Settings

Use personal settings to configure the way you interact with the KVS administration panel. Administrators can have their own settings. Most personal settings do not require any further explanation, so let us address only a few of them:

• Disable IP protection: this disables IP-based administrator session protection. Enable this parameter only if your IP changes as you use the KVS administration panel. Whenever the IP changes, KVS ends the current session; unless this parameter is turned on, you will need to re-login into the administration panel.
• Video edit page display mode: this lets you choose one of the pre-defined display modes for the video edit page. When working with site text or video categorization, we recommend using the Content writer mode where all unnecessary fields are hidden.
• Screenshot display: this lets you set up the way screenshots are displayed on the video edit page. By default, they are not displayed. You can enable them and choose the screenshot format which suits your needs best.
• Video list columns: this lets you set up the way video list looks in the administration panel. If you enable thumbnail display, you will also need to choose the screenshot format and set the size thumbnails will be scaled down to when displayed.
• Album edit page display mode: this lets you choose one of the pre-defined display modes for the album edit page. When working with site text or photo album categorization, we recommend using the Content writer mode where all unnecessary fields are hidden.
• Image display: this lets you set up the way photos are displayed on the photo album edit page. By default, they are not displayed. You can enable them and choose the album format which suits your needs best.
• Album list columns: this lets you set up the way photo album list looks in the administration panel. If you enable thumbnail display, you will also need to choose the photo album format and set the size thumbnails will be scaled down to when displayed.
• User list columns: this lets you set up the way user list looks in the administration panel.

Image Settings

In this section of the settings, you configure sizes of images the KVS engine should use (with the exception of video screenshots and photos). All image sizes are set as NxM, where N is image width and M is image height.

Important! When you make any changes in this section, no images on the server will be converted automatically. Thus, for instance, when you change user avatar size, all avatars uploaded after you made the change will have the new size. No changes will be made to existing avatars.

Please find a detailed explanation of the options below (some of the options are available only in some feature packages):

• User avatar size: fixed size for user avatars. When uploaded in user or administration areas, the images will be scaled down to the size set here. Uploading an image smaller than the size specified will result in an error.
• Category avatar size: fixed size for category avatars. When uploaded in the administration panel, the images will be scaled down to the size set here. The same size is used for avatars of category groups. Uploading an image smaller than the size specified will result in an error.
• Model screenshot size: fixed size for model screenshots. Models support 2 screenshot sizes, so you can select the processing option for the second screenshot. If you choose Autocreate based on size #1, when you upload a source image into the screenshot 1 field, screenshot 2 will be created from that file. This lets you have two similar images of different sizes. If you choose Upload manually, screenshot 2 will be created only if you upload the image manually. This lets you have two different images. Uploading an image smaller than the size specified will result in an error.
• Channel screenshot size (or DVD cover size): fixed size for channel screenshots / DVD covers. Channels / DVDs support 2 screenshot sizes, so you can select the processing option for the second screenshot. If you choose Autocreate based on size #1, when you upload a source image into the screenshot 1 field, screenshot 2 will be created from that file. This lets you have two similar images of different sizes. If you choose Upload manually, screenshot 2 will be created only if you upload the image manually. This lets you have two different images. Uploading an image smaller than the size specified will result in an error.
• Channel group screenshot size (or DVD group cover size): fixed size for channel group screenshots / DVD group covers. Channel groups / DVD groups support 2 screenshot sizes, so you can select the processing option for the second screenshot. If you choose Autocreate based on size #1, when you upload a source image into the screenshot 1 field, screenshot 2 will be created from that file. This lets you have two similar images of different sizes. If you choose Upload manually, screenshot 2 will be created only if you upload the image manually. This lets you have two different images. Uploading an image smaller than the size specified will result in an error.

Conversion Engine Settings

Please find a detailed explanation of the options below:

• Enable pause mode for background tasks: when you enable this, the conversion mode will start switching to pause mode. The time required for this depends on the number and type of background tasks that have been partially launched. After all launched tasks are completed, the engine will switch to pause mode displaying a warning on the start page and a prompt in administration panel header.
• Background tasks priority: this lets you choose a priority setting for resource-consuming tasks that are handled by the primary server (realtime, high, medium, low, very low). You can configure each of the conversion servers separately in the same way.
• Minimum free disc space for primary server: this sets the limit for free disk space on the primary server. When this limit is reached, all content-importing tasks will be suspended to prevent server overload resulting from lack of free disk space.
• Minimum free disc space for storage server group: this sets the limit for free disk space on the storage servers. When this limit is reached, you will no longer be able to add content to your server belonging to a certain server group.

Video Settings

Please find a detailed explanation of the options below:

• Save source files: enable this, and source video files will be saved on the primary server. Source video files may be used later when you want to add new video formats or grab screenshots manually. Storing source files is not required to create new video formats, as files of existing video formats can be used instead. However, if they are, the quality of the files of a new format will very much depend on the quality of your existing video formats, not on the quality of original videos.
• Detect video duration from: this lets you select the video file type to be used when detecting duration of standard and premium videos. You can choose between source files and files of certain video formats.
• Screenshot count: initial number of overview screenshots to be created automatically when all videos undergo initial processing. You can set a fixed number, and in this case each video will have the same number of overview screenshots, or you can use an interval in seconds. This will be the interval between points in a video when screenshots are taken. Thus, number of screenshots per video will vary depending on video duration.
• Screenshot cropping: this lets you configure cropping when creating video screenshots. This is set for each size of an image, either in pixels, or in % from original size. Cropping occurs before screenshots are scaled down to the size set in the settings.
• First screenshot offset: offset in seconds from the video start before the first screenshot is taken. Use this if you want to avoid grabbing screenshots from credits or other static content displayed in the beginning of your videos.

Important! Cropping is used only for the screenshots the engine creates automatically. When you upload manually created screenshots, you will need to crop these yourself.

Video Download Script Protection Settings

Video file protection settings are used together with server-sized protection (X-Accel-Redirect for Nginx) to protect your videos from hotlinking and unauthorized access.

