Brightcove now supports delivery of videos to mobile devices, such as the iPhone and iPad, through use of the HTML5 <video> tag. In order for these videos to be playable on iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touch devices, however, they must be encoded as MP4 files.

When you upload a video file to Brightcove, it automatically makes copies of that file, either as FLV files or MP4 files. It is these copies that Brightcove transmits to the viewer. By default, Brightcove saves these copies as FLV files. The support team at Brightcove now recommends that we save these copies as MP4 files instead, because devices such as iPhones and iPads can play MP4 videos but not FLVs. Unfortunately, the only way that we can change the default setting is to log into each user’s account and change it there. There is not a way to change it across the board (Brightcove support has apologized for this inconvenience).

Here are the steps for changing the default transcoding settings in Brightcove so that uploaded files are converted to MP4 files.

Note: Brightcove does NOT transcode FLV videos, so avoid using this file format. Brightcove support has recommended we upload MP4 files with H.264 compression whenever possible, as that allows us to deliver both the high-quality, uploaded source video file, as well as the lower-quality MP4 renditions (copies) that Brightcove creates.

  1. Log into your Brightcove account at https://my.brightcove.com/
  2. Click on the icon for the Media management section  at the top.
  3. Click on the Upload Videos button in the bottom left.
  4. Select a video file to upload, and then click on the small Edit Settings link near the bottom.
  5. Confirm that Brightcove is set up to automatically create Multiple Renditions for uploaded videos.
  6. In the section for H.264 (MP4) source files, select H.264 (MP4) and Add H.264 source as a rendition.
  7. In the section for Other (AVI, QT, etc.), select H.264 (MP4). The screen should now look like this:
  8. Click on Done and then click on the Start Upload button. Wait for the video to complete the upload process.

Important: You MUST complete the upload of a video after changing your settings if you want these settings to “stick” as your new defaults. Also, please remember that EACH USER must complete these steps, as they are configured on a per-user-account basis!