Output Assets

Every video you upload to Rad TV is automatically processed into multiple formats optimized for different use cases — streaming, downloading, sharing, and embedding. After transcoding completes, you get all of these without any extra work.

Where Output Assets Live

outputAssets is a field on the Content type. It is not available on the catalog Feature type returned by channel { features }, so it cannot be read from a catalog query.

Content is returned by the content mutations, so in practice you read outputAssets from the response to the call that publishes or processes your video. Where you can, keep the value returned by your original publishVideo or submitContentForProcessing call.

There is currently no read-only query that returns outputAssets. The example below uses publishContent, which makes content publicly visible, so only call it against content that is already published. To inspect processing state without mutating anything, use channelDashboard instead (see Polling Job Status).

curl -X POST https://api.rad.live/graphql \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "query": "mutation { publishContent(id: \"did:rad.live:content/feature/123\") { id metadata { title } outputAssets { encoderType video { hls download preview } audio { download } images { thumbnails { urlFormat count } videoThumbnails { urlFormat count } } subtitles { srt vtt } } } }"
  }'

const response = await fetch('https://api.rad.live/graphql', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_API_KEY',
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    query: `mutation {
      publishContent(id: "did:rad.live:content/feature/123") {
        id
        metadata { title }
        outputAssets {
          encoderType
          video { hls download preview }
          audio { download }
          images {
            thumbnails { urlFormat count }
            videoThumbnails { urlFormat count }
          }
          subtitles { srt vtt }
        }
      }
    }`,
  }),
});

const { data } = await response.json();
const content = data.publishContent;
console.log(content.metadata.title, content.outputAssets?.encoderType);

import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.rad.live/graphql",
    headers={
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY",
    },
    json={
        "query": """
        mutation {
          publishContent(id: "did:rad.live:content/feature/123") {
            id
            metadata { title }
            outputAssets {
              encoderType
              video { hls download preview }
              audio { download }
              images {
                thumbnails { urlFormat count }
                videoThumbnails { urlFormat count }
              }
              subtitles { srt vtt }
            }
          }
        }
        """
    },
)

content = response.json()["data"]["publishContent"]
oa = content.get("outputAssets")
if oa:
    print(content["metadata"]["title"], oa["encoderType"])

What You Get

Video

Field	Description	Use For
`hls`	Adaptive streaming manifest (.m3u8)	In-app video players, web embeds
`download`	Full MP4 file	Offline viewing, archival, redistribution
`preview`	Short 10-30 second clip	Social media teasers, content previews

Audio

Field	Description	Use For
`download`	Separate audio track	Podcast feeds, audio-only playback

Images

Field	Description	Use For
`thumbnails`	Auto-generated static frame captures	Video players, content grids, social sharing
`videoThumbnails`	Animated preview clips at key moments	Hover previews, rich thumbnails

Each thumbnail set gives you a urlFormat (URL template) and count (how many). See Thumbnail Expansion below.

Subtitles

Field	Description	Use For
`srt`	SubRip subtitle file	Desktop players, editing tools
`vtt`	WebVTT subtitle file	Web video players, accessibility

Thumbnail URL Expansion

Thumbnails use a compact urlFormat with placeholder digits that you expand client-side. The format depends on the encoder type.

Standard Encoder (7-digit, 0-based)

urlFormat: "https://cdn.rad.live/.../thumbnail_XXXXXXX.jpg"
count: 50

Replace XXXXXXX with zero-padded indices from 0000000 to 0000049:

https://cdn.rad.live/.../thumbnail_0000000.jpg
https://cdn.rad.live/.../thumbnail_0000001.jpg
...
https://cdn.rad.live/.../thumbnail_0000049.jpg

Rad Encoder (2-digit, 1-based)

urlFormat: "https://cdn.rad.live/.../thumbnail_XX.jpg"
count: 20

Replace XX with indices from 01 to 20:

https://cdn.rad.live/.../thumbnail_01.jpg
https://cdn.rad.live/.../thumbnail_02.jpg
...
https://cdn.rad.live/.../thumbnail_20.jpg

Expansion Example

function expandThumbnails(urlFormat, count, encoderType) {
  const thumbnails = [];
  const isRadEncoder = encoderType === 'RAD_ENCODER';
  const startIndex = isRadEncoder ? 1 : 0;
  const placeholder = isRadEncoder ? 'XX' : 'XXXXXXX';
  const padLength = isRadEncoder ? 2 : 7;

  for (let i = startIndex; i < startIndex + count; i++) {
    const index = String(i).padStart(padLength, '0');
    thumbnails.push(urlFormat.replace(placeholder, index));
  }
  return thumbnails;
}

Encoder Types

The encoderType field tells you which encoder processed the content:

Value	Description
`MEDIA_CONVERT`	Standard transcoding
`RAD_ENCODER`	AI-enhanced transcoding (Creator+ and `enhance: true`)

Nullability

outputAssets is null on Content when transcoding hasn't started or is still in progress. Always check for null before accessing nested fields. Once transcoding completes, all sub-fields (video, audio, images) are non-null.

Next steps

Publish to Rad — The full publishing pipeline
AI Upscaling — Get enhanced output with Real-ESRGAN
Transcoding — GraphQL reference for transcode job management

Output Assets

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