Broadcast Grade Transcoding in Minutes Simplified

Few minutes guide to your first VOD transcoding job using SVT Encore.

SVT Encore open-source project has proven itself as a capable carrier grade VOD transcoding solution having been used in production at SVT during the past five years. Being built on FFMPEG it supports a wide range of video formats — necessary for the extensive VOD library spanning close to a century. SVT Encore supports prioritized transcoding queues and scale to multiple instances to meet all real-life broadcaster transcoding demands, from long-tail or archive content to highly time sensitive breaking news reporting, or late deliveries of new series episodes.

And it has the corner stone attributes required by a public broadcaster where all three dimensions must be on top.

Eyevinn has further refined SVT Encore in an easy to install Docker containerized package and made it available through Eyevinn Open-Source Cloud, enabling anyone (I mean anyone) to set up a transcoding job within minutes. In this blog post I will go through each step for how to set up your first Encore transcoding job through Eyevinn OSC.

1. Browse to https://eyevinn.osaas.io and register your own tenant. For more info on Eyevinn OSC: https://www.osaas.io.

2. Find the SVT Encore card and subscribe to the service. With a service subscription you will be able to spin up instances of the associated component.

3. Spin up your own SVT Encore queue instance either directly or through the drop-down menu.

a. Give your Encore instance a name.

b. Set the URL to your desired transcoding profiles written in YAML format. Omitting this field will let Encore use its default test profiles (https://github.com/Eyevinn/encore-test-profiles/tree/main).

Fig 2. Encore queue creation.

4. Congratulations! Encore is now up and ready to accept jobs. The Encore instance URL is seen on the card.

Easiest way to post jobs is to use the Swagger based Encore OpenAPI found in the instance specific drop-down menu.

Fig 3. Encore instance Swagger API docs.

5. To do a quick test using the test content included in the SVT Encore package, set up a new transcoding job by expanding “POST /encoreJobs” in Swagger, post the following JSON in the request body, and execute:

a. {
  "profile": "program",
  "outputFolder": "/usercontent/demo",
  "baseName": "demo",
  "duration": 60,
  "priority": "50",
  "inputs": [
    {
      "type": "AudioVideo",
      "uri": "https://testcontent.eyevinn.technology/mp4/stswe-tvplus-promo.mp4"
    }
  ]
}

b. If using own transcoding profiles and input video files, change the request body accordingly.

6. The response section displays the detailed server response starting with the job ID (in this case: “2ddea7af-5129–4688-bfaf-27defb6616ee”). This ID must be used if polling the Encore about job status and other info.

7. Poll for job status:

a. To get job status, use the job ID in the “GET /encoreJobs” section and execute request. The response body includes status: “IN_PROGRESS”, progress from 1–100 and all other relevant information. When the job is completed, the status will change to “SUCCESSFUL”.

b. Status “SUCCESSFUL” outputs additional information about result of the transcoding job. All output files are accounted for which guides a test playback, or downloading the file for storage.

Fig 4. Encore Swagger API doc.

8. Test playing any of the transcoded output files using the URL to your specific Encore instance and append the location of your file. In this example: https://eyevinn-boristest.encore.prod.osaas.io/usercontent/demo/demo_x264_1312.mp4

Simply browse to this URL in your web browser to start playing the transcoded video.

More on Encore

SVT Encore queue handling is built to make sure that high priority jobs never have to wait until lower priority jobs are processed. It is also built to scale over any number of instances.

Recent additions:

SVT Encore supports chunked transcoding for ultra-fast transcoding jobs. Chunked transcoding parallelizes the transcoding by splitting an asset file into multiple chunks to be transcoded in simultaneously, before sewed back together again as the complete output asset file.

Recently SVT released parameterized coding profiles enabling a more flexible and dynamic transcoding workflow. Already available in Eyevinn OSC.

Let us know if we can help you further with transcoding or any other Eyevinn OSC component.

Boris Asadanin is a Media Solution Specialist and partner at Eyevinn Technology. Eyevinn Technology is the leading independent consulting company specializing in video technology and media distribution.

Eyevinn Technology is the world leading independent specialists in video technology, video development, and sustainable streaming. Proud organizer of the yearly Nordic conference Streaming Tech Sweden.