The Media Management capability in Alfresco is delivered as a zip file containing AMP files, an instance of ActiveMQ, and the content services node infrastructure.

In these topics you will set up ActiveMQ, install the AMP files into an existing Alfresco instance, configure your settings and start Media Management.

Prerequisites for Media Management

There are a number of prerequisite software requirements for Media Management before you start the installation.

You require one of each of the following components.

Install the Media Management AMP files

Download and install the Media Management AMP files, and add Media Management properties to your alfresco-global.properties file. Ensure that you have installed the required external software before installing Alfresco Media Management. See Prerequisites for Media Management for information on what you require before you start the installation.

1. Stop the Content Services server.

2. Unzip the Alfresco Media Management package into a new system directory, for example, opt/media-management:

   alfresco-mm-distribution-1.4.x.zip

   The ZIP file contains the following folders:

   • activemq: contains ActiveMQ software
   • amps-repository: contains one AMP file to be applied to the Content Services repository
   • amps-share: contains one AMP file to be applied to Alfresco Share
   • remote-node: contains content services node software and configuration file If you are using the recommended Media Management architecture, the activemq, amps-repository and amps-share folders reside on the Content Services server, and you must move the remote-node folder to your remote server.

3. Install the repository AMP file. Navigate to the amps-repository directory and copy the following file to the amps folder.

   alfresco-mm-repo-1.4.x.amp

4. Install the Share AMP file. Navigate to the amps_share directory and copy the following file to the amps_share directory.

   alfresco-mm-share-1.4.x.amp

5. Delete the tomcat\webapps\alfresco and tomcat\webapps\share folders in the Content Services installation directory.

6. Navigate to the bin directory and run the Module Management Tool (MMT) file to install the repository AMP files:

   1. For the Content Services repository:

       java -jar alfresco-mmt.jar install ../amps/alfresco-mm-<version>.amp ../tomcat/webapps/alfresco.war
      

       java -jar alfresco-mmt.jar install ..\amps\alfresco-mm-<version>.amp ..\tomcat\webapps\alfresco.war
      

      where alfresco-mm-<version>.amp is the specific AMP file that you downloaded.

   2. For Alfresco Share:

       java -jar alfresco-mmt.jar install ../amps_share/alfresco-mm-<version>.amp ../tomcat/webapps/share.war
      

       java -jar alfresco-mmt.jar install ..\amps_share\alfresco-mm-<version>.amp ..\tomcat\webapps\share.war
      

      where alfresco-mm-<version>.amp is the specific AMP file that you downloaded.

   Check the output to ensure that the AMP files have installed successfully.

7. Take a copy of the most recent tomcat/webapps/alfresco.war<numbers>.bak file in case you need to uninstall Media Management.

8. Define properties relevant to Media Management in your alfresco-global.properties file.

   A sample alfresco-global.properties file is shipped in the root folder of the Media Management distribution zip, which defines custom properties. See Configure Media Management for the full list.

   1. If you have ActiveMQ on a separate server, configure the host and port number for ActiveMQ:

       # Messaging broker, default is localhost
       messaging.broker.url=failover:(tcp://broker1:61616,tcp://broker2:61616)
      

      where broker is each ActiveMQ instance that you have configured.

      You need to set this property only if your ActiveMQ instance is not on the same server as Content Services.

   2. Configure FFmpeg and ExifTool if they are not already available on the command line executable path:

       # FFmpeg executable path, default is ffmpeg
       ffmpeg.exe=
      
       # ExifTool executable path, default is exiftool
       exiftool.exe=
      

   3. If you want to preview raw images, set the following properties in the alfresco-global.properties file.

       transformer.strict.mimetype.check=true
       transformer.strict.mimetype.check.whitelist.mimetypes=image/x-raw-adobe
      

      Set the transformer.strict.mimetype.check property to true, and use the transformer.strict.mimetype.check.whitelist.mimetypes property to add the x-raw-adobe MIME type to an existing whitelist.

   4. If you are using shared content workspaces, remote transformations or publishing channels, configure these as specified in Configure Media Management.

9. Update the remote-node/config.yml file that you extracted from the Media Management installation zip.

   Specify the ActiveMQ host name and prefetch policy (to ensure that transformations can be processed in parallel):

    messaging:
    broker:
      url: tcp://localhost:61616?jms.prefetchPolicy.queuePrefetch=1
   

   The content services node uses ImageMagick and FFmpeg and requires that the executable directories are available on the system PATH variable or are specified using img.exe and ffmpeg.exe system properties.

   For more information about the recommended architecture for Media Management, see Media Management architecture. For information about the content services framework, see Content services node architecture.

10. Restart the server.

11. Launch Alfresco Share.

    To check that the Media Management AMPs have installed correctly, add a video or image to Share, open the file and check that you can see that the media loading and a Renditions Panel is available.

Uninstalling Media Management

To uninstall Media Management, you need to use the Module Management Tool (MMT) and reinstate certain files.

1. Stop the Content Services server.

2. Use the topic, Uninstall an AMP file, to uninstall the module.

3. If you have used a Media Management content model like IPTC or PBCore, you must clean out your database before restarting Alfresco. See Dynamic deployment approach for more information.

4. Restart the Alfresco server.