All Collections
Video Settings
Automatic Video Previews
Automatic Video Previews
Chris Potter avatar
Written by Chris Potter
Updated over a week ago

Automatic Video Previews are turned on by default for all Screenlight accounts. This means that when you upload a video, we will create a high quality 720p proxy that is viewable on virtually any device. This is great for most people, since you can upload virtually any video file without worrying about frantic calls from clients that can't view videos.

That said, there are some situations where you may want more control over your video encoding. In these situations you can go into your account settings and turn off Automatic Video Previews. When you do this, Screenlight will use the master video file you upload for viewing. You will be responsible for producing files in the correct format for online viewing.

REASONS TO TURN OFF AUTOMATIC VIDEO PREVIEWS

  • Faster video processing

  • Video quality control

  • Custom video workflow

Faster video processing

We work hard to minimize the amount of time a video sits in a queue before we start processing. That said, video encoding takes time. If you need something turned around as fast as possible, you can turn off Automatic Video Previews

Video quality control

The video proxies we create are 720p, H.264 baseline encoded video and AAC encoded audio in an MP4 container.

While we have tuned our video encoding process for maximal quality with minimal streaming issues, h.264 is still a lossy video codec โ€” reduction in the video file size is at least partially the result of the encoding algorithm discarding information in the video stream. Because of this, there is a chance that uploading video that has already been encoded using a lossy codec, whether h.264 or something else, will result in artifacts being introduced when we process the video to generate our proxies.

One way to avoid video quality degradation from re-encoding video is to enable video passthrough, and upload an h.264 mp4 that is optimized to the needs of your workflow.

Video encoding workflow

Some clients have very specific encoding requirements, a pre-existing encoding pipeline, or they want clients to see exactly what they've output. If you already have an automated process that is working for you and you know that the outputs will work on the devices you want, then you can turn off our Automatic Video Previews.

Did this answer your question?