Categories vs Playlists

As you make your way through the Zype Platform, you might have some questions about the differences between a playlist and a category. 

Playlists

What are playlists and how do I use them?

A playlist is a collection of videos that you assemble under a single title.

Common playlist titles might include: Recently Released, Most Popular, Movies.

You can use playlists to curate your content in lots of different ways, so be sure to check out our Playlists section for details.

Why would I use playlists?

Playlists are helpful in organizing your content in the most appealing and digestible way for your viewers. In creating playlists and curating your content into such playlists, you should think about the most logical way to group your videos so that viewers will be able to best navigate your content.

Categories

What are categories and how do I use them?

Categories are a way for you to label a collection of videos. Category values act as tags that you can add to videos. Category values can also be assigned during playlist creation, to determine which videos will appear in a category-based playlist. 

Common categories for video content might include: Genre, Type, Season.

Common category values for a Genre category might include: Horror, Comedy, Drama.

Why would I use categories?

Categories are helpful for populating playlists en masse and for filtering library content. Categories are especially helpful for our customers who have large amounts of content being added to the platform on a regular and continual basis. For example, if you are importing content via MRSS feed, you might have categories set up previously to allow for your content to automatically be pulled into category-based playlists upon import. 

Playlists and Categories

You can use both playlists and categories in tandem. In this example you have a manual playlist called "Feature Films" with a nested category-based playlist called "Drama". You have a category called "Genre" with the values Drama, Comedy, Horror, etc. When you create your category-based playlist called Drama, you would select the "drama" tag under the "include" section during configuration, to ensure that all videos with this tag are automatically pulled into this category-based playlist.

You can learn more about Include and Exclude tags HERE.

In the Library view, you can select individual or groups of videos and apply a category value to these. All videos tagged with "drama" in the above example will automatically pull into the Drama playlist. You can select the sync icon to ensure the sync happens immediately. 

Please note: if you intend to use playlists and categories together, you must keep in mind that only the final, last tier playlist can be category-based. All other playlists must be manual. This is because playlists can contain only other playlists OR videos, but not both.