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Name: A unique name of the format.
Description: An optional, more elaborate description of the format. This is visible to users when downloading a rendition quality of an asset in the format and can e.g. be used to describe which use cases the format is intended for.
Format type: The type of the format.
Immediately generated for: The asset types for which renditions qualities of the format should be generated immediately when an asset is uploaded or replaced. See below for more information.
Mapped media formats: In previous versions, the transcode system worked with a concept of media formats, similar to the new format concept. This parameter can be used when migrating from the old transcode system to the new transcode system. More details can be found here.
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Depending on the chosen format type, a number of different parameters will appear. Most parameters should be self-explanatory. However, a short description of some of the key features can be found here.
Generation
Renditions Qualities of assets can be either be generated on-demand, or they can be pre-generated.
If a rendition quality of an asset is requested but has not been generated yet, it is always automatically generated. This feature referred to as on-demand transcoding and makes it possible to ensure that renditions qualities are only generated when needed. Thus, storage space is not wasted on saving renditions qualities that are never used.
The transcode system also supports pre-generating renditions qualities before they are requested. This is e.g. useful for thumbnails and previews, which are always needed. However, it can e.g. also be used to automatically start time-consuming transcodes of large videos that are likely to be requested.
Renditions Qualities can be pre-generated in two ways:
On upload and replace: This can be configured with the “Immediately generated for” parameter when defining a format, as described above. Note that if a new format is defined with this setting, existing assets in the system must be republished to pre-generate renditions qualities of the format for these assets.
Triggered from an automation: The automation step “Generate asset renditions” can be used to pre-generate renditions qualities based on more complex conditions. For instance, an automation can be set up to pre-generate renditions qualities for videos with a certain size or when an asset is published to a specific channel folder.
For most formats, it most likely suffices to rely on on-demand transcoding.
No matter if a rendition quality is requested on-demand or pre-generated, it is never generated if it is already available. If the definition of a format changes, the corresponding renditions qualities are automatically re-generated when they are requested again.
Note that renditions qualities of a specific format can not be generated for all input file types. For instance, renditions qualities of video or audio formats can not be generated for image assets such as png, jpeg, and webp since it does not make sense to create a video or an audio file from an image. However, renditions qualities of image formats can be generated for most common input file types. Thus, even though a limited set of output formats are available, a wide range of input formats are supported.
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One use-case for defining a format is to make it easy for users to download renditions qualities of assets in this format. However, by default, a format is not visible in the download dialog in the Media Manager. The visibility of formats in the download dialog can be controlled from the general settings page in the Media Manager, where it can be configured for individual user groups.
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Note that the configured download qualities only affect the visibility of formats in the download dialog and does not affect security. Thus, a user is able to request a rendition quality of a format that is not visible to the user, as long as the user has access to the asset.
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In addition to the formats defined from the system administration page, it is possible to allow users to request custom qualities /renditions of formats that the users define on-the-fly. This can be done via the “Custom quality” button in the download dialog shown above or by calling the endpoint <api-url>/DigizuiteCore/LegacyService/api/renditionsqualitys/<asset-id>/custom.
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A user must have at least one of the roles Asset_Can_Download_Custom_Quality and Asset_Can_Download_Any to have access to the custom quality download functionality.
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