Documentation

SSAI with HLS discontinuities and MPEG-DASH periods

What is server side ad insertion (SSAI)?

Server side ad insertion (a.k.a. SSAI) is the notion of injecting advertisement materials in-stream through a server process, much like what the TV industry has been doing for a long time now. This can apply to live, on-demand or DVR content.

As such the advertisement, or the pod of consecutive advertisement, can be inserted into the actual content. With Radiant Media Player we support server side ad insertion with HLS and MPEG-DASH. Radiant Media Player should work with any standard compliant server-side solution that offers advertisement insertion services. Please contact us if your set-up requires additional configuration.

SSAI with HLS discontinuities

You can use server side ad insertion with HLS and Radiant Media Player through the HLS EXT-X-DISCONTINUITY tag. Each ad shall be represented by a discontinuity within the HLS stream. This is described on Apple website here.

The player will properly handle EXT-X-DISCONTINUITY and display the ad when indicated in a live or on-demand HLS stream.

To go further when an ad-related discontinuity starts we could want to display the player ad-dedicated user interface (or hide it when an ad-related discontinuity ends). When the ad UI is on, viewers will be presented with a friendly ad user interface and viewers won't be able to seek into the HLS stream to "skip" the ad. Currently this behaviour, if wanted, needs to be implemented through the adUI getter|setter API. To be notified of a discontinuity we can use the player API event fragmentbeingplayedchanged. When this event fires we are able to query the player API hlsFragmentBeingPlayedData method and obtain the related URL for the fragment being played. As such we can test the pattern of this fragment URL to know for sure when an ad-related discontinuity starts or ends.

SSAI with MPEG-DASH periods

Similar to HLS discontinuities, MPEG-DASH provides support for multi-period. A server side inserted ad could be represented by a period. If you submit to the player a MPEG-DASH-compliant manifest which holds multiple periods data the player will parse those information and update content presented to the viewer accordingly. See our MPEG-DASH streaming documentation for more information on the subject.

Google IMA DAI

We support Google DAI solution through the HTML5 IMA DAI SDK. Visit our documentation on the subject to learn more.

SSAI with AWS Elemental MediaTailor

We support server-side ad insertion with AWS Elemental MediaTailor. Visit our documentation on the subject to learn more.

G-Mana SSAI

G-Mana SSAI solution works great with Radiant Media Player. Visit our guide on the subject to learn more.

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