This article discusses creating and managing categories for your videos. Categories must be assigned to at least one hub for content to display properly.
In this article:
- What are categories?
- Create a category
- Assigning categories to content hubs
- General settings
- Content settings
- Distribution settings
- Discovery settings
- Content organization best practices
What are categories?
Categories are groups of videos, events, collections, and buy/rent products. Categories enable you to organize your content, much like parent folders in a filing system.
There are two types of categories:
- Manual categories allow you to add specific pieces of content into a category. You can search for a video, collection, live event, or product, add it to the category, and manually arrange the display order. When you want to add more or rearrange content, you can manually add and rearrange at any time.
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Dynamic categories enable you to establish rules for what content is included in a category and how it is displayed to the viewer. You set up filtering rules based on metadata (ie, tags, content type, video duration, etc.) for what content should get added to a category. Once you set up the filtering rules, content is added dynamically when it meets them. You set up sort rules to determine the order of content displayed to viewers (ie, random order, release date, number of views, etc.).
You can read more about how to configure a Dynamic Category here.
⚠️Note: Currently, multiple categories can only be used when you sell a subscription product with Vimeo OTT. If you are only selling transactional products, however, you can still create a featured carousel for content that you'd like to highlight.
Create a category
To create a category:
- Navigate to Content > Categories.
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Click the + Add button next to the Categories section of the Content page or + New Category at the top of the page.
- A pop-up will open and prompt you to add the category title and choose if you want to create a Manual or Dynamic Category. Create a title, make your selection, and then select Add.
Assigning categories to content hubs
After creating a category, navigate to your Content hubs page and select the appropriate hub. You can also assign a category to more than one hub, so that it appears in the respective hubs' browsing interface. Without assignment to a hub, categories will not appear in user facing hub pages.
General settings
After creating your category, you'll be brought to the category's settings page, starting with the General settings. Here, you can modify the category title, as well as add a Short description, a Full description, and a Thumbnail. You can also add multi-language translations for these text fields.
Content settings
Based on whether you chose a Manual or Dynamic category, this section will allow you to search and add content or set up rules for what content will get added. Read about creating Dynamic Category filters and sort rules.
Distribution settings
The Distribution tab allows you to control how your category is distributed and discovered across your platform. Settings you can configure here are:
- You’ll be able to set its visibility to Published or Private.
- You can also geo-block your category to make it available or unavailable in certain regions. The default option is Worldwide, but if you select Choose countries, you’ll need to specify which countries, and whether you’d like to limit your collection to only those countries, or if you’d like to prevent people in those countries from watching.
- You can replace the category ID in your category's URL with a custom URL specified here.
- You can add Subtitles and captions, enable comments, add a screener, and download the video in multiple resolutions.
Discovery settings
The Discovery tab is for adding information about your category to make it more discoverable for search results. You can:
- Designate the category to be your Featured category, pinning it to the top of the Browse page of your site and apps. This will add it to your featured carousel.
- Mobile App Category appearance: choose from Default (16:9), Vertical (2:3), or Square (1:1) layouts for mobile categories.
- Thumbnail size: choose to display standard or small thumbnails for mobile and TV apps
- Item title display: show or hide text below thumbnails.
- Overlay configuration: add Countdown overlays on the category row level for the first 10 assets within your category.
- Add Tags to your category
- Add Genres to your category
- Add Cast, Crew, Release date, Rating, and Advisory to your category
- Add a License to your category
- Add a Media ID to your category
- Add Advanced metadata (only applicable if you are using our API for data)
- Add Image metadata for images you upload
- Add Custom metadata.
Click Save once you’ve made all your changes.
Content organization best practices
Watch the video below to learn some tips for organizing your content.