To configure full-featured protection, the directory where your video files are stored needs to be declared as internal in the Nginx configuration (use the internal directive to achieve this). If you use multiple video storage servers, you need to configure video storage directories in the same way on all of them. For internal Nginx directories, direct access to files in this directory is forbidden. This makes files available only to the get_file.php serving script, where all security checks are built in. Do the following to declare a directory as internal in your Nginx configuration:

location ^~ /contents/videos/ {
    mp4; # enabling MP4 streaming
    root /usr/home/clients/ftp0/domains/kernel-tube.com/html; # specifying full path to /contents/videos/
    internal; # disallowing access via direct links
}

KVS features the following video file protection options and settings:

• Enable protection for video download script: this enables protection of the get_file.php serving script from hotlinking and content parsing. Use this, and links to the get_file.php script in your site will become temporary and will not work on third party sites that attempt hotlinking. When this protection is triggered, the site will return the file located at the URL configured below.
• IP limit: this works when get_file.php anti-hotlinking protection is enabled. With this setting, you can configure the number of videos to be available from the same IP address within a period of time you specify. All requests to the download script are included here, including skipping through video. When this protection is triggered, the site will return the file located at the URL configured below.
• Render file from this URL instead of video: the file located at this URL will be returned instead of a video file when get_file.php protection is triggered. If this is left blank, the script will return a 403 (Forbidden) error. Here, you need to specify a link to a video file so that it is displayed correctly in the player. If you want to display a static text, you can use the Movie from image plugin that will create a video file of a specified duration from an image you upload.
• Project IP: this is the IP address used by your site for test video requests. This IP is never blocked by the protection system.
• IP white list: here, you can configure IP address masks for IPs that are not to be blocked by the protection system regardless of how many requests come from these IPs.
• Blocked IPs: this is the list of IPs that are currently blocked. The list can change every 5 minutes, as every 5 minutes the engine rebuilds the IP blacklist.

You will need to check your protection settings for each of the storage servers you have. For each server in the storage server list shown in the administration panel, there is a feature that you can yse to check content serving from this server. Among other things, this feature also tests whether content protection for the server is set up correctly.

Protection can be disabled for each individual video format. Use the settings of this format to do so.

You need to enable video downloading in format settings to let users watch your videos from mobile devices. This decreases overall protection level for your video content.

Rotator Settings

Rotator settings let you enable the video and screenshot rotator, and configure the way it works. Screenshot rotator can be enabled only together with video rotation.

Important! Using the rotator increases your server load (HDD and CPU are used more intensively).

Here is a detailed explanation of the options:

• Enable video rotator: enables video rotation on your site.
• Enable screenshot rotator: enables video screenshot rotation on your site. Use options below to configure the screenshot rotator.
• Min video views: the first from the two rotation completion criteria. A video needs to have this many views for the rotator to finish rotating the screenshots for this video.
• Min video clicks: second rotation completion criterion. For a video with this many clicks, screenshot rotations will be set to completed.
• Delete screenshots: this lets you have less clickable screenshots of a video deleted after screenshot rotation for this video is completed. If you want to delete some screenshots, you need to set the number of screenshots to be left after screenshot rotation.
• Completion: shows the way your videos are distributed according to rotation completion degree. 5 increment intervals are used (0%-20%, 21%-40%, 41%-60%, 61%-80%, 81%-100%), and 1 final completion degree (100%), which, when clicked, takes you to the list of videos for which screenshot rotation has been completed. When you change any of the two rotation completion criteria, this graph may look different.

Important! When the rotator is enabled, it starts working in a gradual way. This is a process that depends on your site’s caching settings. The rotator will be in full operation only when all cache refreshes. You can speed this up by resetting site cache (Smarty and MemCache) manually in Website UI. Remember that resetting the cache will lead to a rapid site load increase.

After you enable the rotator, you may notice that links to viewing pages now have the ?pqr parameter which contains data needed for the rotator to process clicks. If you want to remove this parameter from your links, you can configure your site in such a way that click parameters will be sent via JavaScript. Check the technical FAQ to find out more about the procedure here.

Album Settings

This group of settings is used to set global options for albums. This is available only in the Ultimate package. Please find the explanation of the options below:

• Image cropping: these cropping settings are used when album formats are created from the original images. For each image size, this is set either in pixels or in % from the original size. Cropping occurs before the images are scaled down to a required size.
• Create ZIPs with source images: this lets you create ZIP archives with source images of your albums. When enabled, this will create a background task that will create archives for all existing photo albums.
• Access to source images for users: this lets you specify users of which types can physically access source files of album images via the serving script. By default, site users do not have access to source files. If you want to allow source file access for all users, you need to also make sure your source images are available via direct links on all your storage servers. Use the content serving test feature that checks this and shows an error if direct links do not work. Direct links work when the rule in the Nginx configuration is set accordingly.

Video Adding / Editing Settings in Admin Panel

This group of settings lets you set up certain default values used when adding or editing videos in the administration panel.

The explanation of the options follows below:

• Initial video rating: rating assigned to a video when it is created.
• Default user for adding video: this sets the user by whom the videos in the administration panel will be added by default. While adding a video, you will be able to select any other user. If you need to upload a video from multiple users, use importing where lists of users can be used.
• Default status for adding video: this sets the default video status. While adding a video, you will be able to select any other status when needed.
• Default server group: this lets you configure the way a group of servers will be selected for storing videos. Choose between automatic selection of a group with most free space, random selection, or a specific server group.
• Publishing time: this configures the time in the video post date. When adding a video, you will be able to set any time for any particular video to be published on the site.
• Re-generate directories automatically: this disables manual editing of video directory and forces the directory to be re-generated each time the video title is changed. When this is disabled, the video directory will not change even when video title changes. We do not recommend enabling this option, unless you use numeric IDs in links to video pages (they are used by default). When the directory changes, old links to the video page will no longer work. If the links contain numeric IDs, changing the directory will not make the links invalid.

Album Adding / Editing Settings in Admin Panel

This group of settings lets you set up certain default values used when adding or editing photo albums in the administration panel. This is available only in the Ultimate package.

The explanation of the options follows below:

• Initial album rating: rating assigned to an album when it is created.
• Default user for adding album: this sets the user by whom the photo albums in the administration panel will be added by default. While adding an album, you will be able to select any other user. If you need to upload photo albums from multiple users, use importing where lists of users can be used.
• Default status for adding album: this sets the default photo album status. While adding an album, you will be able to select any other status when needed.
• Default server group: this lets you configure the way a group of servers will be selected for storing photo albums. Choose between automatic selection of a group with most free space, random selection, or a specific server group.
• Publishing time: this configures the time in the photo album post date. When adding photo albums, you will be able to set any time for any particular photo album to be published on the site.
• Re-generate directories automatically: this disables manual editing of photo album directory and forces the directory to be re-generated each time the photo album title is changed. When this is disabled, the photo album directory will not change even when photo album title changes. We do not recommend enabling this option, unless you use numeric IDs in links to photo album pages (they are used by default). When the directory changes, old links to the photo album page will no longer work. If the links contain numeric IDs, changing the directory will not make the links invalid.

