With Zype, customers have access to the leading video content management and distribution infrastructure.
Key Benefits:
- Get onboarded with Zype in just a few hours.
- Learn how to navigate our Help Center for self-service support.
- Import and Upload video content right to your Zype Library.
- Monetize your content using advertising as well as subscription, and transaction paywalls.
- Gather valuable consumer data using registration paywalls.
- Start distributing content on web today and learn how to distribute on other endpoints.
- Learn about your audience and analyze your content data through Zype Analytics.
Table of Contents
Introduction to the Zype Platform
Importing and Uploading Content
Prerequisites
In order to onboard with Zype, you will need the following:
- A current, active Zype account
- A stable internet connection
- Ability to access web pages via desktop
Getting Started
Zype has a library of documentation available for you to get familiar with our product, found in our Help Center here.
If you’re just getting started, you should first review our Getting Started section here, which will give you an understanding of our product offering.
Next, before you can begin leveraging Zype as your video infrastructure solution, you must have a Zype account in good standing. If you meet the customer prerequisites and are interested in working with Zype, please contact us here.
If you already have a Zype account and need to log in, please go here and log in with your email and password credentials: http://admin.zype.com/
Zype Support
Before we move on to introducing you to the Zype platform, let’s review how you can get support when you need it.
Zype’s awesome, award-winning support offers full access to the Help Center, Developer Hub, and a Support Team to help you optimize your video workflow. You can read about the support offering and SLAs here.
You can also review our Support and Help Center Overview here.
Introduction to the Zype Platform
Welcome! When you first enter the Zype Platform, also known as Zype Admin, you’ll want to get acquainted with your dashboard, the top navigation bar, the left navigation menu and more by reviewing our article here.
As part of the top navigation bar, you’ll be able to add users to your account and manage their roles and permissions through the Tools menu. This can be especially helpful if you have other team members supporting you in content ingestion, curation, and distribution. We have roles for Admins, Content Managers, and Finance Managers, each with their own permissions. You can read more about how to add new users and set their roles here.
If you need help resetting your password, we’ve got you covered! The “Forgot password” flow is user-friendly, but if you’ve got any questions you can confirm you’re following the proper steps and review helpful screenshots here.
Another part of the Tools menu in the top navigation bar is your Account Settings page. This is an important part of your account to be aware of, since it governs all the settings on your account, and determines your monetization and distribution configurations. You can read more about how to manage your account settings here.
The left navigation menu has many components, and will become your most-visited menu as you begin setting up your library and distribution options. In the “Manage” section of this menu you will find how to add content to your library and organize it into playlists as well as how to best leverage feeds.
The “Publish” section includes ways to monetize your content, whether via advertising, subscription plans or otherwise, as well as ways to distribute video via applications like your website, connected TV devices, mobile devices and beyond. You’ll also find critical data you can use to manage your business through Analytics.
Lastly, if you’d like to get a deeper understanding of this menu and the options not listed above, you can learn more here.
Platform Usage
Zype tracks many types of usage metrics to record engagement and activity on each account. This usage is an indicator to you of potential upcoming service fees you may see on your account, and is accessible at any time through the top navigation bar, as part of the Tools menu.
You can learn more about platform usage and how to track yours here.
Importing and Uploading Content
Now that you’re familiar with navigating the Zype Platform, you can begin to import or upload video content to your library. You have the option to upload to Zype from local storage if your video files exist on a hard drive today or from external storage. You can also import from third party sources like Vimeo, or from an MRSS feed. Lastly we also offer the option to upload using API by reviewing our API documentation found in our Developer Portal here.
Content Management
Once your content has been added to your Zype Library, you can begin to organize it. Zype’s Content Management System is extensive, so we’ll review some of the basics, but you can find the entire Manage Content section on our Help Center here.
Video Library
You should first get comfortable with the Library itself. This is where you will find your complete collection of video content. Here you can filter your videos by video source, active/inactive status, date added to the library, and more. Using filters, you can review specific segments of your library or make bulk updates to specific portions of videos. Read more about the Library here.
Video Metadata
Each video added to the Zype platform can include metadata like a title, description, category tags, and a thumbnail image. You can learn more about much of the metadata fields here. We also have the option to add advanced metadata fields to your videos which you can read about here.
Playlists
Organizing your content into playlists is the most intuitive and seamless way to curate your video content. Playlists are collections of videos that you create to aid in internal organization or for audience viewing. You can read more in our Playlists section of the Help Center here.
When it comes to using playlists to curate your content, you first need to decide if you’d like to leverage manual playlists, category-based playlists, or a combination of the two. You can read more about this here, but it will help to have an understanding of categories before doing any work.
Categories
Categories are used to help organize your Zype library, and to help curate your content into playlists. Categories are made up of a title and a value (also known as a tag). Once created, category tags are used as metadata on your videos. You can read more about categories here.
