Creating remote videos

A remote video asset is a video file hosted outside Flowplayer that is registered in the platform to get a unique id and hence benefits from our metadata and analytics. In addition you can easily create an embed code, while the actual image and video files are stored and delivered from your server or CDN.

When to create a remote video asset

The best option is always to upload your videos using Flowplayer to benefit from our optimized encoding and delivery infrastructure. However, sometimes you may need a different approach. For example if you have a large video library stored on your own servers and do not want to transfer those files anywhere. In this case creating remote video assets for them in Flowplayer is a great way to ensure that you get all analytics and can fully benefit from our platform while keeping the videos delivered from your servers.

Creating a remote video asset has the following benefits since Flowplayer can:

• display the right information in the player such as title and description
• gather analytics about the video
• include the video in our recommendations or playlists
• ensure the right video file format is displayed in the right device/browser
• easily create embed codes from the user interface

If you don’t want any of the above benefits you can load the video file or livestream directly from the player embed code.

Creating a remote video asset in the dashboard

The ability to create a remote video asset in the dashboard will be added soon. Now you have to use the API.

Creating a remote video through the API

To create a remote video asset you can use the remote video API.

How to see that a video is a remote asset

All videos that are remote video assets (e.g. hosted from a server outside of Flowplayer) have a Remote tag in the video listing.