Preparing Your Content for the Brightcove Player

Check that your video and image assets are on your hard drive and in the correct formats before uploading them into Brightcove:

General File Requirements
Video Preparation Guidelines (full-length, preview & bumper videos)
Image Preparation Guidelines (backgrounds, thumbnails, & video stills)

General File Requirements

The files must be on a local or mounted drive.	If your files are on a network drive using UNC (Universal Naming Convention), such as \\Documents\file.flv copy them to your local hard drive before attempting to upload into Brightcove.
Files should be closed when uploading.	When you upload files into Brightcove, they cannot be open for viewing or editing in any other application
Include a full-length video for each video Title.	A preview video , bumper , thumbnail, and a video still are optional. (More info on titles)
File naming: Alphanumeric characters, underscores and hyphens are acceptable. File names can contain a single space between characters.	Two consecutive spaces are not allowed in an asset file name. As you upload your assets into the Brightcove service from the Brightcove Console, they are categorized by their Brightcove asset type (Flash or WMV full-length or preview video, video still, thumbnail, background image, etc.) As a result, you don't have to name your asset files to indicate their purpose in Brightcove. If you later need to programmatically refer to image and video asset files in the Brightcove service, you can do this using a numeric reference-id.

Video Preparation Guidelines (Full-length, Preview & Bumper Videos)

Video Type	Guidelines	Description/Background
Flash full-length , Flash preview video or Bumper Video	Flash Video (FLV) 7 or 8. Encoding at 512 kbps, including both video and audio More detail on encoding to Flash	A full-length video is a primary video in your player. A full-length video is required to create a player Title. A preview video is up to 30 seconds of video content that acts as a trailer or teaser. Include a preview video when your video is for sale or when your full-length video is 15 minutes or more. Flash format is used to prepare video content for playback in any player. (Videos for purchase or rent must be in WMV format.) A bumper video is up to 15 seconds of video content that acts as an introduction or can be used for branding. Include a bumper video when you want to introduce a title with a short clip.
WMV full-length video	Windows Media Video (WMV) 9 Encoding at 1400 kbps, including both audio and video More detail on encoding to WMV	A full-length video is a primary video in your player. A full-length video is required to create a player Title. WMV format is required for titles that will be purchased or rented through a Pay Media player template. (You should include a Flash preview video for each pay media Title.)

Image Preparation Guidelines (Backgrounds, Thumbnails, Video Stills, & Logo Overlays)

Image Type	Requirement	Description/Background
Player background	Non-progressive JPEG The image size can vary, depending on player template (Overview of Player Templates). Maximum file size = 1 MB	A background image is a style option for a Player (other style options are Theme, Color, and Font). Brightcove offers several default background images (available from Players > Styles > Background). you can also create and upload your own background image (Players > Styles > Background > Background Image > Open File Upload), which may better coordinate with the design of the destination website where the Player will be embedded
Thumbnail	Non-progressive JPEG 120x90 pixels	A thumbnail image displays with the content description in the Lineup area of a Player. Thumbnails are helpful for viewers as they search or browse the Internet for video they would like to watch. Creating thumbnails
Video still	Non-progressive JPEG 480x360 pixels	A video still displays in the Player video screen before or after a full-length video plays, if it launches automatically. If the video continues to the next video automatically (you can set this from the Players > Settings tab or by editing the continuousPlay attribute), the still may not display at all. Creating video stills
Logo Overlay	PNG or GIF Maximum Size 464x344 pixels. Transparency recommended.	A Logo Overlay is an image that overlays your video within the video playback window. Sometimes referred to as a Bug, Digital Overlay Graphic (DOG), or Watermark, Logo Overlays are useful for presenting your brand to your users. Brightcove recommends a white logo set at 25% opacity. Download our PSD template as a starting point. Logo Overlays can link to a URL or your choice. Using Logo Overlay.