Revver Video Overview

Revver provides a comprehensive solution for video creators, publishers and distributors to create, edit and manage their videos across multiple platforms. Revver hosts all videos for free, and “packages” video streams with dynamic advertising solutions, so that creators and distributors can profit from the ever expanding business of internet video.

The process by which a user uploads and subsequently sees their video on Revver can be confusing to the new user especially if used to sites where uploading is either not available via an API, so we’ll start with a brief description of the video upload/transcode/review system. There are FOUR stages in the process: UPLOADING, TRANSCODING, REVIEW and GOING ONLINE. The entire process may take up to 2 hours, but depending on a number of factors it could be longer.

STAGE 1: UPLOAD

The first step is the actual upload. Using a standard HTTP POST request the video data is uploaded to a server. Upon a successful upload, a videoID is assigned to the video and it is passed to the transcoding system.

STAGE 2: TRANSCODING

All Revver media is offered in both Flash and Quicktime formats. The process by which it is encoded into these different formats is known as “transcoding” (wikipedia link). The transcoding queue is processed according to a set of simple rules, and then the resulting media file is passed thru a human review process.

STAGE 3: REVIEW

The goal of this process is to ensure that the Revver library is “clean” and free of stolen or pirated content as well as to ensure that there is no pornography or hate speech . In the case of copyright violations, the process that is usually taken is that the owner of the video is notified by the Revver Review team and given opportunity to defend the copyright, or provide additional materials as may be necessary. In this case, the video receives a special status (see below) “review_verify” until it is either approved or rejected.>

STAGE 4: GOING ONLINE

Once approved by the reviewers, the video then is distributed amongst a series of media servers to improve efficiency when delivering videos via API user sites. It usually takes about 10 or 15 minutes for this stage, but this too can vary. During this time, the video (see below) will be in the status “going_online”. Once the distribution is complete, the video is then accessible via the flash player, and can be viewed on API user sites and the www.revver.com site.

In order to track this process, various “statuses” are assigned to the video as is passes through each stage. These statuses are:

uploading

When the call to video.getUploadToken is made, a new upload token is created, and the status of the videoID associated to that token is set to “uploading”.

processing

When a POST request is made to the upload server along with the token in the URL, the system checks to see if video.create has been sucessfully been called for the associated videoID, and if so, changes the status to “processing”. If not, then the videoID remains in the state “uploading” until video.create is called.

failed

For various reasons, videos may fail during the TRANSCODING stage. When this happens, the status for the video is changed to “failed” and no further processing takes place. Note: videos that fail are usually re-transcoded within a few hours or days at most, so the main reason that a video would never end up in the Revver library is if the uploading process never completed.

review

When transcoding completes, the videos are passed into a system that queues videos for our review team, and during this time, until they either approve, reject or request verification, the status remains “review”. As Revver employs a 24/7 staff of reviewers, this is usually the fastest stage of the process.

review_verify

In cases where copyright or ownership of the video content is required to be verified, the reviewer will request additional information. This request will either go directly to the video uploader’s email (if provided), and/or will be visible in the same user’s dashboard on the www.revver.com site.

rejected

If reviewers determine that the video is not appropriate content, i.e. contains hate speech, blatant copyright violations, or pornography, it will be rejected, and the status set accordingly.

going_online

After a video has passed through review, and the reviewer has approved the video for going online, the status is updated and the video is then distributed across multiple video servers.

online

Videos in the “online” status are able to be downloaded in QT format, and played with the Revver Player, or Revver Player Component accordingly. All other statuses are invalid for playing videos.

offline

Videos can be taken ‘offline’ manually, and API developers can request that revver automatically set their videos to offline. This is useful when videos are being uploaded as part of a series, and the developer or content owner wishes to control the release of the videos accordingly.