On dartfish.tv videos are contained in collections, so the first admin task for many will be to add the collections that your channel will need. First, it is important to understand how collections let you manage access to content on your channel.

How collections are used to control access



Add collections

Collections are added from the Sharing page:


Basic settings

Use collection name and description to help the audience identify what a collection offers. They also help your audience search for collections - searches look for words found in both the name and description.

Access type

Choose an access type that best suits how you want your audience to get access to the collection and also what their options for sharing links to others to be.

  • Public collections require no sign in and their contents can be seen by anyone. Those viewing its content can send links to other people or social media.
  • Private collections must be shared by an administrator to give access to their content. Access is password-protected.
    In fact, this definition is not 100% accurate. Services can be added to private collections, which allow the public to self-subscribe. For example, the fee-based subscription service allows access by card payment.
  • Limited collections are something in between these extremes - access without signing in, no barriers to sharing but content private to anyone who hasn't been given a link.

Advanced settings

Advanced settings are displayed for a new collection when the basic settings are saved.

These settings will principally be used to promote interest in and aid discovery of public collections. The description in the basic settings makes your audience curious then the promo description does the hard sell!

Keywords are used to aid collection searches and to filter collections. Your use of keywords will therefore fall into one or both of these possibilities:

  • First, knowing that keywords are used in searches, you can use them when you expect your audience to search for a word but you don't want to use that word in your description.
  • Secondly you can use keywords to group collections of similar types so that your audience can filter to see all collections of that type.

For example, lets say you offer fee-based access to video from major events. Allowing your audience to filter for "Major Events" would not only help narrow their search to the collection for the event they are interested in but also allow them to discover other collections with similar content.

The featured collection setting can only be applied to one collection in your channel. It helps that collection stand out on the collections page.

Services

Services are subscriber only add-ons to a collection. They are further described here.

Personal collections

Personal collections are a quick way to add and share a collection for an individual member of your channel. Learn more here.


Your questions answered

So a collection is like a Windows folder, right?

Not exactly, a Windows folder structure is used to both organize files and to navigate through different types of content. For working with video this type of browsing can have some serious limitations so dartfish.tv uses collections to manage access and keywords to navigate through content.


Can I create a sub collection?

No. If you are having to ask that question your collection structure may be too complicated. As for the previous answer, you should be thinking in terms of sharing collections to access to what that member should see on your channel but then allowing them to navigate through that content by using keyword filters and keyword menus.

However it is possible to organize collections by assigning keywords to them. This allows the user to filter the list of collections by selecting a keyword.

Is it the same for collections in a myDartfish Smartcloud?

No. Smart Cloud sharing uses only limited collections which you create in your apps or directly in Dartfish.tv's my Collections page. To learn more about Smart Cloud sharing see this article.