Overview of transcoding services

A transcoding service is a third-party service that is required to enable your users to work with videos in Censhare.

Why you need a transcoding service for Censhare

Modern video formats vary extensively, and so does the needs of the users. Some users may upload extremely long videos or video in a high resolution. Other users may play those videos using a wide variety of browsers and devices, including mobile phones.

It is important to enable a smooth workflow for all of them. For this reason, each and every video must be converted to the MP4 format, one that has proven to be the most compatible. The task of the transcoding service is therefore to make this conversion happen. Apart of this, a transcoding service also generates still pictures for preview purposes.

If you configure it correctly, the following will happen in the background: When an asset event happens – a new asset has been created, a new master file has been uploaded, the asset has been saved and closed, etc. – a video transcoder will take the video, run a conversion, save the output, and “pipe” it into Censhare on-demand.

Indeed, you can specify another output format for your videos or configure the transcoding service to generate multiple outputs. You also can and should use different presets for video conversion.

How to choose a transcoding service

A transcoding service encompasses:

• video conversion from one format to another

• changes in resolution

• changes in bitrate

• other changes, e.g., another codec

A company can use a few transcoders in parallel. Using different asset filters and events, Censhare controls which transcoding service is responsible for a specific task, e.g., for generating still images or converting to MP4 for preview and editing purposes. It makes sense to use only one service for the same output storage item, even though you can use multiple ones.

The correct choice depends on various factors and needs to be discussed as part of the customization project planning. The main factors are usually:

• characteristics of the video files (MIME type, length, resolution, file format)

• codecs to be used

• end user workflows

• cost factor

• preferred hosting

Censhare supports three media transcoding services. One of them – AWS Elastic transcoder – is scheduled for deprecation in November 2025.

Supported transcoding services

Below you will find a very simple comparison of the available services.

For information on AWS Elastic transcoder, please refer to the third-party documentation (as long as it is still available).