This tutorial takes you through the necessary steps to start using Image & Video Manager to manage and optimize your short-form videos.

You'll learn how to:

Add the Image & Video Manager (Videos) rule and behavior to a property
Create a video policy to automate video optimizations

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you meet the following prerequisites.

You will need:

A login to Akamai Control Center
Access to Property Manager
A contract that includes Image & Video Manager
An active web performance configuration
A property corresponding to the website with the videos you wish to optimize

If you do not have a web performance configuration, you will need to create one.

For non-secure delivery, see Serve content over HTTP
For secure delivery, see Serve content over HTTPs

For more information about creating a property, see the Property Manager documentation.

Tutorial outline

This table provides a high-level overview of the tutorial.

Step	Notes
Connect your videos	Add an Image & Video Manager (Videos) rule with an Image & Video Manager (Videos) behavior to a property to connect your videos to Image & Video Manager.
Create your policy	Create a video policy.
Configure your optimization settings	Specify your tolerances for the quality and width of the derivative videos created by Image & Video Manager.
Activate your policy	Save and activate your policy in the staging environment.

Connect your videos

To connect your videos to Image & Video Manager, you must create an Image & Video Manager rule for the appropriate property. Rules include match criteria and behaviors. If a request fulfills the conditions in the match criteria, your web performance product applies the behaviors in the rule.

Create the rule

Log in to Akamai Control Center.
Go to ☰ > CDN > Properties.
Click the property to which you want to add the Image & Video Manager rule.
On the property details page, click the version of the property configuration you want to edit.
Click Add Rule in the Property Configuration Settings section.
Search for and select Image & Video Manager (Videos) in the list of available rules.
Click Insert Rule.

Specify the match criteria

In the Criteria section, create an If statement by:

Selecting File Extension from the first list
Selecting is one of from the second list
Selecting all of the required video file extensions for your videos

Add the behavior

Click Add Behavior.
Search for and select Image & Video Manager (Videos) in the list of available behaviors.
Click Insert Behavior.
Configure the behavior as indicated in the following table.

Setting	Action
Enable	Toggle On to allow Image & Video Manager to apply optimization settings to your videos and to generate the API keys.
Automatic breakpoint selection	Toggle On to let the Image & Video Manager algorithms choose the best derivative video width for the requesting device's screen size and resolution.
Use Best File Type	Toggle On to automatically convert videos to the best file type for the requesting device. This results in the smallest file size that retains video quality, based on the user agent and the original pristine video.
Region	Choose the location closest to your website's heaviest traffic. If this varies, choose United States.
Pristine Videos CP Code	Select the CP code to track video traffic between IM and your origin.
Derivative Videos CP Code	Select the CP code to track traffic serving derivative videos to end users.
Apply Existing Policy Set	Toggle to No to automatically create a new policy set to associate with this property.
Policy Set Type	Toggle to Standard to use the standard policy set name, which is based on your property name.
Policy Set Name (API Key)	Note this name and record it somewhere you can find it later. This name associates a set of Image & Video Manager policies with this instance of the Image & Video Manager (Videos) behavior.

Click Save.

Configure your video policy

A video policy contains configurable settings to automate:

Video optimizations such as derivative video quality and derivative video resolution
A placeholder video that plays while the requested video video loads

There are two ways to create a new video policy:

By toggling Apply Existing Policy Set to No in the Image & Video Manager (Videos) behavior in the Image & Video Manager (Videos) rule. This results in the automatic creation of a new policy set with a default policy.
By logging in to Akamai Control Center, navigating to ☰ > CDN > Image & Video Manager, and using the Policy Manager tools.

In this tutorial, you will edit the default policy that was already created when you created your rule. You will configure video optimization settings and saving your policy.

Open your policy in Video Policy Editor

👍
New Policy Manager UI
These instructions reflect the new beta version of Policy Manager. If you are using the original version, some things may have changed. To try the new beta, click Switch to BETA.

In Akamai Control Center, go to ☰ > CDN > Image & Video Manager.

Image & Video Manager opens to the Policy Manager page.
Select the correct Contract from the list.
Expand the policy set that was created when you saved your rule.
Open the Actions menu for the default policy and select View/Edit policy on staging.

The Video Policy Editor appears.

Configure your optimization settings

Configure Image & Video Manager to optimize your videos based on your video quality and breakpoint tolerances. For more information about video optimization settings, see Optimize your videos.

Select a fixed Quality for your videos. You choices range from High to Low. For the purposes of this tutorial, select Medium. This reduces video file size while delivering medium visual quality.
Select 1280x720 pixels as the Derivative Video Resolution. Dervative videos will play at medium resolution.

Save and test your policy

Click Save and Test on Staging.

You are now ready to test your policy's impact on your actual videos in the staging environment.