Your first video

From creating an account to a video playing on your site, step by step, without writing a line of code. The longest part is waiting for the video to process.

Before you start #

You need two things: an email address and a video on your computer. Nothing else — no software to install, no servers to configure.

By the end you will have your video stored, converted to several qualities, protected if you want it protected, and a small piece of code you can paste into your site to make it play. You copy and paste that piece; you do not need to understand it.

What each menu section is

The sidebar has four groups. DRM is copy protection. Video is where your content lives: Storage, Encoding and Player. Account is your balance and settings. This tutorial only uses the Video group and, at the start, Balance.

1. Create the account #

Press Get started, type your name and email, and hit Create account. A six-digit code arrives; type it in and you are through.

There is no password to remember or lose. Every time you sign in from a new device you get another code. Codes expire after ten minutes, so ask for one when you are about to use it.

We do not ask for a card

Airi runs on prepaid balance: you top up what you want and it draws down. No monthly fee, no commitment, and no automatic charge at the end of the month.

2. Add balance #

Go to Balance in the menu. A new account starts at zero, and with no balance nothing can be uploaded or converted — looking is fine, creating is not.

Topping up is manual for now: press Contact support and we credit the amount. Paying from the panel itself is coming, but today it is an email.

Very little covers this whole tutorial. A ten-minute video converted to two qualities costs about 26 cents, and storing it for a month, cents. That same page lists every price and the history of every movement.

3. Upload the video #

Go to Storage and press Upload file. Pick your video and wait: large files are split into pieces automatically, so you can upload several gigabytes without thinking about it.

When it finishes it appears in the list with its name, size and date. Above, you will see the space used and what it will cost per month.

You can watch it already

Press Watch (the play triangle) on the file's row. It opens playing, and creates a player for you if you did not have one. Plenty of people never need anything beyond this.

The other button on the row copies a signed link: an address that works for a while and then stops. It is what you hand to whoever should see the video. If someone shares it, it stops serving when it expires.

4. Make it play well on any connection #

A video straight from a camera or a phone does play, but badly: anyone on a weak connection watches the spinner. The fix is to keep several versions at different qualities and let the player switch between them as it goes. That is what encoding means.

Go to Encoding and start a new job. There are only four things to decide:

Field	What to pick
Source	The video you just uploaded. It is in the list
Qualities	Tick 1080p and 720p. Two is plenty; each extra one adds to the price
Packaging	Pick HLS and DASH. They are the two formats players understand; with both you cover every device
Encrypt with my DRM keys	Only tick this if you want copy protection. You can leave it off and turn it on for another video later

The duration is read from the file itself, so you normally leave it alone. Before you confirm you will see the quote: what it will cost, worked out with the same numbers that later charge you.

Press Encode and wait. How long depends on the length and how many qualities you asked for; the list tells you where it is, and you do not need to leave the page open. When it finishes, the results appear on their own in Storage.

Do not ask for more quality than the original has

If your video is 720p and you tick 1080p, you do not get 1080p: you get the 720p that was there. Detail that does not exist is not invented — and you are only charged for the 720p that actually came out, not the 1080p you asked for.

If it fails, you pay nothing

A job that ends in error costs you nothing: whatever came out is deleted and the full amount is returned. Cancelling one in progress costs nothing either, even though the video does not stop processing inside.

5. Put it on your site #

Go to Player. If you pressed Watch in the previous step you already have one; if not, press New player and give it a name.

Inside you can change the colours, add your logo, decide which buttons appear and whether it starts on its own. Everything shows immediately in the preview. None of it is required: it works as it comes.

When you like how it looks, copy the embed code and paste it into your site wherever the video should appear. It is two lines and you do not have to touch them.

The player costs nothing

It is free, and there is no paid version with more in it. You pay for the video being downloaded and, if you protected it, for the playback permissions — but you would pay those with any other player too.

If you want that player to work only on your site and not on the site of whoever copies the code, its settings let you name the domains where it is allowed. Anywhere else, it does not load.

6. See what you have spent #

Go back to Balance. There is what you have left and the detail of every movement: the encoding, what the storage takes up, what has been downloaded, and each top-up. Nothing is bundled into a generic line.

Storage is charged once a day for what you are using, so you see a small entry each day rather than a shock at the end of the month.

What happens if you run out

Nothing is deleted all at once. You stop being able to upload and encode, but what you already have keeps playing. We email you, and you have fifteen days to top up before the files are deleted. Topping up cancels the countdown immediately.

Where to go next #

That is the whole round trip. These are the three things people usually want afterwards:

Really protect the video. Ticking "encrypt with my DRM keys" when encoding means it can only be watched through your player, with permission and for a limited time. How that works is in DRM.
Decide who can watch what. Links can be limited by country, by speed and by how long they last. That is in Storage.
Let your AI assistant do it. Upload, encode and publish by asking Claude or Cursor. That is in MCP.

One loose question? Try the FAQ. And if yours is not there, write to us — we answer.