Timeshift/Startover for LIVE

Introduction

This article provides a detailed explanation of the TimeShift/Startover feature, purpose, usage, and configuration.

How it works

Serverside.ai requests the playlist and manifest from the source and keeps the reference for the configured period of time in the serverside channel cache. This includes, beside the content segments reference, the ad markers as well for a reuse in a later step. By requesting the serverside.ai enabled channel with an absolute start time, the playlist for the client will be starting accordingly in the past and every ad marker ever since in the source stream will be triggered at the runtime for an ad replacement.

Setup and configuration

Precondition: The content segment must be available for the configured period of time. Serverside.ai will not cache or store source stream content segments!

The Timeshift Window is a channel specific configuration for HLS and DASH live, and configured in seconds. The maximum is limited to 1h (3600sec.) by default on the administration UI. Please get in contact if a longer period of 1h is required.

The channel cache needs to be "built up" after the initial channel creation or reset of an existing channel. During this period, this feature is not fully functional.

The timeshift window can be configured as well via the channel/api

{
        "timeShiftWindow": 0
}

Playback request

The absolute start point needs to be provided within the initial serverside.ai channel request as an startquery parameter in an ISO date and time format.

https://live.serverside.ai/:format/view/:channelID?api-key=:apiKey&start=YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