API Settings

KVS offers basic API functionality that lets you use outer scripts that create site users and assign premium status to them (and remove such status as well). You can use the API to integrate KVS with your other sites when needed. See the /admin/api/kvs_api.php script to find out more about the parameters the API receives.

The explanation of the options follows:

• Enable API: use this to enable API for your site.
• API password: this creates a non-empty key that will be required for your API to accept outside requests.
• API access URL: the URL used to access your API. This differs for different domains.

Site settings let you configure global aspects of your site. Some options are available only in certain feature packages. See explanation of the options below:

• Disable website: this lets you fully disable your site for outside users. KVS administrators will still be able to see the site without any limitations. Outside users will be redirected to /website_unavailable.html, a static page the contents of which you can customize.
• Dynamic HTTP parameters: this table lets you specify up to 5 dynamic HTTP parameters along with their default values. These parameters will be used by the site’s engine on all pages as well as in links to content sources and payment pages, even when caching is used. Dynamic HTTP parameters are used in situations when you need to accept a HTTP parameter from the outside (and the parameter is not supported by the engine) and display its value on your site or insert it into your links to content sources and / or payment processors. For example, let’s address a situation when you need to accept webmaster traffic and insert their ID to your links to ads and / or payment pages. When caching is enabled, you cannot do this without using dynamic HTTP parameters. To insert the value of a param1 parameter (for example) use the %param1% token in the page template or URL. Then, for a user who visits a link given below, the %param1% token will be replaced with 123456: http://your_domain.com/page/?param1=123456 Important! Using dynamic HTTP parameters may slightly decrease the performance of your site. Make sure you configure only the parameters you actually use.
• XXX page URL pattern: this sets up the pattern to be used for links to viewing pages for objects of various types (videos, photo albums, models, content sources etc.). This pattern is used in the administration panel to quickly go to the viewing page. It is also used by the site engine to create links to viewing pages. The pattern needs to have the %DIR% token which will be replaced with the object’s directory value, and / or the %ID% token to be replaced with the object ID. For photos, you can also use the %IMG% token which is replaced with the photo’s ID. Important! When you change these patterns, you need to add new rules to your root htaccess file. New links will not work unless the rule is added. Also, make sure you keep the old rule as there can be incoming links to your site which use older values. Patters of secondary objects are not required, as such objects do not always need viewing pages. When you specify a pattern, you can use the {{$item.view_page_url}} variable in the template of this object’s list block. This variable contains the link with tokens replaced with their actual values.
• Synchronize user status: this enables synchronization of user statuses with the database, and sets the interval for it. When your site has a member area, premium users can have expired memberships while they are still on the site, or their access to certain content purchased for tokens can expire. This situation does not occur very often, therefore, you don’t need to query the database with each request to check whether the access has expired or not. This option lets you set an interval in minutes. This will be the interval between updates of user status from the database. If your site does not have a member area or token-based access, we recommend disabling this setting.
• Synchronize user online status: this enables synchronization of ‘user online’ statuses with the database, and sets the interval for it. After a user enters the member area, once every 60 seconds a small script is run that pings the server. On the server, such ping can be recorded in the database, which would mean the user is currently online on the site. If you need to use this information anywhere on your site, or you would like to obtain site usage statistics that would include user activity duration, enable this option. The interval defines the period of time between instances when ‘user is online’ statuses will be saved to the database.
• Synchronize user unread messages: this enables synchronization of internal user messages with the database, and sets the interval for it. As users navigate the site, it makes little sense to constantly check whether they have new messages. You can enable this and set the interval between checks for new messages, e.g. in order to show a notification in site header.
• Stop words: the list of words not allowed on your site, separated by commas. When users create any content on the site (comments, wall posts, videos, or photo albums), stop words will be replaced with replacement word (e.g. [censored]). Use this to avoid search engine bots detecting certain words on your site and banning it from the SERP. In internal search, stop words will be removed from all search queries.
• Replacement: the word all stop words will be replaced with.

Member area settings are used to configure global aspects of the way your site’s member area functions. This is available starting from the Advanced package. Please find the explanation of the options below:

• User status after premium: this defines what status is assigned to users when their premium memberships expire or transactions are declined. Users with status set to Active can log into the member area (unless this is disallowed in the settings of the login block), so in this case your site will need to display content correctly to non-premium users. If you choose to set the Disabled status, users with expired premium memberships will not be able to log into the member area.
• Purchasing standard videos for tokens: this lets your users use tokens to purchase access to standard videos, and sets the default price for such videos in tokens. If you need, you can set different prices for any specific videos.
• Purchasing premium videos for tokens: this lets your users use tokens to purchase access to premium videos, and sets the default price for such videos in tokens. If you need, you can set different prices for any specific videos.
• Purchasing standard albums for tokens: this lets your users use tokens to purchase access to standard photo albums, and sets the default price for such photo albums in tokens. If you need, you can set different prices for any specific photo albums.
• Purchasing premium albums for tokens: this lets your users use tokens to purchase access to premium photo albums, and sets the default price for such photo albums in tokens. If you need, you can set different prices for any specific photo albums.
• Purchase nulled after N days: this sets maximum duration of access to purchased content. When a non-zero value is used here, user purchases will be nulled after this many days. If you change this value, the change will affect only new purchases made from then on.
• Activity awards: here, you can set up a system of token awards your users get for various activities on the site. Later, they can use tokens to purchase access to premium content. In this table, token amounts are defined for awards users get for different types of activity. For some activity types, you can set minimum activity completion criteria, e.g. minimum uploaded video duration, minimum comment length etc.

In Customization, you can enable additional fields for certain objects. These fields can be used in the administration panel and on the site as well. If you enable certain fields for some of the objects, they will not show on the site automatically. To use them in this way, you will need to modify the corresponding templates manually.

When you enable additional fields, you can also set their names to be displayed in the administration panel (and nowhere else!).

