We’re currently running into a bit of a challenge with our Encoding Settings. As you can see in the example screenshot, we have hundreds of settings (203 items in our case!) — including many old 4:3 profiles and low frame-rate variants (like 15 fps) that we honestly never use.
The sheer number of these settings is causing quite a bit of confusion for our Webcast Operators, and it makes the daily workflow harder than it needs to be.
So my question to you, dear friends and colleagues:
Is it safe to delete the encoding settings we don’t use? Could removing them cause any issues in the system?
For example:
Could deleting an unused profile affect existing/already published presentations that were encoded with it?
Are there any dependencies (templates, recorders, publishing profiles) we should double-check before deleting?
Is there anything you’d recommend doing beforehand (like a backup or a review) to stay on the safe side?
Any advice or experiences from those who have done a similar cleanup would be hugely appreciated!
Thanks so much in advance, and have a wonderful day!
It’s technically safe to delete encoding settings you no longer plan to use, but in practice, you’ll likely find you can’t delete many of them. If an encoding profile has ever been used by a presentation, recorder, or template that still exists in your system, Mediasite won’t let the deletion complete. So before you even get to “should I,” you’ll often hit “I can’t”: older presentations, templates, and other dependencies tend to hold onto these profiles even years later.
The bigger picture:
Honestly, the real issue probably isn’t the 203 encoding settings themselves. It’s that your Webcast Operators are interacting with encoding settings at all in their daily workflow. In a setup following best practices, operators should almost never need to touch the encoding settings list directly. If that’s happening regularly, it’s a sign it might be worth revisiting your setup rather than trying to prune the list.
What we’d recommend instead:
Create a Stream Group for each recording scenario you actually use (e.g., “1 Camera + 1 Screen,” “2 Camera + 1 Screen,” etc.). These bundle up the encoding settings so no one has to think about them individually.
Build a Template around each Stream Group, so the scenario, encoding, and other presentation defaults are all packaged together.
Have operators create presentations/schedules from those Templates, rather than starting from scratch and picking encoding settings manually.
With this approach, your operators just pick “1 Camera + 1 Screen” (or whatever fits) from a short, friendly list of templates, and never need to see, understand, or wade through the full encoding settings list at all. The 203 settings can stay right where they are, safely out of the daily workflow, without you having to fight dependency errors trying to delete them.
Happy to go into more detail on Stream Group or Template setup if that would help!
I’ve sat through years of university lectures, paid actual tuition money, and not once did a professor explain something to me with this much patience, clarity, and structure.
You just casually dropped a better lesson in one forum reply than half my degree, and for Free! Where were you during my exam seasons?!
Jokes aside, this is genuinely one of the most helpful answers I’ve ever received. The way you reframed the whole thing (the real issue isn’t the 203 settings, it’s that operators are touching them at all) was a bit of a lightbulb moment. I was so focused on “how do I delete this mess” that I never stopped to ask “why are my operators even in this menu?”
The Stream Group to Template to operator friendly workflow makes total sense. Instead of fighting dependency errors and risking something breaking, we just build a nice short list and let the 203 settings gather dust peacefully in the corner.
