Wistia uses a lot of terms that might not be the most intuitive when you’re first getting started. What in the world is a Turnstile? Who is my audience? How do I explain this data to my boss? Don’t worry—the glossary’s got you covered.

Account Owner is a user role with the highest permission level in Wistia. Account Owners have full access to resources like billing information, account-wide settings, and API keys. Each Wistia account can have up to three owners.

Related: Manage Team

An action refers to any opportunity a viewer or listener takes on your media to fill out a Turnstile, click on an Annotation Link, or complete a Call to Action. These actions are tracked in your video stats.

Related: Lead Generation Tools

An admin refers to a Wistia user with full access to a folder or Channel. Admins can access all available folder permissions, including Upload, Download, Share, Stats, and Edit (i.e., they have “Can manage” permissions). Unlike Account Owners and Managers, admin permissions are specific to individual folders and Channels.

Related: Manage Team

An Annotation Link is an in-video pop-up text or link. Annotation Links can be configured in the “Customize” panel, and viewer clicks are recorded in your video stats.

Related: Annotation Links

An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a tool for developers to create custom workflows in Wistia, like creating custom stats reports or player controls. Account Owners can access API keys in their account settings to get started.

Related: APIs and Developer Resources

Autoplay is a video playback setting that plays a video immediately on page load. Autoplaying videos will contribute to your account’s bandwidth usage and may be blocked in certain browsers.

Related: Updating the Player Controls

Average engagement is a percentage measurement of the amount of time viewers spent watching or listening to a given media. This calculation includes the number of times the video was played, its length, and how long your audience actively spent watching or listening. Average engagement is reported on both the account-wide “Trends” page and the individual media analytics.

Related: Media Analytics Overview

Bandwidth is data that is passed to your viewers when they load a video or play an audio episode. Account Owners can veiw their monthly bandwidth usage on the "Account Usage" page of their account settings.

Related: Account Usage and Bandwidth

Beta features are Wistia features that aren’t quite 💯 just yet. They’re features we hope to launch into the product in the future, but need some customer feedback first. An Account Owner can enable beta features in their account settings.

Warning: These features may be a bit buggy, so only proceed if you’re okay with user testing.

Related: Account Settings

The big play button is a lightly transparent overlay on your video thumbnail, indicating to viewers that they should click to play the video. The big play button can be customized in the “Controls” tab of the “Customize” panel.

Related: Updating the Player Controls

A billing contact is a designated user who receives all billing-related emails from Wistia, including invoices and receipts. Anyone can be added as a billing contact without having a Wistia login.

Related: Wistia Billing Overview

The Brand Kit is the home for all of your custom branding settings, including player colors, fonts, and logos. Brand Kit settings can be accessed and applied to media pages and Live events. Account Owners and Managers can manage the Brand Kit in their account settings.

Related: Brand Kit

A Call to Action, or CTA, is a clickable message, image, or HTML script that appears anywhere in your video and lets your viewers know what you want them to do next.

Related: Call to Action

Captions allow you to add text to your media to help boost SEO benefits and increase the accessibility of your content. Captions is a submenu in the Customize panel. A Wistia user can upload their own SRT file (in any language) or order captions in English. Captions are indicated by the _CC_ button at the bottom of the video.

Related: Transcripts and Captions

Channels are a way of sharing your video and audio episodes in a single, styled media gallery. Channels can be shared via a direct link or embedded on your website. Channels can also be used to host and distribute your podcast.

Related: Wistia Channels

Chapters are customizable markers in your media timeline to help viewers navigate to important content. Chapters can be configured in the “Customize” panel for any media.

Related: Chapters in Your Video

Comments allow viewers and users in your Wistia account to leave feedback and ask questions on media pages. Team and audience comments can be enabled on any media page.

Related: Commenting

The “Customize” menu in Wistia contains various options for making your media your own, including player appearance and controls, password protection, lead capture forms, captions, and more.

Related: Customize Your Video

Derivatives are copies of your media within Wistia. When you upload your video, our servers will create multiple versions of your videos for different environments  (e.g., mobile devices) and those with slower internet speeds. This way, Wistia ensures that your media can be played in every environment.

Related: Export Settings

Domain Restrictions is a Wistia feature that allows you to permit media to be embedded in certain domains. Account Owners can configure Domain Restrictions on the "Account" page in their account settings.

Related: Account Settings

E-v1 is the Wistia JavaScript library included in every legacy embed code. This is where the magic lives — it’s how we pull in stats, update customizations, and track views.

Related: All About E-v1.js

The editor includes tools to trim, split, and stitch videos directly in Wistia. Add transitions, background music, branded captions, and more.

Related: Editing in Wistia

Email merge tags are a way to share your videos in email campaigns. Email merge tags display a thumbnail (with a play button overlay) for the video in an email campaign and link out to a specified page. Most email merge tags also track viewers' email addresses and are tagged as identified viewers on the "Audience" page.