Here are some examples of how you can use additional fields:

• For categories, 2 additional fields are enabled by default. These let you set the title and description to be used in the metadata of the HTML page (SE-related fields). These values will be used (unless the fields are empty) for each category on the video list page of this category.
• For content sources, you can use a big variety of fields to offer full-featured reviews of your sponsors and virtually any other promos.
• Additional fields for feedback can be enabled and set to required in the feedback block. In this case, users will be required to fill these fields in when submitting the feedback form.

Video Formats

Video formats are split into 2 groups, which lets you set up different sets of video files for standard and premium videos on your site. Standard videos can also be private or public. The Basic package does not feature multi-format support, letting you configure only 1 video format.

Please find the description of video format fields below:

• Title: format name to be used in the administration panel, or on the site, if you decide to use it there.
• Postfix: unique format ID that has to be the last part of file name with extension. The postfix is used in video file names, with video numeric IDs coming before them. Postfix examples: .flv, .mp4, _hq.mp4, premium.wmv etc. Correspondingly, video file names for the postfixes listed here will be 123.flv, 123.mp4, 123_hq.mp4, 123premium.wmv etc. You cannot modify a postfix after you have created the video format.
• Video type: video format group selection: standard videos or premium videos. After you have created the video format, you cannot select a different group here.
• Status: video format status that defines the life cycle of the files of this format. Active required formats will always be created automatically for all videos, unless files of this format are uploaded manually. Active optional formats can be uploaded manually, but will not be created automatically. Disabled formats will not be used when creating videos. You may need this status if you want to remove one of the older formats but do not want to lose existing files of this format. The conditional optional checkbox lets you set up optional formats that will be created provided the duration and the sizes of video source files allow for the creation of such format.
• Source files: lets you mark a format so that files of this format are used as source files later on. If original source files are missing, the engine will use the files of the format marked with this checkbox as source files. If no such format is defined, the engine will use the format with the largest files.
• Video size: lets you either specify a fixed video size to be used while creating files of this format, or make the engine keep the size of source files. If you set a fixed size, you can also either preserve the original video aspect ratio (then either width or height will be dynamic depending on the option selected), or force a fixed size to be used (then cropping will occur on video edges to force the format aspect ratio).
• FFmpeg options: FFmpeg options which define the quality of video and audio streams, set codecs, container formats, and more. You can use these basic options to start with: -vcodec libx264 -threads 0 -r 25 -g 50 -crf 28 -me_method hex -trellis 0 -bf 8 -acodec libfaac -ar 44100 -ab 128k -f mp4
• Watermark image: a PNG image to be put over videos.
• Watermark position: lets you position the watermark on videos.
• Customize watermark for content sources: this lets you customize watermarks for different content sources. To do so, choose the additional file field for content sources where watermarks will be stored. When processing videos, KVS will take the file associated with each video’s content source, as long as this field is filled in. Enable the corresponding field in customization settings to be able to upload custom watermarks for different content sources.
• Access level: this lets you choose categories of users that will be able to access the video files of this format. Correspondingly, the files will not be available for other users. This is used to set up a member area on your site.
• Enable ability to download: this enables downloading video files of this format, or playing then in the HTML5 mode (only for MP4 files). If this is disabled, the files will be available only via the Flash player. When this option is enabled for video formats available to all users, anti-hotlink and video parsing protection will become weaker.
• Disable hotlink protection: allows hotlinking for the video files of this format in any possible way.
• Limit duration to: this limits the duration of the video files of this format, based on seconds or % specified. With limits in %, you can also set minimum and maximum values in seconds.
• Number of parts: this is used together with duration limit, letting you create trailers of specified duration from several parts of a video. The more video parts there are, the greater the conversion server load.
• Offset from beginning: this lets you set an offset from the start of the video in seconds or %.
• Offset from end: this lets you set an offset from the end of the video in seconds or %.
• Last part: this lets the engine know that the last part of the trailer needs to be created from fragment end, not start. When you set the number of parts to >1, the engine splits the video into several fragments of equal duration, picking a piece of certain duration from the beginning of each fragment, creating a merged trailer of required duration. Enable this to have the last part of the trailer created from fragment end, not start.
• Customize duration for content sources: this lets you enable custom format durations for different content sources. To do this, you need to choose the additional text field of content sources where the duration (in seconds) will be stored. When processing videos, KVS will use the duration limit in seconds from content source data, as long as this field is filled in and is a valid number. Enable the corresponding field in customization settings to be able to set custom duration for different content sources.
• Limit speed to: this lets you limit file delivery speed for a particular format. This option works only when videos are served via Nginx.
• Create timeline screenshots: this enables creation of timeline screenshots for video files of this format. After this option is enabled, timeline screenshot creation will be launched in the background for all video files of this format. When this is disabled, no existing timeline screenshots will be deleted. Use the context menu in format list to delete timeline screenshots that have already been created.
• Screenshots interval: interval in seconds between instances of grabbing timeline screenshots.
• Directory name: name of the directory where timeline screenshots for each video file of this format will be stored. You need to specify the name of the directory, not the path to it. The name needs to be unique among all video formats. It will be used to build the path to the directory where timeline screenshots are stored. Examples of names: flv, mp4, mp4_premium_timelines etc. After you set the directory name, you will not be able to change it.

Important! When you create an active required video format, or when you change a format’s status to active required, for each video that doesn’t have a video file of this format file creation tasks will be launched. With large number of videos, background tasks like this can run for days or even weeks, so please be careful when creating active required formats. Before you set the status of a format to active required, test it on several videos using mass editing.

Important! When you enable timeline screenshots for existing video formats, for each video that does not have timeline screenshots background tasks will be launched to create such screenshots. When screenshots cannot be grabbed fast enough, creation of timeline screenshots can take a long time to complete.

When you delete a video format, all video files of this format will be deleted from all storage servers. Deletion will be a background task. Until it is complete, the format status will be set to Removing files.

Screenshot Formats

Screenshot formats are split into 2 groups: overview and timeline screenshots. Overview screenshots are created for every video using the source video file. Number of overview screenshots is set globally in content settings. Timeline screenshots are assigned to video formats, this is why their number is configured in settings for each format. You need to specify the interval between the instances when screenshots are grabbed. Thus, each video is supposed to have at least 1 overview screenshot. Sets of timeline screenshots can be different for different video formats.

