Automatically Archiving Inactive NextGen Live Channels
Overview
Every NextGen Live channel you create holds a slot against your account's live event and channel quota for the region it was created in, and it keeps holding it after the stream ends. Once the quota in a region is used up, creating or starting another channel there fails until something is archived, even if none of the channels are streaming.
Auto-Archive removes that manual cleanup step. When it is enabled, a channel that has been inactive — stopped or in an error state — for the retention period you set is archived automatically, and the quota it held is released.
Auto-Archive is off by default and is turned on per account by an account administrator. Archiving is the same action as the manual Archive in the Live module: it finishes the channel permanently. See Archived Channels for what happens to a channel and its media after it is archived.
Enabling Auto-Archive
You must be an account administrator with access to the Live module.
- Open the Admin module.
- In the left navigation, click NextGen Live Settings.
- Find the Auto-Archive section.
- Turn on Automatically archive inactive jobs.
- Set the Retention period (days) — a whole number of days between 1 and 365. The default is 30.
- Click Save.
- Read the Enable Auto-Archive? confirmation and click Enable Auto-Archive to apply the change, or Cancel to leave the setting as it was.
The confirmation appears only when you are switching Auto-Archive on. Changing the retention period afterwards, or turning the feature off, saves directly.
When a channel is scheduled for archiving
A channel is scheduled the moment it becomes inactive, and the archive is due at that moment plus the retention period. A channel becomes inactive when you stop it, and also when it fails and moves into an error state.
The rules that follow are worth knowing before you enable the feature, because they decide which of your existing channels are affected.
- Only channels that become inactive after you enable Auto-Archive are scheduled. Channels that are already sitting stopped when you turn the feature on are not picked up, and must still be archived by hand. To bring one under Auto-Archive, start it and stop it again.
- Restarting a channel cancels its pending archive. Stopping it again starts a fresh retention period from the new stop time.
- A change to the retention period applies to channels that become inactive after the change. Archives already scheduled keep the due time they were given.
Seeing when a channel will be archived
The Live module shows the pending archive so that nothing disappears without warning.
- The channels list has an Auto-archive column. A channel with an archive pending shows Auto-archive scheduled for and the due date and time.
- The Control Room shows the same information alongside the channel's region.
- Once the due time has passed and the channel has not been archived yet, the indicator changes to Overdue and states what the archive is waiting on.
- After the channel has been archived, the indicator reads Archived.
Channels with no pending archive — because Auto-Archive is off, or because the channel is running — show nothing in the column.
What archiving keeps and what it ends
| Item | What happens |
|---|---|
| The channel | Finished permanently. Its streaming endpoints are removed and it cannot be started again. It moves to Archived Channels, where it is listed for 30 days before disappearing from the UI. |
| Live event / channel quota | Released back to your account, in the region the channel belonged to. |
| Clips and VODs already produced | Kept. They live in the Media module and are unaffected by the channel being archived. |
| The Live media asset | Kept in the Media module, including after the archived channel drops off the list. For a channel with Live-to-VOD enabled, the asset is the converted VOD. |
When archiving is postponed
An archive is never allowed to cut short work that is still running on the channel. If the channel has a live-to-VOD conversion or a clip in progress when the archive comes due, the archive is refused and retried automatically every five minutes until the work completes. The channel shows as Overdue in the meantime, with the reason.
Two safety limits stop a piece of work that never reports back from blocking the archive forever:
- A live-to-VOD conversion stops blocking after 24 hours. The conversion is then recorded as failed and the archive proceeds.
- A clip stops blocking after 6 hours.
If the archive is still being refused 48 hours after it first came due, Brightcove stops retrying. The channel stays inactive and keeps holding its quota, and you will need to archive it yourself.
Force delete
When an archive has been overdue for more than ten minutes — long enough for at least two retries to have been refused — a Force delete action appears in the channel's three-dot menu (⋮) in the Control Room. It archives the channel immediately, skipping the checks that are holding it up.
The confirmation dialog names the channel and states what will be abandoned. Force delete is not offered for channels that are archiving normally.
Rules and limits
| Rule | Detail |
|---|---|
| Default state | Off. No channel is archived automatically until an administrator enables the feature. |
| Retention period | 1 to 365 whole days. Default 30 days. Account-wide. |
| Retention starts from | The moment the channel became inactive — the stop, or the transition into error. |
| Who can change the setting | Account administrators with Live module access. |
| Retry cadence when blocked | Every 5 minutes, for up to 48 hours after the archive first came due. |
| Force delete availability | Once the archive has been overdue for 10 minutes. |
Troubleshooting
A stopped channel has no archive scheduled
It became inactive before Auto-Archive was enabled. Start it and stop it again to schedule one, or archive it manually.
The channel says Overdue
A live-to-VOD conversion or a clip is still running on it, and the archive is being retried. The indicator names which one. No action is needed unless it persists — see Force delete.
A channel was archived that I still wanted
Archiving cannot be undone. Create a new channel to stream again; any clips and VODs the old channel produced are still in the Media module. To stop this happening again, raise the retention period, or restart channels you intend to keep so their pending archive is cancelled.
Quota is still exhausted after enabling Auto-Archive
Channels stopped before the feature was enabled are not scheduled, and no channel is archived until its retention period has elapsed. Archive the channels you no longer need manually to reclaim the quota now.