The total encoding minutes limit the amount of video minutes that can be uploaded and processed (encoded) to your alugha account.

Every time you upload a video file, we kick off a process that chops up your video file in little packets that get send off to multiple encoding server. There your video-packets will be transformed into different file formats and multiple resolutions. Afterwards these video-packets will be sent back to our server where we reassemble. The result is a video that plays smoothly on different display sizes and network conditions (adaptive bitrate streaming).

Unfortunately, this process comes with a price tag that we have to pay every time a Sumoling uploads a video. For this reason, we had to limit the total amount of minutes a Sumoling can upload. 

Instead of reducing the video quality or offloading Sumolings to a second tier encoding server, we opted to choose very generous limits (starting at 10.000 minutes for 1 code) that most of them probably will never hit.