Channels/Streams
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The content in the article below (and this legacy platform) is no longer being maintained — use the new platform https://help.equativ.com/serversideai instead.
This legacy portal will be permanently shut down on February 1, 2026.
Create New Channel
Go to your channels page https://staging.serverside.ai/app/ad-insertion/channels and click on the Add Channel button.
Section 1 - General Settings
At first you have to decide if the channel you want to add is of type VoD or Live.
Video on Demand (VoD) channels are built from one or more pieces of content. These are mostly clips, recordings, or movies. You can provide an MRSS file on your manifest request to allow ad insertion for different contents and specify the position of your ad-pods. For more details see: https://nowtilus.gitbook.io/serverside-ai/video-player-app/vod-dash-hls
Live channels are constant streams of media(audio/video) chunks. Usually, these are tv channels or live events. Your stream has to be compliant with our stream specifications and needs to contain markers so we can detect when to insert personalized ads.
The Name and API-Key can be freely chosen. If no API-Key is provided we will use a random key.
Section 2 - Specify Source
Depending on the type of stream you selected (VoD or Live) we expect different types of sources.
Type
Description
Example
VoD
URL to one content from the MRSS you will use to request the ad-insertion
We are working hard to provide support for all varieties of sources. Nevertheless it is possible that you are using a source that is currently not supported by Serverside.ai. Please have a look at our source specifications to get more information.
After you entered your source URL click the Analyse button so we can gather the encoding and packaging format from your source. If you skip this step you will not be able to save your channel.
Please don't hesitate to contact our support in case you discover any issues while analyzing your source.
Section 3 - Profile
This section will appear after the analysis of your source is done. It is meant to perform advanced detailed adjustments to the encoding and packaging settings. In 99% of the cases, you can simply leave everything as it was analyzed by Serverside.ai and skip this section.
Section 4 - Ad Server
If you do not have an ad server configured already or do not have the exact settings at hand currently please leave everything as is to use the default Serverside.ai Equativ ad server. You can change these settings at any point of time later on.
You will receive an Ad Server URL after you finished setting up an account at Equativ, SpotX, FreeWheel, Google, or another ad server.
If your ad server is not yet in the list of supported ad servers, contact our support team to add the ad server of your choice to the list.
Depending on the ad server you select, default settings will be loaded to the Ad Source Parameters editor.
These settings have two purposes:
They act as defaults that are added to every request to the ad server as long as there are no specific options transferred by the client. This applies to all settings that can be set on the client side: https://nowtilus.gitbook.io/serverside-ai/video-player-app/ad-server-parameter
You can also add settings that cannot be changed by a client. These settings are used to configure the ad server connection.
Section 5 - Preroll (only Live)
A Preroll will be displayed before a live stream starts to play.
You can specify how many ads are displayed and how long the preroll will run.
If you desire to use a different ad server for your Prerolls you can use the Use dedicated ad-server toggle. Follow the instructions in section 4 to set it up.
If you want to add a Preroll to VoD channels define an ad break at position 0 seconds of your content in your MRSS.
Section 6 - Ad Slate (only Live)
If the ads that are returned from the ad server are in summary not exactly in the length of the ad break there will be a gap until the program continues. To prevent the stream from switching back to the rest of the original ads we introduced a concept called ad slates.
The ad slate will fill up the missing seconds to make the transition between ad-block and program seamlessly again.
Example: If you have a 40-second pod for ads but there are only ads of the size of 30 seconds on the ad-server.
If you do not have an ad slate in place yet you can choose the Serverside.ai default and change it later.
After selecting or uploading an ad slate an encoding and packaging job will start to run. Please stay on this page and wait until it has finished (usually within 1-2 minutes). Otherwise, the encoded asset will not be assigned as an ad slate to the content.
Ad slates should have the format "mp4" that we expect to receive from the ad servers as well.
Enable and Play Channel
After saving the channel it is not yet enabled.
In the list view you can activate your channel by clicking the toggle button in the actions section.
To test the playback of the channel we provide an example player available via the play icon in the Actions section. It allows you to see and compare your source and output.
It is important to understand that ad insertion will not work for the first ad block. We need to download all ads first from the ad server, encode and package them in the same formats as your channel and make them available on a CDN (Content Delivery Network). Depending on the number of ads that are available on your ad server that can take some time.
For testing, we highly recommend that you choose our example ad server with only a few ads that will quickly be conditioned for your channel by Serverside.ai.
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