself. Media tags also power the "related" lists that appear alongside every video.
As a community leader, it's important to encourage your members to title and tag videos appropriately so other members can find them within the community and search engines (like Google) can list your videos in their search results, where new people can find you.
You can help this process along by editing your community videos' metadata within the Affiliate Center under Manage > Media.
Occasionally, videos don't upload successfully. In those cases, you'll typically see a "transcoding failed" status in the Affiliate Center when you view the video in your pending media queue. Typically, videos fail because they are somehow misconfigured or use an audio codec or other specific format that we cannot support. Also note that many video files also have Digital Rights Management (DRM) settings that prevent the KickApps platform from accepting the video.
If you notice any problems, log a support ticket and we'll take a look. Please keep the original copy of the video - we can learn a lot by inspecting the original file.