DC 5.8 Media format configuration

Owned by Magnus Frank
Aug 17, 2023
3 min read

Digizuite supports a wide set of different asset types, some which can be converted into other types in order to enhance the user experience.

For example extracting a thumbnail for a video is very helpful when identifying a video in the Media Manager.

This sections covers the configuration surrounding Media formats.

To understand how Digizuite handle different media types there are a few concepts that the reader must be familar with.

  • Media format

  • Media format type

  • Media transcode

  • Destination

  • Asset type configuration

  • Profiles

Below is an explanation of each concept

Media format

The media format defines the end result of the asset conversion. Think of the media format as what should be created? For instance defining a thumbnail consists in its simplest form of defining a width and a height.

Media format definitions are found in the DAMCenter under System tools → Formats

Media format type

Where the media format defines the specific settings of the end result of the asset conversion, then the media format type defines the resulting type (e.g. Jpg, PNG, Mp4, etc.). Furthermore, this hold the information on what file extensions map to what format. This information is used to identity how Digizuite should treat the uploaded asset.

Media format type and media format together defines what should be created.

Media format type definitions are found in the DAMCenter under System tools → Format types

Media transcode

The media transcode defines the transcode path between two media format definitions. In other words media transcode define how an asset is converted into a specific media format.

For instance when converting an image into a thumbnail the 3rd party tool ImageMagick is used and similarly when converting a video into a thumbnail the 3rd party tool FFMPeg.

Media transcodes consists of three components:

  1. Source media format

  2. Target media format

  3. ProgId

Where the ProgId is short for program identifier.

To put words on this, it means in order for converting an asset with a source media format into another target media format the following program (progId) must be used.

Media transcode definitions are found in the DAMCenter under System tools → Media transcode

Destinations

Destinations are, as the name suggest, the destination for where the resulting file should be placed once the media format has been transcoded. Digizuite supports two types of destinations

  • Azure

  • UNC

This entity holds information on how to access the file storage.

Destination definitions are found in the DAMCenter under System tools → Destinations

Asset type configuration

Asset type configuration binds everything together. Whenever an asset is uploaded the asset type (e.g. Image, video, Pdf, etc.) is determined based of the extension of the uploaded file.

The asset type configuration holds information for a given asset type the following media formats should be generated on a specific destination.

This typically would be thumbnail and preview formats ensuring good user experience.

Asset type configuration can be found in the DAMCenter under System tools → Asset type configuration

Profiles

Asset type configurations defines what should always be generated for all assets that are uploaded, but there may be cases where certain formats should be generated only when the asset changes status. For instance if the asset is approved and therefore becomes ready for usage on a public facing website there could be a need for generating certain formats specific to the website. This is what profiles solves.

Profiles essentially is a list of Media formats. Together with another concept called profiles & destinations the information of

  • What media formats should be generated (Profiles)

  • Where should they be placed (Destinations)

  • When should it happen (Channel folder)

is combined into the last concept of understanding media formats.

Channel folders is a concept in Digizuite used to control availability of assets. Considering the case of a Digizuite being the backbone of all images on a public facing website, channel folders can be thought of as the distribution channel used to determine what set of assets is available for selection on the public facing website. Ideally only approved and ready assets should be available.

Combining the information above with a profile allows the configuration to be setup where an asset is approved which in turn triggers it to be published to the the distribution channel the website is allowed to see. The publish to the distribution channel triggers the Profile & Destination setup to spawn a job generating the web previews needed for the website to show the file.

Profile configuration can be found in the DAMCenter under System tools → Profiles

The corresponding profiles & Destination configuration can be found under System tools → Config manager → Digiziute DAM Center → Profile & Destinations.