Related: Email Marketing and Wistia

An embed code is a snippet of code that you can add to your site to put additional content (like a video!) on your webpage. Wistia supplies lots of different types of embed codes, including asynchronous (or standard embed codes), iframe (or fallback embed codes), and oEmbeds.

Related: Embedding Your Media

Embed links allow you to create more versatile playlists with your Wistia videos. Embed links can be used with the standard embed, and keep all of the customizations added in the Customize panel.

Related: Embed Links

The engagement graph provides an aggregate view of your audience’s viewing or listening experience, indicating which parts of the media kept their interest and which lost their attention. The blue part of the graph displays a second-by-second average engagement across all viewers and listeners, while the orange section indicates rewatches. Engagement graphs are available for individual media in the “Engagement” tab of the “Analytics” page.

Related: Tracking Average User Engagement

Episodes refer to any video or audio file in a Wistia Channel. You can customize episodes and track their performance with your audience. Episodes in a Channel can be in a published or unpublished state. Only published episodes will be visible to your audience.

Related: More about adding Episodes

Exporting refers to the act of downloading content from Wistia. Users can export media files, analytics reports, Live registration data, and more.

Related: Export Settings

A fallback embed is a type of inline embed code that uses an iframe. Fallback embed codes should typically only be used if a standard embed isn't working as expected or if your site builder only accepts iframes.

Related: Embedding Your Media

A fixed-size embed has specific dimensions and will fit into whatever size container it is placed into, so it works great on all devices. A fixed embed will remain a static size and will not adjust to its environment. It’s a good option if you’re working with a site that isn’t responsive, or if you have special circumstances to need a fixed size.

Related: Embedding Your Media

All media in Wistia are organized into folders. A folder can contain one or more videos and/or other types of files, and an account can contain multiple folders. Each folder has its own folder-level stats, and several features apply specifically at the folder level.

Related: Managing Files in Your Wistia Account

Fullscreen is a control in the Wistia player that allows your viewers the opportunity to watch your video in full screen. The fullscreen option can be added or removed from the play bar for any video in the “Controls” tab of the “Customize” panel.

See: Updating the Player Controls

Nothing to see here. 👻

A hashed ID is the 10-digit string of letters and numbers at the end of any Wistia media URL. So the hashed ID of this media — https://support.wistia.com/medias/64jchp8ot0 — is 64jchp8ot0. The hashed ID is used to identify your media in an embed code, help our support team troubleshoot issues, make API requests, and more.

A heatmap is a graphical representation of an individual viewer or listener’s experience. It shows which sections of your media a viewer watched/listened (green), rewatched (yellow, orange, or red), or skipped entirely (white). Heatmaps have lots of data associated with them including total number of media of yours they’ve played, their viewing or listening device, their location, the URL where they watched the video or played your episode, IP address of the viewer, their total engagement, and their contact email or name (if available).

Related: Heatmaps

HLS, or HTTP Live Streaming, is the form of video delivery we use here at Wistia. HLS allows us to deliver the highest quality video for your viewers without them having to change a thing. HLS uses adaptive streaming, which will automatically flip to the highest quality version of your video based on the internet speeds available.

Related: Export Settings

An inline embed is a type of embed that loads and plays the media in line with the other content on your site. Inline embeds are different from popover embeds, which “pop over” the rest of the content on the page. Types of inline embed codes include: standard embed, fallback embed, and the oEmbed. You can also make inline embed codes responsive or fixed size. The inline embed is available in the Embed & Share modal.

Related: Embedding Your Media

Integrations allow Wistia to pass specific viewing data to third-party platforms. We’ve got a big list of integration partners, with email marketing, Turnstile, and marketing automation. Account Owners and Managers can view and connect integrations in their account settings.

Related: Wistia Integrations

IP filtering is a feature that allows you to exclude certain IP addresses from your Wistia stats. IPs can only be listed as individual numbers, not ranges. Account Owners can configure IP filtering in their account settings.

Related: Account Settings

JSON-LD, or JavaScript Object Notification for Linked Data, is how we inject SEO metadata into the Wistia embed codes.

Related: Media SEO

🚶 Keep moving along.

A Limited User is a user in Wistia who can only access folders and Channels to which they’ve been given access. Limited Users can be given “Can manage” or “Can view” permissions for specific folders or Channels.

Related: User Roles

Wistia Live is a webinar-hosting tool that allows you to create branded events, track audience engagement, and follow up with leads through various marketing automation platforms.

Related: Getting Started with Live

Load settings is an option in the “Customize” menu that allows you to apply player customizations from another video in your Wistia account to another.