Please find the explanation of format fields below:

• Title: format name to be displayed in the administration panel.
• Group: format group, can be either overview or timeline. After you create a format, you will not be able to select a different group for it.
• Size: fixed screenshot size for this format. If you want the screenshots for this format to have the same size as the original files, you need to set the size to source keyword. In this case, screenshot sizes can differ depending on original video size. Size is a unique group ID, i.e. you cannot create 2 overview screenshot formats with the same size. You cannot modify the size after you have created the format.
• ImageMagick options for screenshots created automatically: ImageMagick options for processing the screenshots of this format that have been automatically grabbed from videos. The options need to contain tokens %INPUT_FILE%, %OUTPUT_FILE% and %SIZE%; these will be replaced with relevant paths and size when the operation is running. These ImageMagick options will only be used for automated video screenshot creation.
• ImageMagick options for screenshots uploaded manually: ImageMagick options for processing the screenshots of this format that have been manually uploaded, either during video creation, or during setting up screenshots. The options need to contain tokens %INPUT_FILE%, %OUTPUT_FILE% and %SIZE%; these will be replaced with relevant paths and size when the operation is running. These ImageMagick options will only be used for manually uploaded video screenshots.
• Screenshot aspect ratio: this is an important option that lets you configure screenshot scaling. You can have the screenshots grabbed from your videos to be scaled to the size required by a particular format. If the aspect ratio of the original video is preserved, screenshots may have black bars on the edges. In case the screenshot aspect ratio is adjusted to the format requirements, there will be no black bars. However, source screenshots will be cropped on the edges if needed.
• Create ZIPs: this specifies whether ZIP archives with screenshots of this format are to be created for each video. If it is enabled for an existing format, a background ZIP screenshot archiving task is launched for all videos. If it is disabled for an existing format, a similar background ZIP archive deletion task is launched for all videos.
• Watermark image: a PNG image to be put over each screenshot.
• Watermark position: lets you position the watermark on the screenshot.

Important! When you create a new screenshot format, a background screenshot creation task will be launched for all videos, creating screenshots of this format. This task will be processed by the primary server and may take a long time to complete, depending on available server resources and total number of screenshots.

When you delete a screenshot format, all screenshots of this format will be deleted for all the videos. Deletion will be launched as a background task. While it is running, the format status will be set to Removing files. Before you delete a format, you will need to make sure your site templates do not have any more links to the screenshots of the format being deleted. To do this, use template search in the administration panel and search for format size in your templates (e.g. 240x180).

If you need to change the screenshot size you use on your site, you will need to create a new screenshot format with the required size, wait for the background creation task to be complete, and then switch the site templates to the new format. After that, it is safe to delete the old format.

Album Formats

Photo album formats are split into 2 groups: main image group and preview group. Files of main image group formats are created for each photo in the album. At the same time, files of preview group are created for the main photo of each album, one file per album. Album formats are supported in the Ultimate package only.

Please find the description of album format fields below:

• Title: format name to be displayed in the administration panel.
• Group: format group, can be either main or overview. After you create a format, you will not be able to select a different group for it.
• Size: fixed image size for this format. Is not a fixed size, as unlike video screenshots, album photographs support dynamic sizes with various limitations. Size is a unique ID for a format in the group. You cannot modify the size after you have created the format.
• ImageMagick options: ImageMagick options for processing the photos of this format. The options need to contain tokens %INPUT_FILE%, %OUTPUT_FILE% and %SIZE%; these will be replaced with relevant paths and size when the operation is running. These ImageMagick options will be used for any photo-related tasks.
• Image aspect ratio: this is an important option that lets you configure the scaling of source photographs to the size set for this format. If the aspect ratio of the original photo is preserved, photos may either have black bars on the edges (fixed size), or the photo size will be smaller than the size set in the format (dynamic size). In case the photo aspect ratio is adjusted to the format requirements, there will be no black bars. However, source photos will be cropped on the edges if needed.
• Create ZIPs: this specifies whether ZIP archives with images of this format are to be created for each photo album. If it is enabled for an existing format, a background ZIP archiving task is launched for all photo albums. If it is disabled for an existing format, existing ZIP archives will not be deleted. Here lies the difference between photo album ZIPs and video screenshot ZIPs. Use the context menu in the format list to delete existing ZIP archives.
• Watermark image: a PNG image to be put over each photo.
• Watermark position: lets you position the watermark on the photo.
• Access level: this lets you choose categories of users that will be able to access the photos of this format. Correspondingly, the photos will not be available for other users. This access restriction will only work when you use protected links to photographs (via the serving script).
• Show this image when no access: this lets you use a pre-defined image to be shown to users who attempt to access a photo via the serving script and do not have enough user privileges to do so. If this field is left blank, the serving script will return the 403 (Forbidden) error.

KVS lets you use source photos on the site in the same way as photos of any format. Go to content settings to configure access level required to see the source photos.

Important! When you create a new photo album format, a background task creating photos of this format for all photo albums will be launched. This task will be processed by the primary server and may take a long time to complete, depending on available server resources and total number of photos.

When you delete a photo album format, all photos of this format will be deleted from all the photo albums. Deletion will be launched as a background task. While it is running, the format status will be set to Removing files. Before you delete a format, you will need to make sure your site templates do not have any more links to the photos of the format being deleted. To do this, use template search in the administration panel and search for format size in your templates (e.g. 120x160).

If you need to change the size of photos that you use on your site, you will need to create a new photo album format with the required size, wait for the background creation task to be complete, and then switch the site templates to the new format. After that, it is safe to delete the old format.

Storage Servers

Storage servers are used to store and serve video and photo content. In most cases, the content is stored on the same server as the site that uses it. Sometimes it makes sense to migrate the content to a separater server with a special configuration optimized for faster content serving. This can decrease primary server load. Also, in certain cases it is a good idea to serve the same content from several different servers to balance the load between them. This is exactly what KVS multi-server architecture was implemented for.

KVS features support of virtually any servers whicih store content. The main requirement for remote servers is FTP access with writing permissions. In case you need to use content protection and disallow direct content access, other requirements may apply.

The base of content storage is a specified directory in the server’s file system. KVS stores content in a tree data structure, which means certain subdirectories will be created in the root of the storage directory. In these subdirectories, content files will be stored.

