Before using media processing or online editing in Intelligent Media Services (IMS), upload your media assets — videos, audio, images, and auxiliary files such as captions and fonts.
Supported file formats
IMS supports uploading videos, audio files, images, and auxiliary media assets such as captions and fonts. Upload local files directly, or pull online files from a URL or import them from OSS.
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Media type |
File format |
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Video |
MPEG |
MP4, TS, 3GP, MPG, MPEG, MPE, DAT, VOB, and ASF |
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AVI |
AVI |
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Windows Media Video |
WMV and ASF |
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Flash Video |
FLV and F4V |
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Real Video |
RM and RMVB |
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QuickTime |
MOV |
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Matroska |
MKV |
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HTTP-Live-Streaming (HLS) |
M3U8. The standard M3U8 format with TS segments is supported. Use an English file name without special characters to ensure proper identification. |
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Other formats |
DV, GIF, M2T, M4V, MJ2, MJPEG, MTS, OGG, QT, SWF, and WebM |
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Audio |
MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC, RA, M4A, FLAC, APE, AC3, AMR, CAF, and ACM |
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Image |
GIF, WebP, PNG, JPG, JPEG, and HEIC |
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Auxiliary media asset |
Subtitle |
SRT, VTT, and ASS |
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Font |
TTF, TTC, and FON |
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Handling replacement of files with the same name
If you replace a file in OSS with a new file that has the same name, IMS does not automatically update the media asset information. The duration, file size, and frame count of the media asset remain the values from before the replacement.
To have IMS parse the correct information, upload the replacement file under a new file name. IMS then automatically registers the file as a new media asset and parses the correct duration and other metadata.
Calling the UpdateMediaInfo operation only updates the metadata fields of a media asset. It does not trigger reparsing of the underlying OSS file, so it cannot update file-level information such as duration and file size.
Upload methods
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Upload method |
Description |
Scenarios |
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Upload media assets directly in the IMS console. |
Quick uploads or large-file uploads in simple O&M environments. |
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Call the UploadMediaByURL operation to pull media files from public URLs and store them in IMS. |
Media files accessible through public URLs. |
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Upload using OSS APIs (Not recommended) |
Call the CreateUploadMedia operation to obtain the upload URL and credentials, then use a native OSS API to complete the upload. Not recommended due to limited efficiency and higher error rates. |
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Console uploads do not support setting media tags or video thumbnails. Other upload methods support these features.
Storage options
IMS stores media assets in ApsaraVideo VOD or OSS. Configure storage addresses to add or change the default location.
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Product |
ApsaraVideo VOD (Recommended) |
Object Storage Service |
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Description |
Add ApsaraVideo VOD system buckets or your own OSS buckets registered in the VOD system. Create new buckets in the ApsaraVideo VOD console if needed. Manage VOD storage. |
Add your OSS buckets, or create new ones in the OSS console. Create buckets in the console. |
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Scenarios |
All-in-one video service covering upload, transcoding, distribution, and playback with built-in CDN, hotlink protection, watermarking, and AI processing. |
General-purpose storage for unstructured data. Requires integrating transcoding, CDN, players, and access control — flexible but operationally complex. |
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Price level |
Standard storage unit price is comparable to OSS. |
More flexible billing. Overall cost can be 5%–10% lower. |
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Management and O&M |
Out-of-the-box: auto-creates buckets, attaches CDN, and generates playback URLs. Low O&M overhead. |
Requires manual CDN, hotlink protection, credential, and authentication setup. Suited for teams with DevOps capabilities or an existing storage platform. |
Post-upload processing
When uploading audio or video files, you can enable automatic transcoding. IMS runs the specified workflow after the upload completes. The callback you receive indicates whether the media asset is ready:
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No post-upload processing: the asset is ready when you receive the video upload complete callback.
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With post-upload processing: the asset is ready when you receive the transcoding sub-task complete or transcoding main task complete callback.
All available callbacks are listed in Callback event overview.
Contact us
If you have questions or want to obtain technical support, join the DingTalk group for IMS (ID: 84650000851) to contact us.