1) What is the difference between a parent/child entry and a regular single entry?
Kaltura media may be comprised of one file asset or more. Entries are generated respectively, once your source media file starts uploading and transcoding begins. A regular entry asset is created when a single file asset is available i.e. video/audio/image/live. A multi-stream media asset may be created when capturing multiple videos simultaneously, for example, with Kaltura Classroom or Kaltura Capture. The resulting output is a parent entry containing the parent video, whereas the parent entry references a child entry which is the other stream. Another scenario for having a parent/child entry is media + doc files, for example, video + doc or audio + doc. The parent-child relationship is maintained when more than two file assets are available, whereas child entries are associated with the main parent entry.
2) Is there a way to avoid creating a parent/child entry?
No. The patent-child mechanism automatically kicks in the backend if more than one file asset is available.
3) Can both the parent and the child entries be seen in KMC / KMS?
In KMS, yes, both parent and child entries are displayed on the player.
In KMC, both parent and child entries are displayed on the Preview&Embed Page when using a player with the relevant player UI variables.
4) Can both the parent and child entries be downloaded?
By default, the downloading action downloads only the parent entry and not the child entry. However, there are several workarounds to separately download the secondary files; such as, temporarily add another file to the media and use the Content Selector to switch between the parent and the child files, or via the API console. For more information, see How to download multi-stream media?
5) Can the parent/child entries be separated into independent entries?
No, this is not supported via the Kaltura applications. However, an API-based solution is available. For more details, please see How To Replace Dual Stream to One Stream.
6) Will stopping/starting a Zoom recording create new parent/child entries?
Yes, when stopping and starting a Zoom recording from the same meeting session new parent/child entries are generated.
Following are the zoom recording types, the parent and child will be selected based on the provided recording, following this priority -
- Shared screen with speaker view
- Shared screen with a gallery view
- Shared screen
- Speaker view
- Active speaker
- Gallery view
- audio-only
- audio transcript
- chat file
- poll
7) How to identify which is the Parent and which is the Child entry id?
The parent entry id is equal to the entry ID found in the media page URL. The child entry id can be revealed via the API console. For additional details, please refer to step 1 in How To Replace a Dual Stream with a Single Stream.
8) Will updating the parent entry name automatically change the child entry name too?
No, the child's entry name will not change according to the parent's new name and will keep the original name.
