# What is a channel on Epiphan Unify?

A channel is an encoding instance associated with your video and audio inputs to produce video recordings and/or live streams. Your video and audio sources can be combined and added to a channel, which you can stream and record.

- **Pearl Nexus** - we recommend configuring up to three channels for best performance.

- Pearl Nexus comes with two channels already preconfigured: HDMI-A and HDMI-B. The HDMI-A video input port on Pearl Nexus is assigned to the HDMI-A channel and the HDMI-B video input port is assigned to the HDMI-B channel by default. But you can easily change that and add whichever video and audio sources you want to a channel. You can even change the name of the channel using the Admin panel.

> product: unify · topic: channels · source: unify-userguide.md · updated: Oct 7, 2026