Introduction
As you start to develop your application, it will become increasingly complex with various topics and activities. This is likely to mean that the digital asset library of images, videos, and sound files will become increasingly large.
Large unoptimised files will lead to long loading times and require more processing power, negatively impacting the user experience. Therefore, it is important to ensure that you build your application using optimised files suitable for the application.
For perspective, an average iOS and Android mobile application is ~40mb, which varies based on the type of application it is and the media content required.
Games, educational, entertainment, and graphic-intensive applications are likely to be larger.
Applications that relay information like news and weather will be smaller, as data is often stored on the internet.
Although there is no set file limit on the Cogniss platform, uploading large files is known to cause issues and provides a slower experience for end-users.
Free tools for file optimisation
We recommend optimising your media files to reduce the file size and ensure it is a supported file type. There are various services and applications available, and we have listed several free services you can consider. The supported file types for the platform are listed in the brackets.
Images/icons (.PNG, .JPG, .GIF)
Tiny PNG - also works with JPEG and png files - https://tinypng.com/
Mac users can use Preview (default image/document viewer). Read here for more - https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/preview/prvw2015/mac
Videos/movies (.MP4)
We strongly recommend uploading the video to Youtube or Vimeo and including it in the application using the external media content block. Each of these web platforms also compresses your videos as part of the upload process, helping to provide an optimal user experience.
Handbrake - open source desktop transcoder - https://handbrake.fr/
Audio/sounds (.MP3)
Cut and arrange clips, edit volume levels, combine audio clips, and add sound effects.
Audacity - open source desktop audio application - https://www.audacityteam.org/
Mac users can use Garageband (from the app store or often preinstalled).
Media.io - only works for files up to 100mb - https://www.media.io/audio-compressor.html
Audacity - open source desktop audio application - https://www.audacityteam.org/
Additional information
Please note, reducing file size too much can impact the quality of the media content. Hence, it is best to try out different file sizes to see how to best optimize for quality and performance and make sure to listen/watch the video to see what a user will be seeing.
Please see our Image Guidelines for Cogniss Creator article for recommended sizes for images across the Creator platform.
If you have a media file that is of an unsupported file format (e.g. TIFF for images, WAV for video, ACC for audio), you can use a file converter to change them into the supported format:
Online converter - https://www.online-convert.com/
The optimisation software suggested above often has the ability to save the imported file as a different file type.