Please find an explanation of content storage fields below:

• Title: server name to be displayed in the administration panel.
• Server group: server group that this particular server belongs to. Content storage is assigned to groups of servers, not to individual servers. Any server that belongs to a group will store and serve all content assigned to this group. This structure lets you balance the serving load if there are multiple servers in one group.
• URL: HTTP link to the content storage directory. In most cases, this directory needs to be protected from direct access so that files in this directory cannot be downloaded bypassing the content protection system.
• Streaming type: this lets you choose the streaming type supported by this particular storage server. For example, if you serve content via Apache, you need to select the HTTP 302 redirect streaming type; if you serve content via Nginx, you need to select the Nginx (x-accel-redirect) streaming type. CDN, the last option in the list, lets you connect any servers with non-standard protection system. When you choose CDN, you will need to create a PHP control script for this CDN system, or request such script from your CDN solution provider.
• CDN control script: full name of the PHP script to manage this particular CDN server, found in the /admin/cdn directory. The /admin/cdn directory does not exist by default, so you need to create it and copy the script there. A template of the script is located here: /admin/tools/cdnapi.php. The template contains a set of functions with special names, which will be called by the KVS engine when files are requested or content is invalidated. Invalidating is an integral part of CDN that cache your content. If no invalidation takes place, CDN servers will keep serving old content even if the content has been replaced. Function names in the script depend on the name of the script to prevent overlapping between scripts for different CDN systems. You will need to rename all functions in the template in accordance with the script name. All functions are documented and have sample values which are sent from the KVS engine as parameters.
• Streaming key: CDN provider key used for content protection. The key is sent to the CDN control script where it can be used in the protection mechanism.
• Use custom streaming HTTP param: this lets you specify a HTTP streaming parameter name that is used instead of the standard start name to skip through videos. Use this field if your server does not support start as a standard streaming parameter.
• Connection type: this defines how data copying between servers is carried out. Important! Regardless of the connection type, one and the same directory in a server’s file system can be used only for one storage server in KVS.
• Path: full path to the content storage directory. The directory specified here needs to have writing permissions (777) and correspond to the HTTP link to it defined in the URL field. When Nginx is used, the storage directory needs to be declared internal in the Nginx configuration to prevent direct access to it.
• FTP host: hostname used when connecting via FTP.
• FTP user: username used when connecting via FTP.
• FTP password: password used when connecting via FTP.
• FTP folder: directory in which the content should be stored, relative to FTP root. If the FTP access leads directly to the storage directory, this field should be left blank. Important! Point your FTP user to the www root in FTP server settings and specify path to storage directory relative to www in KVS settings to avoid potential problems later on. For example, if content should be stored on the server in the http://ip.ad.re.ss/contents/videos directory, then your FTP connection should be set up in such a way that the home directory is http://ip.ad.re.ss and the FTP folder is contents/videos.
• Control script URL: link to the control script remote_control.php, used to manage content serving from a remote server, as well as for monitoring server status. Control scripts are not required for CDN servers. This field is filled in automatically. All you need to do is copy the file /admin/tools/remote_control.php to your storage server and make sure it is available at the URL from this field (the script needs to be in the server’s www root). If the script is available, connected word will be displayed. Otherwise you will need to find out why the script is not working (invalid Apache configuration, invalid Nginx configuration, invalid PHP configuration, etc.).
• Time offset: this can be used in remote storage server settings to set its time difference with the primary server. For remote storage servers, KVS requires time synchronization with the primary server with minute precision. If you do not want to synchronize the time zone between your servers, you can set the time offset in storage server settings.

When you create a second and further servers in a server group to which content has already been assigned, you need to fully copy the contents of the storage directory from any existing server in the group to the new server. Here, directory contents include the entire subdirectory structure and files (as you know, KVS stores content in a tree data structure). If you don’t do this or copied only some of the files, or copied the files into a different directory, KVS will return an error when you try adding this server.

Important! After you add a new server to a server group to which content has already been assigned, this server’s status will be set to disabled, which means it will not be used to serve content. It lets you check everything before final server activation, most importantly, check content serving. You can activate servers using the context menu in the server list, and also in server group settings.

Let us have a look at most frequent errors you may encounter when trying to add a new storage server:

• No PHP extension for FTP was found: your PHP package does not contain functions required to work with FTP. Re-compile your PHP so that it features the FTP extension.
• Unable to connect to host:21: FTP connection declined by server. Firewall protection on storage server could have been triggered.
• Unable to login with credentials provided: invalid FTP username and / or password.
• Put / get / chmod / delete operations failed, insufficient permissions possible: this error means that KVS was unable to complete the basic operations test (copying file to server, setting access permissions, copying file from server, deleting file). Try completing these operations from your FTP client.
• Automatic check cannot find some files selected for checking. Please make sure you copied all files to this server.: this error means that most likely you did not copy the files of existing content to this server, or the directory where the files are in FTP settings is incorrect. When you add a storage server to a server group that already has content, KVS randomly selects up to 10 items of content and checks whether they exist on the storage server that you are adding.
• [Control script URL]: script failure: when the control script was requested, it did not return the connected word as it should. There may be various reasons for this: you did not copy the script to required location, the server’s Apache, Nginx, or PHP configuration is invalid.
• [Time offset]: remote server time is not synchronized with primary server time: the time on a storage server needs to be the same as the time on the primary server with minute precision. If the servers use different time zones, you will need to configure the offset in Time offset.
• [CDN control script]: file /admin/cdn/mycdn.php does not exist: you are trying to add a CDN server, but you did not copy the control script to /admin/cdn.
• [CDN control script]: file /admin/cdn/mycdn.php does not contain required functions: you are trying to add a CDN server, but your control script does not contain functions with required names. Most likely, you did not take into account that names of all the script functions need to have the PHP filename as prefix. E.g. for the mycdn.php script, function names need to look like this: mycdn_test, mycdn_get_video, etc.
• [CDN control script]: CDN check error: <error details>: the _test function of the control script returned an error.

