After a video administrator works with edX partner support to complete preliminary setup for the entire institution, individual course teams can begin to upload video files for their courses in Studio. This section describes the specifications met by successful video files, the steps to upload the files, and how you monitor video processing at edX.
The result of video processing is additional file formats that are transferred to multiple hosting services (YouTube CMS and Amazon AWS), ready for learners to access.
Your videos can contain whatever content you want to include in the course.
Important
Each video file that you upload must be less than 5GB in size.
The Creating Videos section of edX101 Overview of Creating an edX Course has some helpful pointers for creating good video content.
The maximum size for each video file that you upload is 5 GB. The upload process fails for larger files.
The automated processing that takes place at edX transforms each of your uploaded video files into several different formats. For this process to succeed, you must upload videos in .mp4 or .mov format.
For best results, your video files should have these compression specifications.
| Codec & Container | H.264, .mp4 |
|---|---|
| Resolution & Frame Rate | 1920x1080, progressive, 29.97 fps (see note) |
| Pixel Aspect Ratio | 1.0 |
| Bit Rate | VBR, 2 pass |
| Target VBR | 5 mbps |
| Max VBR | 7.5 mbps |
| Audio | AAC 44.1 / 192 kbps |
| Size | 5GB maximum |
Note
Typically you export at the same frame rate that was used when you created the media file. For example, if you create the file in a country that uses the PAL system, you export at 25 fps instead of the NTSC standard of 29.97 fps.
Each video file must have a unique name. The edX partner support team recommends that organizations define a naming convention for video files, and apply it to videos for all courses. At a minimum, your naming convention should include these elements.
An example naming convention is {course}_{year}_{segment}_{learning
sequence}_{revision}.{type}, which results in file names like
SPU27_2015_S1_1_0.mp4.
Video file names should include alphanumeric characters and underscores only. Periods should be used only to separate the file name from the extension that identifies its type.
Standardizing the content and format of these file names helps all interested parties identify and track video files over time.
Before you can upload video files, the video upload feature must be enabled for the course. Your video administrator coordinates this task with the edX partner support team. See Create YouTube Channels.
Open the course in Studio.
Select Content, then Video Uploads.
Add video files to the Video Uploads page. You can drag files to the page and drop them, or click Select files to locate the files to upload.
A rectangular tile appears on the page for each file. The file name, a progress bar, and the status of the file upload process appear in the tile.
Important
You must leave the Video Uploads page open in your browser until the upload process is complete for all files.
When the status of an uploaded file changes to “Ready”, the file upload process is successful. If the status of an upload is “Failed”, the file upload process was not successful. You can monitor file progress on the Video Uploads page or download a report.
A list of every file that you uploaded to the edX servers appears in the Previous Uploads section of the Video Uploads page. You can remove videos from the Previous Uploads list without affecting course content that uses the video ID of successfully uploaded videos.
To remove a video from the Previous Uploads list, follow these steps.
Open the course in Studio.
Select Content, then Video Uploads.
In the Previous Uploads list, locate the row for the video that you want to remove, then select the “X” icon in the Action column.
In the confirmation dialog box that appears, select Remove to remove the video.
The selected video is removed from the Previous Uploads list. Course content that uses the video ID of the removed video is not affected.
After your video files successfully reach the edX servers, automated processing begins.
Note
Automated processing takes 24 hours to complete.
A list of every file that you attempt to upload to the edX servers appears in the Previous Uploads section of the Video Uploads page. The list includes each file’s status in the encoding and hosting workflow. In addition, you can download a report of the video files that you uploaded. See Reporting Video Statuses.
The encoding and hosting process assigns these statuses to video files.
Statuses of Invalid Token or Unknown indicate a configuration problem. Inform edX partner support if these statuses appear.
For more information, see Video Encoding and Hosting Overview.
View detailed information about the video files that you upload in the available encodings report. The available encodings report includes the status of the encoding and hosting process for each video file that you upload, the identifier for the video, and the URLs for each encoding format. The available encodings report is a comma separated values (.csv) file that you can view in a spreadsheet application or text editor.
To download the available encodings report, follow these steps.
The .csv file includes the following columns.
The .csv file also includes a column for each of the formats that are the result of the edX encoding and hosting process. These columns include the URL of a host site only after the format is successfully generated and delivered to its destination.
desktop_mp4 URL: The AWS location of a 720p resolution video file in mp4 format. This file is delivered to learners who do not have access to YouTube and view course videos with mp4 players.
desktop_webm URL: The AWS location of a 720p resolution video file in webm format. This file is delivered to learners who do not have access to YouTube and view course videos with webm players.
The encoding and hosting process no longer creates webm versions of the video files that you upload. Modern web browsers do not require the webm format. The .csv file includes the desktop_webm URL column to show the webm URLs for videos uploaded before this change. When you upload a new video, the column will remain empty, even after the encoding and hosting process is complete.
mobile_low URL: The AWS location of a 360p resolution video file. This file is delivered to learners who download and view course videos on mobile devices.
youtube URL: The YouTube location of a 1080p resolution video. By default, the edX video player delivers this video.
The edX encoding and hosting process produces these alternative formats to ensure optimal playback quality for your learners.