Channels/Streams

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.

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.

Please don't hesitate to contact our support in case you discover any issues while analyzing your source.

Section 3 - Profile

Profile settings

Section 4 - Ad Server

Ad Server Configuration

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.

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.

Ad Slates

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.

Channel list view

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.

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