When you want to protect your content from hotlinking and / or unauthorized access, you need to set up this protection on your storage servers:

• Nginx-powered servers let you disallow accessing content via direct links. Instead of direct links, a serving script is used, which tells Nginx which file should be served to the user. For a local storage server, this script is the main get_file.php or get_image.php script. For remote servers, the remote_control.php script offers such functionality. You need to copy this script to your storage server. Regardless whether your storage server is local or remote, accessing files via direct links needs to be disallowed. Modify your Nginx configuration in the following way to do this: location ^~ /contents/videos/ {
      mp4; # enabling MP4 streaming for videos
      root /usr/home/ftp0/domains/domain.com/html; # specifying full server path relative to /contents/videos/
      internal; # disallowing access to this directory via direct links
  } After you declare this rule, direct links looking like http://domain.com/contents/videos/0/1/1.mp4 should stop working and will return 404 error from then on. Accessing content will be possible only via the serving script which features different levels of protection. Protecting photo albums is carried out in a similar way: location ^~ /contents/albums/sources/ { # disallowing direct access to source images
      root /usr/home/ftp0/domains/domain.com/html; # specifying full server path relative to /contents/albums/sources/
      internal; # disallowing access to this directory via direct links
  }
  location ^~ /contents/albums/main/1024x1024/ { # disallowing direct access to images with size 1024x1024
      root /usr/home/ftp0/domains/domain.com/html; # specifying full server path relative to /contents/albums/main/1024x1024/
      internal; # disallowing access to this directory via direct links
  }
• CDN servers implement protection through generating a temporary hash in the CDN management script. However, the specifics of using CDN require you to have the origin server that the CDN queries to cache your content. In KVS settings, you set up the origin server as your storage directory, and the CDN itself as URL. With a bit of simplification, the whole arrangement looks like this: KVS copies files to the origin server > users request files from CDN > CDN requests files from the origin server and caches them, after which no requests to the origin server are made. As a result, if your server is the origin server, all content needs to be available via direct links so that CDN can cache it. In order to prevent unauthorized access to content on your origin server, use a CDN provider’s server which supports FTP connection as your origin server.
• When you use standard 302 redirect, the content is still available via direct links. As a rule, in this situation referrer protection can be used for anti-hotlinking; however, this will not protect you from third parties grabbing your database.

Storage Server Groups

Storage server groups let you set up balancing the content serving between servers in the same group. You can assign multiple storage servers to each group. The content is assigned to a server group, not to a specific server. If there are several servers in the group, the content is duplicated between the servers. Thus, the same content can be served from multiple servers at the same time.

When facing an insufficient disk space situation, you need to create a new server group and add one or more physical servers to it. After that, you will be able to add content to the server group you have just created.

Please find the description of storage server group fields below:

• Title: group name to be displayed in the administration panel.
• Content type: this lets you create a group for storing videos or photo albums. Historically, KVS cannot store videos and photo albums on the same server group. So, even if the content will be physically stored on the same server, you still need to create 2 groups of servers, one for videos, the other for photo albums.

Please find the description of balancing table fields below:

• Server: name of storage server which is configured in this line of the table.
• Status: storage server status. Contnet is served from active servers only.
• Load balancing weight: sets the weight of this server for balancing. The higher the weight of this server relative to other servers, the more likely content is to be served from this server.
• Assign countries: this lets you assign certain servers to certain countries and serve content from these servers only to users from these countries. For one server, this field needs to be blank, which means this server is used for all countries not defined in other fields.

Checking Content Serving

KVS features an automated tool for checking how content is served from your storage servers. This tool can be launched manually for each individual server to get details on each aspect of content serving. Also, this tool regularly checks all storage server and displays error messages on the start page if problems are detected.

In the administration panel, content serving check can be run from the context menu for any of the servers. For video servers, serving videos of each format is checked. For photo servers, serving photo albums of each format is checked, as well as serving ZIP files of the formats for which they are enabled. Here are the check details:

• Direct links to video files should not work. If for a particular video format its files are available via direct links, you will see an error message. This error, however, is not critical. It does not affect the way your site works and is not shown on the start page.
• Links to video files via the serving script should work. If for a particular video format its file(s) are not available via the serving script, you will see an error message. The exception here are formats of videos access to which is not allowed for unregistered users. In this case, the check will display a warning, as only registered users or administrators can check links to files of this format. In order to make sure the file is actually served, you can click the link in the notification and see if it is working.
• FLV or MP4 file streaming should work. If for a particular video format streaming is not working, you will see an error message.
• Direct links to photos should work for the formats with unrestricted access (i.e. photos available to all users). If photo(s) of a publicly available format are not available via direct links, you will see an error message.
• Direct links to photos should not work for the formats that are not available to unregistered users. If photo(s) of a format with restricted access are available via direct links, you will see an error message. This error, however, is not critical. It does not affect the way your site works and is not shown on the start page.
• Links to photos via the serving script should work. If for a particular photo album format its file(s) are not available via the serving script, you will see an error message. The exception here are formats of photo albums access to which is not allowed for unregistered users. In this case, the check will display a warning, as only registered users or administrators can check links to photos of this format. In order to make sure the file is actually served, you can click the link in the notification and see if it is working.
• Links to ZIP files of photo albums are checked using the same logic as links to photos.

If a check returns an error, you can see the HTTP headers of requests and responses in the details. As a rule, errors occur when storage servers are not configured properly. Let us have a look at most common situations:

• Direct link not working? check: here, an error means that files are available via direct links. If the storage server uses HTTP 302 redirect as its streaming type, this error is natural and there is no way it can be avoided. Let us remind you that this streaming type means that all files are available via direct links. If the storage server uses Nginx, most likely, in your Nginx configuration, the internal directive for the storage directory is not set (see storage server settings for more information).
• Direct link working? check: here, an error means that files are not available via direct links. If your storage server uses Nginx, most likely, the internal directive is set in the configuration for the storage directory. Remove this directive. If your storage server uses CDN, you need to disable protection on this server.
• Protected link working? check: here, an error means that files are not available via the serving script. Most likely reasons are: content files do not physically exist in storage directory, or MultiViews is enabled in Apache, which interferes with content serving scripts.
• Streaming working? check: here, an error means that video file streaming is not working. If the storage server uses Nginx, most likely, the FLV / MP4 streaming module is not enabled for the storage directory. If this is a CDN server, your CDN may need non-standard streaming parameter. Contact your CDN provider for more information and specify the parameter in storage server settings in KVS.

Conversion Servers

Conversion servers are used to distribute load the system experiences during content-related operations. The Basic and Advances packages only support local conversion servers.

