Why Does Subsplash Recommend Storing All Files Locally?
Subsplash recommends recording all of your live streams and on-demand media locally, as this will ensure a quality back up of all items. There are a few reasons for this!:
Subsplash re-encodes uploaded files and live streams to be optimized for delivery to your viewers. This means that these files will not be as good for archival storage, which allows someone to re-encode these files for different services and purposes.
These local files can be recorded at archival quality, which generally means they will have higher settings than Subsplash supports currently. This means that these files can more easily be re-encoded or re-exported for delivery to other systems, whether they are online services like Subsplash or used locally within your ministry
For live streams, Subsplash is unable to record during a disconnect, since there is no incoming footage. Locally recording streams allows for those disconnected portions to be saved, and that file can then be uploaded in place of the file that experienced this.
Tips for Recording and Storing Media Locally
If you are wanting to set up local recording for an encoder and are running into issues, Subsplash recommends reaching out to the manufacturer of that encoder. These support teams will be able to serve you best!
Since we recommend having local copies of your files, we wanted to provide some tips for recording these files.
If you are recording on your encoder, we recommend setting the encoder's recording settings a little higher than normal. This will allow one to re-encode this file to a lower or higher bitrate with much more ease and a more quality output. If you are using OBS (Open Broadcaster Studio), this resource will help you set up local recording.
If you are locally recording streams, we would recommend using the Matroska Video (.mkv) format, and then re-muxing (the process of changing the file type) to .MP4. The Matroska video format is much more resilient to issues that can cause a disconnect, but cannot be uploaded to the Subsplash Dashboard. On most operating systems, the file can be renamed, and in that process, the extension type can be changed from .mkv to .mp4!