Related: Customize Your Video

A Manager in a Wistia account is a step below an Account Owner. Managers can create and manage folders, add contacts and manage their permissions, customize videos, access stats, and more.

Related: User Roles

Marketing automation is a tool used to trigger certain workflows based on lead behavior. All of Wistia’s marketing integrations work a bit differently, so check out our documentation on HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot.

Related: Wistia Integrations

Media is the technical term we use to encompass anything and everything you can upload to a folder or Channel in your Wistia account. There are a ton of different media file types, but the most common are: video, audio, doc, and image. Any media that is uploaded to Wistia that isn’t recognizable (can’t be displayed or read) will be available for download.

Related: Managing Files in Your Wistia Account

Metadata is the data in your site that describes your site’s content (so Google knows what’s up!). Metadata helps to improve your site’s search engine ranking. At Wistia, we use JSON-LD to inject metadata into the head of your website with our standard embed codes.

Related: Media SEO

Move & Copy is an in-app feature that allows you to move and/or copy media between folders in your account. You can also move media to another account on which you are the Account Owner or Manager. Moving media between accounts will reset stats.

Related: Managing Files in Your Wistia Account

Nope — keep scrolling, friend.

An oEmbed is a link that tells a site (most commonly WordPress how to embed content from a third-party platform. This “embed code” type is a URL where the specifications are added as a string on that URL. It can be accessed in the Embed & Share modal under the Inline Embed tab.

Related: Wistia and oEmbed

Password protection requires viewers to enter a password to watch a video. You can set a password for a video in the "Customize" panel. Passwords can only be added to videos.

Related: Require Password

The Wistia player is the interface used to display all video and audio files, including controls like the play and pause button, fullscreen option, and volume. Any time you’re viewing or watching a Wistia-hosted media, you’re interacting with the player.

player.js is the Wistia JavaScript library included in every Aurora embed code. It contains all the functionality that makes the Wistia player what it is: customizations, tracking, and more.

Related: All about the Aurora Player

The play bar is a visual representation of the timeline of a media file. It shows where your viewer or listener is at any given point in your content. The play bar also includes a thumbnail preview on hover for videos, so your viewers know what’s coming up next. It can be turned on or off in the Controls menu of the Customize panel.

Related: Updating the Player Controls

Play rate measures how often people choose to play your media. This metric is calculated based on the number of times the media was loaded versus the number of times it was played. Play rate is listed on both the account-wide “Trends” page and the individual media stats page.

Related: Media Analytics Overview

Wistia player controls include the big play button, small play button, play bar, settings controls (i.e., video quality, playback speed), volume control, fullscreen button, and the Wistia banner. Player controls can be customized in the “Controls” tab of the “Customize” menu.

Related: Updating the Player Controls

A podcast directory like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Libsyn is a platform where your audience can access and listen to your podcast.

Related: Distributing Your Podcast

Your podcast host is the home base for your podcast, like Wistia! Podcast hosts create an RSS feed for your podcast so you can distribute it to different podcast directories.

Related: Adding and Setting Up a Podcast

A popover embed is a type of Wistia embed that opens the media player over a page’s content in a lightbox. Popover embeds require the viewer to click on the player to open and play. Users can generate a popover embed code from the “Embed” option on the media page.

Related: Embedding Your Media

Private Users Sessions contain all of the logged-in views in your Wistia account. Here you’ll be able to see which media and folders your users viewed, edited, and/or uploaded, how much of each media they’ve watched (i.e., heatmaps), and if they viewed any stats. Account Owners and Managers can access Private User Sessions in their account settings.

Related: Share Privately

Nothing here, keep going.

Record videos natively in Wistia to share with colleagues, embed on your site, or post to social media. Wistia’s Record tool includes options to record solo, with colleagues, or invite external users to submit a recording to your account.

Related: Recording in Wistia

The Replace Media tool is an option on a video’s page within your account. Replacing a video is pretty much exactly what it sounds like — it allows you to replace a video without having to update the customizations or re-embed the video.

Related: Replacing Your Media

Responsive embeds are a type of embed code that forces the player to resize to fill its parent container on a webpage. Responsive embeds will adjust to the size of each viewer’s window, so they’re great for all environments (including mobile!).

Related: Embedding Your Media

An RSS feed is like a newsfeed for your Podcast. As soon as you publish a new episode of your Podcast, its information will be added to the RSS Feed. You and your listeners (and Podcast distribution services like Spotify and Apple Podcasts) can access this RSS Feed at the RSS Feed URL. You can find an RSS Feed URL in any Channel where you’ve enabled podcasting.

Related: What is a Podcast RSS Feed?

RTMP ingest allows you to control a Wistia Live event through other advanced streaming tools (e.g., OBS) and have more flexibility over your stream.