Please find a description of conversion server fields below:

• Title: server name to be displayed in the administration panel.
• Status: server status. Only active conversion servers are used.
• Maximum tasks: this sets maximum number of tasks to be sent to this particular conversion server at the same time. However, this does not mean the conversion server will process these tasks simultaneously. All loaded tasks will be processed consecutively, one after another.
• CPU-hungry operations priority: this lets you choose a priority setting for resource-consuming tasks that are handled by this particular server (realtime, high, medium, low, very low).
• Optimize content copying: enable this to make the conversion server copy processed content directly to storage servers. This saves primary server bandwidth and speeds up content processing. If you enable this and the version of remote_cron.php on your conversion server is old, or the FTP extension for PHP is not installed, an error may occur.
• Connection type: this defines how data is copied between servers. Important! Regardless of the connection type, one and the same directory in a server’s file system can be used only for one conversion server in KVS.
• Path: full path to the server’s working directory. The directory specified here needs to have writing permissions (777).
• FTP host: hostname used when connecting via FTP.
• FTP user: username used when connecting via FTP.
• FTP password: password used when connecting via FTP.
• FTP folder: the server’s working directory relative to FTP root. If FTP access leads directly to the directory required, leave this field blank.

Before you create a remote conversion server, you need to copy the /admin/tools/remote_cron.php script to its working directory, and set it up as a Cron job to be launched once every minute. When it is run for the first time, the script will try to detect paths to all required libraries automatically. It will also create a file called config.properties in the same directory, where all paths will be listed. Check whether the libraries were detected correctly and make modifications to the file if necessary:

# ffmpeg is required
ffmpeg = /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg

# imagemagick (convert binary) is required
imagemagick = /usr/local/bin/convert

# yamdi is required for FLV videos support
yamdi = /usr/local/bin/yamdi

# qt-faststart is required for MP4 videos support
qt-faststart = /usr/local/bin/qt-faststart

# time offset in comparison to main server (in hours)
timeoffset = 0

• ffmpeg: path to FFmpeg, a required setting. The FFmpeg library is used for primary video conversion tasks.
• imagemagick: path to the imagemagick convert library, required.
• yamdi: path to the Yamdi library, required only if you intend to store FLV videos. The Yamdi library is used to add metadata to FLV files so that the player can skip through them.
• qt-faststart: path to the qt-faststart library, required only if you intend to store MP4 videos. The qt-faststart library is used for post-processing of MP4 files so that the player can skip through them.
• timeoffset: positive or negative time offset between the primary server and the conversion server.

Let us have a look at common errors which you may come across when adding a conversion server:

• No PHP extension for FTP was found: your PHP package does not contain functions required to work with FTP. Re-compile your PHP so that it features the FTP extension. If Optimize content copying option is enabled, the FTP extension for PHP needs to be installed on the conversion server as well.
• Unable to connect to host:21: FTP connection declined by server. Firewall protection on storage server could have been triggered.
• Unable to login with credentials provided: invalid FTP username and / or password.
• Put / get / chmod / delete operations failed, insufficient permissions possible: this error means that KVS was unable to complete the basic operations test (copying file to server, setting access permissions, copying file from server, deleting file). Try completing these operations from your FTP client.
• Conversion script not configured / not working on this server: in the server’s working directory, there is no data generated by the conversion script. Most likely, the script was not configured as a Cron job.

Content localization lets you offer your site’s content in a choice of languages. When you create new languages, the engine ‘extends’ the database so that it can duplicate existing data in new languages. Also, in the administration panel, you see features that let you translate your objects into new languages. Only the Ultimate package features localization support.

Please find the description of language fields below:

• Title: language name to be displayed in the administration panel.
• ISO code: 2-character ISO code of the language (Latin alphabet only). This code will be used to switch the site to another language mode.
• Applicable to: choosing the localization application area. This option defines how translations work in the administration panel. If you want to translate only object titles, set this value accordingly.

The main documentation covers a variety of methods you can use to make your site multi-lingual. When you add multiple languages within the same domain name, you need to list the ISO codes of these languages in the /admin/include/setup.php file:

$config['locales']=array('de','fr','es','it'); // list codes of all supported languages in any order

In this case, in order to switch the site to a localized version, you need to send the kt_lang=%code% parameter to any page. This parameter will be stored in user’s cookies, and later on, for this user, the site will switch to the chosen localized version automatically.

When you use language satellites, you need to specify the ISO code of the current locale in the /admin/include/setup.php file so that this particular satellite always works in this locale:

$config['locale']='de'; // specify one of the supported language codes to be used for this satellite

If you want to use language keys in your site’s templates, you need to create the /langs/default.php file where all keys and their values for the default locale will be defined. Then, copy the contents of this file to language files called /langs/de.php, /langs/fr.php etc., for all the locales your site is supposed to support. Then, you can give these files to your content writers and translators so that they enter the copy. The files need to have this format:

<?php
    $lang['key1']="Text 1";
    $lang['section1']['key1']="Section 1 Text 1";
    $lang['section1']['key2']="Section 1 Text 2";
    $lang['section2']['subsection1']['key1']="Section 2 Subsection 1 Text 1";
    ...
?>

There can be any number of sections and they can be nested in any way you want. We recommend declaring values common for the entire site without any sections. We also recommend declaring notions that are logically grouped in the same section, e.g.:

$lang['site_title']="Site name - best videos and community site";
$lang['posted_by']="Posted by";
$lang['duration']="Duration";
...

$lang['main_menu']['home']="Home";
$lang['main_menu']['videos']="Videos";
...

Then, in your site’s templates, you can use these keys to display certain types of copy:

{{$lang.site_title}}
{{$lang.posted_by}}
{{$lang.duration}}
{{$lang.main_menu.home}}
{{$lang.main_menu.videos}}

In case you need to insert certain dynamic values into a block of text, NEVER split this text in several parts and display on your site like this. Instead, insert placeholders into it. These will be replaced with actual values when displayed on the page. The reason here is that in different languages word order can differ and your translators may need to rewrite the block completely. For instance:

$lang['titles']['videos_by_category']="Videos for category %1%";
$lang['confirmations']['delete_messages']="Are you sure to delete %1% messages from %2% user?";

{{$lang.titles.videos_by_category|replace:"%1%":$category_info.title}}
{{$lang.confirmations.delete_messages|replace:"%1%":$selected_count|replace:"%2%":$username}}

When your site works in a particular locale, the engine will first implement the default language file, and then the language file for this locale, as long as it exists. Thus, when certain keys are missing in the locale language file, copy from the default language file will be displayed on the site.