Video Analytics is Adobe's video-tracking solution, which is available to you through the Primetime SDK.
The Adobe Video Analytics feature encompasses two aspects of video tracking:
Primetime Player Monitoring - This is provided with the PSDK. It provides real-time metrics about the quality of streaming, including the buffer rate, error rate, average bit rate, active streams, and startup time.
On-the-fly transcoding or creative repackaging
Some third-party ads (creatives) might be available only as a progressive download MP4 video, in which case they cannot be stitched into the HLS content stream. Primetime Ad Insertion and the iOS PSDK provide an option called third-party creative repackaging, which addresses this situation.
On the fly ad transcoding is supported through Adobe Ad Serving. The Adobe Ad Server account must be configured for creative repackaging on the Ad Server and then repackaging is seamlessly handled through the PSDK.
Full-event replay (FER)
Full-event replay (FER) is a VOD asset that acts, in terms of ad insertion, as a live/DVR asset. Your application can now ensure that ads are placed correctly by selecting the ad-signaling mode.
Improved start-up time, failover, and playback performance.
Playback of pre-roll ads is now separated from the playback of the main content for live streams. This will improve the startup time by loading the mid-roll ads and initializing DRM workflow pre-hand while the pre-roll is still playing. Seeking back in the content won't return the user to the pre-roll ad.again.
Optimized playback startup time of DVR LIVE and VOD FER streams by making a single ad server call instead of making individual requests per ad cue point.
PSDK iOS build supports EVENT type HLS playlists. Fixes issues with Ad Tracking.
This is a common scenario for live/linear streams. The PSDK is responsible for detecting such metadata/cues, extracting the necessary information from them and communicating with an advertising server to obtain the corresponding ads.
The resolved ads are spliced in by replacing main content at the location indicated by the metadata/cues. Otherwise the client will drop further and further than the actual live point.
This is a common scenario for video-on-demand streams. Metadata information about these streams are registered into the advertising server prior to playback. The PSDK is responsible for retrieving the ad timeline from the server and corresponding ads. The resolved ads are spliced by insertions into the main content as indicated by the server map.
By default, PSDK uses manifest cues for live and linear streams and an advertising server map for VOD streams. This works well for simple playback scenarios, but we can complete live streams using the metadata/cues presented in the manifest. For HLS, once the EXT-X-ENDLIST tag is appended to a live manifest, the stream becomes a VOD stream and there is no way to differentiate it from a normal VOD stream. The PSDK can correctly identify these streams and play them only if it is instructed to do this by the application. Use PTAdSignalingMode to control this behavior. The PSDK assumes that the application will obtain the actual signaling mode that should be used from external sources (vCMS, etc.).
The PSDK provides you with the option to load all ads for the stream when the user begins viewing or to resolve only the ads that occur after the user's current live point.
PSDK 1.2 enhances LBA support to include the ability to have a live stream with multiple audio tracks.
For more information about LBA support, refer to the PSDK for iOS API Reference.
The application developers must set the PTAdSignalingMode in PTAdMetadata to define the ad signaling mode.
The properties volume(float) and muted(BOOL) were added to PTMediaPlayer to set/get the volume of the playback for iOS 7.
Client can register custom ad cue markers for the PSDK to use in addition to the default ad markers it always checks for. This can be done by using the class method setAdTags: in the PTSDKConfig class.
Clients can register with the PSDK to be notified about a custom tag within the HLS manifest. This can be done by using the class method setSubscribedTags: in the PTSDKConfig class.