Alibaba Cloud ApsaraVideo VOD provides an all-in-one solution that allows you to manage, process, deliver, and play audio and video streams on demand. Short video platforms, online education institutions, and TV broadcasting and media can use ApsaraVideo VOD to efficiently produce, manage, and distribute audio and video content.
Supports uploading large volumes of audio and video content to the ApsaraVideo VOD platform through the console, API operations, SDKs, and PC clients. Powered by large language model (LLM) frameworks, ApsaraVideo VOD provides end-to-end intelligent media capabilities for audio and video content. The capabilities include intelligent analysis, natural language retrieval, automated review, video translation, and media fingerprint. | Provides broadcast-level media processing features such as video transcoding, visual effects, and encryption. Powered by the narrowband HD technology, ApsaraVideo VOD supports scenario-based transcoding to lower bitrates and reduce bandwidth consumption, ensuring secure and smooth video playback across various devices and network environments. | Delivers secure and efficient global content distribution by leveraging the robust content delivery networks (CDNs) of Alibaba Cloud. ApsaraVideo VOD also provides cross-platform player SDKs with rich playback features, such as preloading, local caching, adaptive bitrate streaming, and device-side quality enhancement, to deliver a premium viewing experience. |
Benefits
Stable and feature-rich media service: provides an all-in-one solution that covers video upload and storage, media processing, distribution, and playback, supports multiple scenarios, and offers extensive SDKs and APIs to meet diverse business requirements.
Smooth and efficient user experience: provides a global network of over 3,200 CDN nodes and cross-platform player SDKs, enables instant loading and low stuttering rates, and supports adaptive bitrate streaming and device-side quality enhancement, ensuring smooth and stable playback experience.
Reliable and comprehensive security protection: provides end-to-end video security protection solutions. Multiple encryption methods, such as private encryption, HTTP live streaming (HLS) encryption, and digital rights management (DRM) encryption, are combined with automated review to effectively prevent hotlinking and copyright infringement.
Controllable costs: provides scenario-based transcoding solutions that meet the requirements of short drama and general-purpose use cases, ensuring high video quality at lower bitrates and reducing bandwidth costs by over 30%. Flexible billing methods and efficient development tools help reduce operational costs.
Get Started with ApsaraVideo VOD
Step 1: Enable storage management
Make sure that you have logged on to the ApsaraVideo VOD console and activated the service. You are not charged for service activation. You can choose a billing method based on your business requirements.
ApsaraVideo VOD offers a trial for new users to fully experience the service.
ApsaraVideo VOD services in different regions are isolated. We recommend that you choose a nearby region to effectively reduce network latency and improve data transmission efficiency. Supported features may vary based on regions.
Log on to the VOD console and go to the Storage page. In the top navigation bar, select a nearby region.
Click Enable VOD buckets, and select a storage redundancy type. If your business requires higher availability, we recommend that you use zone-redundant storage.
ZRS
Zone-redundant Storage (ZRS) stores multiple copies of your data across multiple zones in the same region. If a zone fails, the data that is stored in the other zones is still accessible.
LRS
Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) stores multiple copies of your data across multiple devices of different facilities in a single zone. This ensures data durability and availability even if hardware failures occur.
Wait until the bucket is enabled. You can use the bucket only after the system returns a message indicating that the bucket is enabled and the status of the bucket changes to Normal.
Step 2: Upload an audio or video file
Choose Media Files > Audio/Video, and click Upload to go to the Upload Media page.
Click Add Media. In the Add Media dialog box, use the default upload method From Local to upload a file.
From Local: To upload a file in the VOD console, you must click the area in the dotted line rectangle to select the local file, or drag the file to the area.
From URL (supported only in the Shanghai region): To upload a file in the VOD console, you must enter the URL, extension, and name of the file.
After the audio or video file is uploaded, click Upload.
The Upload Media page displays the status of the file that you upload. When the file status changes from Uploading to Uploaded, the file is uploaded.
You can return to the Audio/Video page to view the uploaded file.
Step 3: Obtain the playback URL and play the media file
If you play the media file by using the playback URL, you are charged for outbound traffic. In this case, we recommend that you configure an accelerated domain name to use the acceleration billing method, which allows you to enjoy a discount compared with the outbound traffic billing method.
Choose Media Files > Audio/Video, and click Manage in the Actions column of the uploaded file.
Click the Video URL tab, and click Copy in the Actions column of the definition that you want to use to play the file.
Paste the playback URL into your browser to play the file.
Extended features
You can configure a transcoding template to automatically transcode videos when you upload them and generate output videos in multiple definitions.
You can configure a workflow to automatically perform video processing tasks, such as transcoding, screenshot capture, watermarking, after a video is uploaded.
You can use the video editing feature to perform professional editing task online or by using APIs or SDKs.
You can configure accelerated domain names to speed up video uploads and downloads and enjoy traffic discounts.
FAQ
How can I upload audio and video files in batches?
You can upload multiple audio and video files at a time by using a PC client tool, URL, or SDK. For more information, see Media upload.
How to migrate audio and video files stored in OSS to ApsaraVideo VOD?
If the following two conditions are met, you can add your Object Storage Service (OSS) bucket to ApsaraVideo VOD.
The OSS bucket exists in the target region, and the bucket is of Standard storage class.
You have authorized ApsaraVideo VOD to access your OSS resources on the cloud resource access authorization page.
You can also migrate the audio and video files to ApsaraVideo VOD by using their URLs and an upload tool. For more information, see Media upload.