Content Characteristics and AMD
This behavior lets you define specific information about your content to optimize its delivery.

Catalog Size
Use this to set the overall volume of objects to be delivered through this property.
- Small: Select if all of your content is less than 100G.
- Medium: Select this if all of your content 100G to 1TB.
- Large: Select this is all of your content ranges from 1TB to 100TB.
- Extra Large: Select this if all of your content is greater than 100TB.
- Unknown (Default): Select this if you don't know the volume.
Content Type
If you're delivering a specific type of content with this property, you can select it here to help optimize delivery.
- Standard Definition: This is typically 480i/p or 720p.
- High Definition: This is typically 1080i or 1080p.
- Ultra High Definition (4K)
- Other: Select this if your use case isn't available for selection, or it is a combination of the available selections.
- Unknown (Default): Leave it set to this if you're unsure of the specific content type.
Popularity Distribution
Select how often the content is requested:
- Long Tail. This applies if most of the traffic volume consists of a small number of requests for content that has relatively long life.
- Popular. This applies if most of the traffic volume consists of a large number of requests for content that has a relatively short life.
- Other. Select this if your use case isn't available for selection, or it is a combination of the available selections.
- Unknown (Default). Select this if you're not sure of the popularity level for the content to be delivered by this property.
Origin Object Size
Use this to set a range for the size of the objects delivered through this property:
- Less than 1MB
- 1-10MB
- 10-100MB. Partial Object Caching is automatically enabled with this setting.
- Greater than 100 MB. Partial Object Caching is automatically enabled with this setting.
- Unknown. Set to this value if you're unsure of the specific object size, or you don't have a definitive fixed size for target content. Partial Object Caching is automatically enabled with this setting for objects greater than 10 MB in size.
Do you need Partial Object Caching (POC)?
- 10-100 MB.
- Greater than 100 MB.
- Unknown. POC is applied for an object that is greater than 10 MB in size, if the object falls into what you've selected for Content Type. For example, if you've selected "High Definition" as your Content Type, POC is enabled if a file of that type is requested that's over 10MB in size.
If you specify a "large files" setting, but your origin never actually serves files in that size range, the Akamai platform makes additional requests to the origin. This can impact overall performance and access. This happens because the edge server requests the first byte of each object to determine if the minimum object size criteria has been met—at least 10MB. Once that check fails, the server simply re-requests the entire object from the origin.
We recommend that you verify the size of your delivery objects on your origin, and select the appropriate size to ensure that POC is enabled or disabled, as necessary.
Enable <Media Format>
You can select from multiple switch buttons, for the various media formats supported for use—Enable HLS (HTTP Live Streaming for iOS), Enable HDS (HTTP Dynamic Streaming for Adobe Flash), Enable DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) and Enable Smooth (for Microsoft Smooth Streaming). Set the switch to Yes for each format to be supported by this property. Additional options for each format include the following:
- Fragment/Segment Duration: Select the desired fragment or segment duration for the selected media format.
- Origin Object Size. Use this to set a range for the size of media objects delivered through this property—Less than 1MB, 1-10MB, 10-100MB, or Unknown (This is the default, and should be left as the selected setting if you are not sure of the size of objects to be delivered).
Best Practices settings applied by default
We automatically apply various "Best Practices" settings to coincide with the Content Characteristics behavior in your property configuration. (You don't need to manually define these via individual behaviors, because we preset them for optimal performance.)
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Optimized For |
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Streaming Format Identification | Your property supports the following formats, and
applies best practices settings when they are selected in the
property. (They are also used to generate logging and reporting
information.)
Note: CMAF is
supported for use with live
media via an AMD property. (You must set it up to distribute
live media via our Media Services Live (MSL) product.) Among
other things, you need to generate your media in CMAF format,
and you’d select HLS, DASH or both when selecting a Streaming
Format in this behavior. (See the Live Streaming
with MSL 4.x and AMD - Getting Started Guide for full
details on setting up live streaming with AMD.) Logging and
reporting information is displayed as the specific format of the
manifest actually requested—HLS or DASH. |
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Segment Durations | The property automatically applies the following for
segment duration when you select the applicable media format. (This
is also used for logging and reporting data.)
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Basic HTTP Settings |
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Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) | The following CORS headers are included with the
following values:
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GZIP Content Compression |
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Caching |
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Content Type | Based on the selected media formats, the content type
header includes the following information:
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Content Characteristics and Mixed Mode Configuration
This is a "use case-based" behavior that's automatically included in the Default Rule and used to optimize delivery. You need to apply settings for this behavior in the Default Rule. However, with Mixed Mode Configuration for AMD (MMC), you can also include it in another rule and apply different match criteria to have separate requests use different content characteristics optimizations. For more details, see How to use Mixed Mode with AMD.