Monetizing Content
Before you’re ready to monetize content, it’s possible you’d like to offer viewers the option to register. Offering free content with “registration walls” is a great way to capture valuable audience data. While this feature is grouped with "monetization" options, it offers the ability to capture consumer information without requiring payment information. You aren't monetizing with this feature and it isn't required if you use one of the three monetization options listed below. If you’re interested in configuring registration walls on your videos, you can read more about this here.
Zype supports three main monetization options: advertising, subscriptions, and purchases. You can read our entire Monetization section in the Help Center here, but we’ve also included some helpful highlights below.
Advertising
Advertising can be a great way to generate revenue. We support Client Side Ad Insertion for preroll, midroll, and postroll ads, allowing you the optimal flexibility when building out your consumer’s ad experience. You can learn more about how to serve ads on videos here. If you’re interested in Server Side Ad Insertion, reach out to your Account Manager to discuss your options.
Subscription
When monetizing with subscriptions you’ll need to configure subscription plans that your viewers can purchase for access to content, providing you with predictable, recurring revenue. Most commonly you can enable Monthly and Annual subscription plans that give your audience the option to pay on a continuous one-month cycle or an annual cycle.
Zype integrates directly with both Stripe and Braintree for payment processing, whether you choose to monetize via subscription plans or one-time purchases.
Zype often refers to the subscription monetization model as SVOD (subscription video-on-demand), so you may see this in documentation throughout our Help Center and Developer Portal. You can read more about monetizing with subscription here.
Transaction
When monetizing with transactions, you are offering a purchase that can be either one-time purchase-to-own or a one-time rental. Zype also supports “pass plans” which allows a one-time purchase of a group of videos available for a predetermined set of time. Zype integrates with both Stripe and Braintree for payment processing, whether you choose to monetize via transactional purchases or subscription plans.
Zype often refers to the “purchase” monetization model as the “transactional” model so you may see TVOD (transactional video-on-demand) in reference to this monetization option. You can learn more about our purchase or transactional monetization options here.
Distributing Content
Zype offers tools for distribution on web using our embeds or our WordPress plugin, as well as social platforms like Facebook. We also offer distribution to Connected TV applications like Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV, as well as mobile applications like iOS mobile and Android mobile. Finally, play through apps and feeds like Vewd, Xumo, Pluto TV, Roku Direct Publisher, Roku Channel, Local Now, Plex, Zeasn and more.
You can read more about the distribution options available to you and access our template app SDKs here.
The Zype Player
When distributing your content on web, it’s helpful to have an understanding of the Zype web player. You can review the web player capabilities and supported features here.
There are also a number of options to customize the web player, like adding player branding, messaging, and configuring player rules. You can find out more about these options here.
Zype Analytics
Now that you have an understanding of how to add your content to Zype, organize it, monetize it, and distribute it, you’ll want to understand how audiences are responding to it. The first step is to understand the types of analytics available to you. Zype captures valuable data outlined here for you to better understand your audience, your content, and your business. You can find other helpful overview articles in our Help Center section, called the Zype Analytics Dashboard.
Once you’re familiar with the data available to you, you can start pulling revenue reports, viewer engagement reports, and streaming reports to help you optimize your business strategy. A great tool available to you is our customer level analytics, which show detailed activity tracking on each consumer, including subscription status, number of logins, and linked devices. You can read more about Consumer Analytics here.
Lastly, our Log analytics are helpful in understanding platform usage, or in identifying possible errors. You can learn more about logs like your transcode log and your player request log here.
You can view our entire section of analytics articles in our Help Center here.
Zype Live
Zype Live is a fast, reliable, and scalable way for you to broadcast live stream content to your audience. You can learn more about Zype Live by checking out our Quickstart Guide, or by reviewing the Zype Live section of the Help Center.
Developer Tools
Zype provides a robust set of developer tools to ensure your technical team is successful. We provide easy to use API endpoints to build workflows in content upload, curation, authentication, video playback experience, and more. You can read more about the Developer Tools available to you in our Help Center section here.
To review our developer guides, click here.
View our complete API documentation here.
We also provide reference apps and SDKs for your team to launch more quickly, which you can review here.
Advanced: Custom Applications
If you already have your own CDN (Content Delivery Network) capable of handling end viewer delivery, and have applications that you love and use today, you can use Zype to organize and monetize content within your existing applications using our API documentation.
If you’d like additional information on how to configure your own applications following Zype’s app template guidelines, you can review Zype’s repositories and our open-source Github documentation here.
Troubleshooting
If you’re trying to get started with Zype and are having issues, please visit the following resources for troubleshooting and common questions:
- Review our Help Center homepage >
- Review how to search for information in our Help Center >
- Review Zype Platform FAQs >
Ready to get started?
If you’re ready to start managing your video infrastructure with Zype and don’t have an account yet, please contact us here to learn more.