Managing Media Library and Stock Library

Introduction

Shape libraries collect all the assets you can use in your Shapes. 

The Media Library is a repository of the images, videos, and audio files you upload, whereas the Stock Library contains a large number of assets from Pexels (opens in a new tab) that you can pick and choose.

When editing your Shapes, you can change the background or the soundtrack of your scenes by quickly accessing the Media Library or the Stock Library from the editor. The Media Library can also be accessed from the dropdown menu that appears when you click on your profile button in the top right corner of the home page.

Managing the Media Library

You can access the Media Library by clicking on your profile button in the top right corner of the home page and selecting the Media Library option or directly while editing a Shape scene.

When editing the background of a scene, access the Media Library by clicking on the pen icon on the right corner of the scene’s preview in the middle of the page, then selecting Media Library from the dropdown menu. In the slide-out panel, you can browse the assets you uploaded to Shape. Click on a background to apply to the selected scene. 

You also have the possibility to explore Shape’s Media Library. To do so, select the Expand and Upload button at the bottom of the panel. 

On the page that opens, in the Media Library tab, you can browse assets, search for them by writing their names or tags in the search bar, and upload a new asset by clicking the Upload button or by dragging and dropping it anywhere on the page.

Please note: refer to the Best Practices for Assets and Supported File Types section when uploading an image or a video to the Media Library.

Once you have uploaded your asset, you will find it among the images or videos on the page.

Assets are also automatically uploaded to the Media Library from the documents you use when creating Shapes from documents.

You can open an asset’s page by clicking on its card or by clicking on the card’s ellipsis menu and selecting Preview.

To delete one or more assets, select them by clicking on the top left corner of the asset's card, then click on the Delete button. Please note that if you delete an asset used in a Shape that has already been published, it will be removed from the library, but not from the published content.

When you have decided which asset you want to use for the scene background, open the asset page, then select the Apply button. As an alternative, select the asset by clicking on the top left corner of its card or by clicking on its ellipsis menu and pressing Select, then click Apply at the bottom of the page.

You can also add, remove, or edit tags that categorize the asset by clicking on the ellipsis button in any asset’s thumbnail and selecting Edit Tags, or by opening the asset’s page and then clicking on the pen icon next to the Tags section. If you click on a tag already assigned, it will be added to the search bar to find all of the assets related to it.

In your Media Library, you will also find the audio files you uploaded to be used as soundtracks for your Shapes.

Best Practices for Assets and Supported File Types

When uploading assets to the Media Library, the maximum file size is 20MB for images and 200MB for videos. These are the supported file types:

• Supported Image Formats
  • .jpg, .jpeg
  • .png
  • .gif
  • .tiff
  • .svg
• Supported Video Formats
  • .mp4
  • .wmv
  • .webm
  • .mpg
  • .mov
  • .mkv
  • .avi
  • .flv
  • .ogv
  • .mts
  • .3gp
  • .3g2

The recommended aspect ratios are 16:9 and 4:3. By default, assets fill the player's background. If you have vertical assets or screenshots that need to be clearly visible, you can set them to fit the player and keep the asset's aspect ratio by selecting the Fit Media option in the editor.

Videos will be converted through Cloudinary. Shape’s supported streaming profile is hd_lean and the possible representations are the following:

Learn more on Cloudinary streaming profiles (opens in a new tab).

Shapes are split into scenes. Classic scenes have a maximum duration of 60 seconds, except for those with voice-overs, whose duration will be adjusted to the duration of the voice-over. The background videos for classic scenes, if you upload videos longer than a minute, will get cut off at 60 seconds or at the end of the voice-over duration. Quiz scenes and long-text scenes do not have a duration, as Shapes will stop and wait for the learners’ feedback. Video scenes do not have duration limits, but we recommend creating video scenes no longer than 2 minutes. 

Managing the Stock Library

You can access the Stock Library from the dropdown menu when editing a scene’s background, or by switching to the Stock Library tab after expanding the Media Library.

The Stock Library includes millions of images and videos, all available for you to use for your learning assets. You can filter the assets shown on the page using the Images or Videos dropdown menu.

You can open an asset’s page by clicking on its card or by clicking on the card’s ellipsis menu and selecting Preview.

When you have decided which asset you want to use for the scene background, open the asset page, then select the Apply button. As an alternative, select the asset by clicking on the top left corner of its card or by clicking on its ellipsis menu and pressing Select, then click Apply at the bottom of the page.