What is a media asset, media asset types, management, and use cases - ApsaraVideo VOD

Uploading and processing media create numerous media assets. ApsaraVideo VOD provides a unified, powerful service to manage these assets through the console or by calling APIs. This topic defines media assets and describes their types, management features, methods, and common use cases.

Media assets

Content production generates large amounts of data, such as audio, video, image, and text files. A media asset consists of this data, its associated metadata, and related information.

Media asset types

Type	Description	Reference
Basic information	Audio/video information: Includes the video ID, title, description, duration, thumbnail URL, status, creation time, file size, snapshot, category, tag, storage region, and storage class. Image information: Includes the image ID, title, URL, status, description, file size, category, width, height, creation time, tag, and storage region. Auxiliary media assets such as watermarks and subtitles: Includes the title, URL, description, file size, business type, category, creation time, tag, and storage region. Note The `category` settings are global and apply to all media asset types. You can create up to three levels of categories. To manage categories, log on to the ApsaraVideo VOD console. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Configuration Management > Categories. You can also manage categories by using category APIs.	Video: Audio and video information AudioStream: Audio stream information ImageInfo: Image information AttachedMediaInfo: Auxiliary media asset information Category management Category APIs
Source file information	Includes the file name, duration, file size, status, width, height, frame rate, URL, bitrate, output file type, and creation time.	Mezzanine: Source file information
Playback information	Includes the video stream bitrate, definition, duration, encryption status, playback URL, format, frame rate, width, height, stream type, transcoding job ID, watermark ID, stream status, creation time, and modification time.	PlayInfo: Playback information Audio and video playback

Use cases

Centrally manage metadata for media types such as videos and images to reduce maintenance costs.
Quickly retrieve media assets by using text tokenization for titles and descriptions. This feature streamlines the use of frequently accessed content.
Link different types of media assets, such as audio, video, image, and text files, to their corresponding stream information and AI data. This makes it easy to find related assets. For example, from a video, you can quickly access its snapshots, thumbnail, playback information, and AI data.
Use existing assets in production workflows, such as video editing and transcoding, to create new content.
Each managed media asset is assigned a URL, which simplifies sharing and distribution.

Management features

ApsaraVideo VOD lets you get, update, delete, and search for media assets, change their storage class, and download media files.

Feature	Description	Reference
Get media asset information	This feature retrieves the basic information of a media asset by its ID. You must use different APIs for different asset types.	Get and update media asset information
Update media asset information	You can modify asset information such as the title, description, category, and tags. Fields like file size, status, and storage region cannot be modified.	Update media asset information
Change the storage class of a media asset	You can change the storage class of audio and video assets. ApsaraVideo VOD allows you to store assets as Standard, Infrequent Access (IA), Archive, or Cold Archive objects.	Change the storage class of a media asset
Search for media assets	You can search for basic information about media assets. The search feature uses text tokenization for titles and descriptions to support fuzzy matching. ApsaraVideo VOD provides the unified SearchMedia API operation and a unified media asset search protocol for all media asset types.	Search for media assets
Download media files	Download audio and video files: Call the GetMezzanineInfo API to get the URLs of source files for download. Download image files: Obtain image URLs by getting asset information or searching for assets, and then save the images. Client-side downloads: To allow users to download and cache videos for offline playback on mobile devices, you must integrate the ApsaraVideo Player SDK.	Download media files
Delete media files	You can delete various types of media files generated by ApsaraVideo VOD, such as source audio/video files, transcoded streams, video snapshots, and uploaded images. The service provides deletion features at different granularities.	Delete media files

Management methods

ApsaraVideo VOD allows you to manage media assets by using the console or by calling APIs.

Manage assets in the console

After you activate ApsaraVideo VOD, log on to the ApsaraVideo VOD console. In the left-side navigation pane, go to Media Files > Audio/Video, Image, or Short Video Material. You can then manage your audio, video, and image assets. The console allows you to upload, view, update, delete, and search for assets. If you delete a media asset, its source file is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered.
Manage assets by calling APIs

You can call API operations to search for, view details of, batch update, and delete audio, video, and image files. For more information, see Media asset management APIs.