Transcoding Media Assets

last update on: July 15, 2021

Media asset transcoding was introduced in Access Anywhere v2006.

Access Anywhere provides an integration with FFmpeg that gives users the ability to transcode their media assets into other formats and configurations.

A high level overview of video transcoding can be found here.

Access Anywhere supports transcoding in the following ways:

  • On-Demand Transcoding - As and when the users request it
  • Automated Transcoding - As defined by the Data Automation Rules policies.
  • API-Initiated Transcoding - Initiated by an API client program.

Prerequisites

To access the Transcoding feature you must have:

  • Access Anywhere >= 2006.00
  • License key that enables Content Intelligence

Transcoding Presets and Configuration

Regardless of how the transcoding is initiated (on-demand, automated or through the API), the options available for transcoding are the same. The transcoding feature comes with a selection of built in “presets”, however each preset can be tweaked and reconfigured with your own specific parameters.

An example of the interface is below:

On-Demand Transcoding

To transcode a file, right-click the file within the Web File Manager, and select Transcode.

From the dialog that appears, choose one of the available presets. You can also reconfigure the transcoding inputs at this point.

Press the Transcode button to begin the transcoding process.

The transcoding process will then be launched in the background and can be monitored from the Tasks tab. Once transcoding is complete the transcoded file will be attached as a sidecar file to the original file. On your storage platform, these files will be displayed side-by-side.

Automated Transcoding

Access Anywhere also supports automatic transcoding using the Data Automation Rules.

This feature helps to provide 'watch folder' type functionality for automatic transcoding of files.

The behaviour and output is the same as the manual transcoding, with the main difference being how the transcoding is initiated.

Please refer to our Data Automation Rules documentation for more information on how to configure automated transcoding.