About File Hosting Locations
A file hosting location is where Cisco Show and Share stores its published files. By default, Cisco Show and Share stores uploaded videos, transcripts, files, and slides locally on the appliance. In this configuration, Cisco Show and Share becomes the origin server for the videos.
We recommend, as a best practice, that you configure Cisco Show and Share to store the files on external servers. You can define external servers for each file type that you support.
A hybrid deployment, in which some file types are published locally to the Cisco Show and Share appliance, and some file types are published to an external server, is also supported.
For more information about file hosting locations, see the following topics:
How Locally Published Files are Served
When you publish all files locally, Cisco Show and Share delivers files directly from the appliance using the following methods:
- RTMP (streaming) for FLV and MP4/H.264.
- HTTP (progressive download) for WMV, MP3, and all other assets, such as attached files and text transcripts. HTTP is also used for MP4/H.264 videos when viewed from the Cisco Show and Share mobile application.
External File Hosting Location Server Types
You can use streaming servers or web servers to host video and associated files.
It is highly recommended that you use an appropriate streaming server as the external file hosting location for FLV and MP4/H.264 videos. If you do not, the video editing feature of Cisco Show and Share will not work. The Cisco Show and Share video editor uses non-destructive editing. This means that the original video remains intact and pointers and markers are used to create the edited version. This type of editing requires a streaming server to play back the video correctly. If you publish an edited file to a non-streaming server, the file will play back in its unedited form.
Table 4-1 shows the external server types recommended for each file type
About the Default Hosting Location
If you publish some or all files to an external hosting location, you must define a Default Hosting Location. The Default Hosting Location is the location used for any file type that does not have a defined hosting location. It contains *.* in the file type for defining the hosting location. Typically, the Default Hosting Location will be an HTTP server.
Procedures
Define External File Hosting Locations
When you switch from local file hosting to external file hosting, Cisco Show and Share automatically creates templates for the most used file types. You can modify those templates with your external server information or create new file hosting locations.
One of the locations that you must define is the default hosting location. The DeployLocalConfig Hosting Location drawer contains the Default Hosting location settings. This location should be an HTTP server.
Files that are uploaded as attachments to videos, such as.zip or.doc files, the text transcripts (.txt), and the video thumbnails (.jpg) are also stored externally according to the location defined for those file types. If you do not have a location defined for those specific file types, they are stored on the server defined by the default hosting location settings.
Procedure
Step 1
Log in to Cisco Show and Share as Administrator or superuser.
Step 2
Choose Administration from the global navigation.
Step 3
Choose Setup > Show and Share.
Your browser loads the File Hosting Locations page. In the default state for this page, a check box with the label “Publish locally to < Show_and_Share_appliance_FQDN >” is checked.
Step 4
Uncheck the Publish locally to check box.
The File Hosting Locations page loads a set of drawers. Templates for the hosting locations of the most commonly used file types are pre-populated.
Step 5
Define a file hosting location for the specified file type. See Table 4-2 for the field descriptions.
Note
If you have integrated the Cisco Media Experience Engine with Cisco Show and Share, all uploaded videos will be transcoded to H.264 in an MP4 wrapper. Windows media files might be excluded from transcoding if bypass is selected by the user. Therefore, you will need to define hosting locations for both H.264 and WMV.
Step 6
(Optional) You can add additional file hosting locations by clicking Create an additional file hosting location. You can remove an unused template by clicking Delete.
Step 7
Click Save.
Table 4-2 External Hosting Location Settings
|
|
File Hosting Location Name |
A human-readable name. It might be the same as the relevant file type. |
File Hosting Server Settings |
Accepts files with extensions |
The filename extensions that identify particular file types. These are the default values:
- H.264 Hosting Location: *.mp4, *.m4v, and *.mpv4
- MP3 Hosting Location: *.mp3
- Windows Media Hosting Location: *.wmv, *.asf, *.asx, *.wma
- FLV Hosting Location: *.flv
|
File upload protocol |
The protocol or method for file transfer. Either FTP or SFTP. We recommend using SFTP. |
Host address |
The DNS-resolvable FQDN or routable IP address of the remote server where you will deploy files of the relevant file type. Using an FQDN is recommended. |
Login name |
A user account with sufficient privileges to access the remote server. |
Login password |
The assigned password for the login name that you specified. |
Directory root location |
The relative directory path to files that you will deploy. For example, if the root directory on the server is configured to be /data/ftproot and the absolute path for the deployment site ends with /data/ftproot/vp/flash, then the relative value to enter would be /vp/flash. |
Directory root URL path |
The URL where Cisco Show and Share will reference your files. This includes the protocol, the FQDN, the application, the codec, and the path. If your video files are hosted on a web server, use the HTTP or HTTPS protocol. If the video files are hosted on a streaming server, use the RTMP protocol. For example: [protocol]://[servername]/[application]/[codecID:][directory] A sample URL for streaming a video over RTMP using the above syntax might be: rtmp://myserver.com/vod/flv:flash or rtmp://myserver.com/vod/mp4:mystream Note When using the RTMP protocol, you must specify the codec ID, for example, FLV, MP3, or MP4. You do not need to specify the codec when you use the HTTP or HTTPS protocol. A sample URL for playing video over HTTP might be: http://myserver.com/vod/mp3 or http://myserver.com:8080/vod/mp4 The second sample shows where the port number appears in the URL when you do not use the default port for the HTTP protocol. |
Prepare a Web Server for Externally-Hosted Transcript Files
You must configure and use a web server for your text transcripts whenever they are stored externally from the Cisco Show and Share server. Your transcript files will be hosted externally when the default file location (*.*) points to an external server or if you define an external server for *.txt files.
In the root directory on your web server, you must save an XML file with the filename CROSSDOMAIN.XML.
Example File Syntax
<!DOCTYPE cross-domain-policy SYSTEM "http://www.adobe.com/xml/dtds/cross-domain-policy.dtd">
<site-control permitted-cross-domain-policies="master-only"/>
<allow-access-from domain="*"/>
<allow-http-request-headers-from domain="*" headers="SOAPAction"/>
If you do not use a web server with the crossdomain.xml file, Cisco Show and Share will not be able to retrieve the transcripts.
To understand the CROSSDOMAIN.XML file and its purpose, see:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/fplayer9_security.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/articles/crossdomain_policy_file_spec.html
http://developer.yahoo.com/javascript/howto-proxy.html
Delete a File Hosting Location
When you switch from local file hosting to external file hosting, Cisco Show and Share automatically creates templates for the most used file types. You might not need all of them. For example, if you are using a Cisco MXE 3500 running Release 3.3 software, you will not need the FLV Hosting location. You can safely delete it.
If you delete a file hosting location for a file type that has been previously published, files published to that location will be unavailable. Viewers will receive a warning that the file is no longer available.
Procedure
Step 1
Click Delete to the right of the file hosting location name.
Step 2
Click Yes in the confirmation dialog box.
Configure Local File Hosting
By default, Cisco Show and Share uses local file hosting. Typically you will not need to perform this procedure unless you are using local file hosting and you change the AAI password. This procedure shows you how to reenable local file hosting.
Procedure
Step 1
Log in to Cisco Show and Share using an administrator account.
Step 2
Choose Administration from the global navigation.
Step 3
If not already there, click Setup > Show and Share.
Step 4
Check the Publish locally to checkbox.
Step 5
Enter the AAI admin password in the Password field.
Step 6
Click Verify Password.
If you entered an incorrect password, you receive the message “URL Test Failed”. Reenter your password and try again. If you entered the correct password, you receive the message “URL Test Pass”