Related: RTMP Ingest for Live

A section is a subset of a Wistia folder. Sections divide up folders to help keep your account organized. They can be added by hovering right below the title within a folder. They can be renamed using the Edit button.

Related: Managing Files in Your Wistia Account

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the practice of including metadata in your site’s code and content to improve search engine ranking. Wistia embed codes optimize your video content for SEO by default.

Related: Media SEO

The Set Folder Defaults feature allows users to apply the customizations of one video to all other videos in the same folder. Applied customizations include player color, rounded player corners, player branding, thumbnail text overlay, autoplay, player controls, and share buttons.

Related: Managing Files in Your Wistia Account

The share buttons are in-player social sharing buttons. They allow your viewers to share your media further on their social networks. The “Share” option is located in the “Customize” panel. Sharing options include embed, email, download, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn.

Related: Customizing the Share Buttons

Simulcasting allows you to stream your Wistia Live event to other platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn. You’ll need an RTMP URL and Stream Key to get started.

Related: Simulcasting

The small play button is an icon included in the play bar of a video. It has the same functionality as the big play button overlay on a video’s thumbnail, and can be toggled on or off in the “Controls” section of the “Customize” modal.

Related: Updating the Player Controls

The standard embed is a type of inline embed code. Standard embeds load asynchronously, so they don’t hold up page load speeds on your site. They’re fast and resilient and work in almost every environment. They’re highly configurable using our JavaScript Player API, but can also be used right out of the box. The standard embed code injects JSON-LD metadata into the head of your page for SEO markup. The standard embed can be copied from the “Inline” tab in the “Embed” modal.

Related: Embedding Your Media

A Standard User is a user in Wistia who can create and upload any new content, including media, folders, Live events, recordings, and Channels. They have admin permissions for any content that they create, and can also be added to existing folders and Channels with varying permission levels.

Related: User Roles

A swatch is a blurry image that serves as a placeholder for the video player and thumbnail. You might see a swatch when loading an embedded video on a webpage. A swatch is included in all Wistia video embeds by default.

A thumbnail is the still image that appears in place of your video before it’s played. You can upload a custom thumbnail image or select a frame from the video in the “Customize” panel on the media page.

Related: Choose Your Video's Thumbnail

Total plays include the total number of times a given media was played, meaning a viewer either pressed play or the media was set to autoplay. Total plays are listed on the individual media stats page.

Related: Media Analytics Overview

A transcript is a time-coded log of all spoken dialogue in a media. Transcripts can be uploaded or ordered directly in Wistia and exist in tandem with captions.

Related: Transcripts and Captions

Turnstile is Wistia’s native lead collection form. A Turnstile can be added at any point in your video’s timeline and can double as a gate by disabling the skip button. Turnstile fields include first name, last name, and email address. Turnstiles can be configured in the “Customize” menu for any videos.

Related: Turnstile

Uploading is the act of adding content to your Wistia account. You can upload lots of different file types, but to use Wistia to its fullest potential, we recommend videos that are MP4 files, with an H.264 codec. Uploading can be accessed from a folder page or by dragging and dropping the file into your browser.

Related: Upload Media

A user is anyone invited to log in to a Wistia account via email and password. User roles include Account Owners, Managers, Standard Users, and Limited Users.

Related: Manage Team

The View Stream contains a chronological list of everyone who has watched any of your videos, as well as their heatmap and other information, such as their device, IP address, and general geographical location. If a viewer has been identified — for instance, if they filled out a Turnstile form — their entries in the view stream will also include their email address and name if provided. You can access the View Stream under the “Analytics” page on the Home page of your account.

Related: Viewer Analytics

The viewer page allows you to see the entire history of one viewer of your videos. It’s important to note that this refers to public stats ,  not private. You can find the viewer page of any public viewer by clicking on their heatmap.

Related: Viewer Analytics

A waypoint is an icon in the media timeline on the “Customize” page that indicates the presence of a Call to Action, Annotation Link, or lead capture form. The waypoint indicates where one of these will appear and how long it will be visible. Waypoints can be dragged around the timeline and will disappear after the customizations are saved.

Related: Lead Generation Tools

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Your Wistia URL, or subdomain, is the string of letters and numbers that appears before wistia.com in your account URL. You can change your account URL at any time without affecting any embedded media. However, note that any media page URLs that reference the old account name will no longer work.

Related: Account Settings

301 is a status code that a server sends to a browser to indicate that a page has moved to a new location. If you’re importing an existing podcast to Wistia, you should set up a 301 redirect to ensure directories and subscribers know where to find your new content.

Related: How to Import an Existing Podcast

A 360 video is captured in a spherical format, meaning a viewer can drag and click or move their device to view all directions of the video. You can enable 360 video controls for applicable video files in the “Controls” tab of the “Customize” panel on the media page.

Related: Wistia's 360 Video Player