Adaptive Renditions: Architectural Overview and Configurations
Introduction
Adaptive Renditions allow the devices to automatically select the best rendition for a device based on customer-defined rules. The devices will automatically download and play the most appropriate rendition of an asset based on these rules allowing customers to only focus on designing the main experience.
Objective
As an AEM Screens Developer, you can now configure device-specific asset renditions to be downloaded and played automatically without having to create all content variations manually. You must configure the Adaptive Renditions before a content Author can use this feature in an AEM Screens channel.
Architectural Overview
Adaptive Renditions are based on the idea of having multiple asset renditions named following a specific naming convention. The decision to play a specific rendition is made by evaluating media query expressions that can only be resolved on devices with expected capabilities.
The ability of having an associated rendition naming pattern defines a rendition mapping rule, such as portrait or landscape, as shown in the figure below. After computing all available expressions the Screens player will collect the naming patterns corresponding to the matching rules. The patterns are used to find the correct renditions during the sequence playback by looking for the patterns in the rendition names.
Adding Rendition Mapping Property to the Screens Project
To enable the Adaptive Renditions feature, the following mapping rules should be present and the Context-Aware (CA) Configuration should be resolvable for channels and displays.
Follow the steps below to configure the setup:
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Navigate to CRXDE Lite. Check, if the rendition-mapping configuration exists in
/conf/screens/sling:configs/rendition-mapping, as shown in the figure below.
note important IMPORTANT If you installed the latest Feature Pack 202109, you will see rendition-mapping node structure pre-populated in /conf/screens/sling:configs/rendition-mappingin CRXDE Lite. See Release Notes for Feature Pack 202109 to get details on the latest feature pack.
For existing projects, ensure that Screens project has the rendition-mapping configuration associated. See Adding Rendition Mapping to an Existing Project section to learn more.
Adding Rendition Mapping Property to an Existing Project
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Navigate to CRXDE Lite.
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Explicitly define the rendition mapping association by adding
sling:configRefproperty pointing at/conf/screensto the project content node, as shown in the figure below.
Adding Rendition Mapping Rules
Follow the steps below to add a node under Rendition Mapping:
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Navigate to this path
/conf/screens/sling:configs/rendition-mappingfrom CRXDE Lite. -
Create a node under rendition-mapping. Right click on rendition-mapping and click on Create --> Create Node, as shown in the figure below.
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Enter the Name for your mapping rule such as rule1 and the node Type as nt:unstructured in Create Node dialog box. Click on OK.
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You need to add the expression property with the value containing the query expression.
note note NOTE Refer to Using Media Query Syntax to learn more. Click on rule1 that you created, and enter expression in Name and (orientation:landscape) in Value, as shown below. Click on Add.
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Add the pattern property with the value containing the rendition naming pattern.
note note NOTE The value defined in the pattern property will be matched to the new asset rendition and will be selected, if the expression is evaluated to true. To add the pattern property, click on rule1 that you created, and enter pattern in Name and landscape in Value, as shown below. Click on Add.
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Click on Save All and you will see the properties under the node you created under rendition-mapping.
The Next Steps
Once you have added rendition mapping properties and rules, now as a Content Author, you can configure your assets to use Adaptive Renditions and also migrate your devices for large networks to avail this feature, in your AEM Screens channels. See Using Adaptive Renditions in AEM Screens for more details.