Enable/disable ad replacement in the past

In your Live Ad Replacement services, you can now select whether you want to activate or de-activate replacement in the past inside the DVR window of your manifests.

You have the choice between no replacement of ad breaks at all, the replacement of the full DVR or just a specific duration in the window .

The configuration happened via API in Live Ad Replacement in Creation or Update of Services:

or on the webapp at the source edition step, when you activate the Ad Replacement

Convert source/ad segments to absolute URI

You can now change the default way media segments are referenced in manifests, using relative or absolute URLs or even adding a prefix in the segment’s path location.

More details are specified in a Knowledge Center (you will notice that this has been mostly developed for Dynamic Ad Insertion applications) article.

The configuration happened via API in Advanced Options in Creation or Update of Services:

or on the webapp at the source edition step, when you click on “More options”:

Flexibility in ad insertion

We now provide more flexibility in terms of ad insertions.

Originally, if the ad marker duration was 15 seconds and the Ad returned by the ad server was 15.2 seconds, the insertion was not performed. This was creating a loss in monetization that some of our customers were not willing to take.

Starting today, we allow a certain threshold so the Ad (or pod of Ads) can be inserted when it runs longer than the break duration. The web app and the API allow you to input a threshold value for Ad Insertion services.

For the web app, you will be able to configure that at the Ad Insertion service edition step:

Custom headers to origin servers

You can now set one or more custom headers (name and value) that will be sent in the manifest requests to the sources. This is typically used as an authorization mechanism by the origin servers.

This applies to:

• Live sources
• Asset sources
• Asset catalog sources
• Ad server sources (ad origin)

In the WebApp, this is available in the "More options" section of the source creation and edition pages.

In the API, please see the origin / customHeaders parameters (e.g. create live source API).

This is also available when validating a source (More options).

The players in the preview page automatically add these custom headers to the requests, so that you can keep watching these sources and the services that use them, even when these headers are required by the origin servers.

Please see below a screenshot of the service creation page of the WebApp showing the custom header configuration fields:

Authorization headers

You can now prevent unauthorized access to your broadpeak.io services by requiring each request to contain a specific http header.

When definining your service, you may specify an optional header name and an associated value.

All incoming requests for your service will be checked and any request that doesn't have the proper name and value will be answered with a 403 Forbidden response, with the following payload: "Incorrect or missing authorization header".

The player of the service preview page will automatically send the authorization header so that you can watch your service.

Please see our API reference (advancedOptions / authorizationHeader)

See below a screenshot of our WebApp showing the authorization header in the "More options" section of the service edition page.

API key scopes

We have added scopes to our API keys. You can now create API keys that have limited rights on specific API endpoints.

Please see below a screenshot of the WebApp showing the addition of scopes during the creation of an API key.

By default all scopes are added.

You can also have a look at the API key creation endpoint

Ad Insertion: Live pre-roll + ad replacement

You can now enable both live pre-roll and ad replacement in an Ad Insertion service.

You can select a different Ad Server (or different Ad Server query parameters) for each feature.

When ad transcoding is enabled, this applies to both features.

Please see our API reference (liveAdPreRoll and liveAdReplacement objects) for more details about how this can be configured by API.

Please see below a screenshot of the WebApp showing the simultaneous configuration of Ad pre-roll and Ad replacement.

Support for DASH multi-period live sources

You can now use a DASH multi-period live source with broadpeak.io. This requires setting an advanced option to tell broadpeak.io that it should use existing periods in the live source to perform content insertion or replacement. Please only enable this option if your live source does contain multiple periods.

Please see the dashMultiPeriodInput parameter in the Live source API or the below screenshot showing this advanced option, hidden by default, in the Source edition form of our WebApp.

WebApp: Short summary of a service in the service list

You can now quickly see how a service is configured from the service list, without having to go to the edition pages.

Just click on the small arrow on the left of the service name. This will display the main information about the service, including sources, features and options.

Please see the below screenshot showing this feature:

WebApp: Update a service at any step

When editing a service, you no longer need to go to the last step to update it. You can click on the new >Update Service button, at the bottom of any step.

Please see the below screenshot, showing this button on the first step:

Query parameter forwarding

You can now configure the query parameters from the client requests that should be forwarded through the manifest manipulation process:

• To the media segment requests: they will be added to the media segment URLs in the manifests;
• To the media manifest requests (in HLS): they will be added to the media manifest URLs in the multivariant HLS manifest;
• To the origin server requests: they will be added to all manifest requests (multivariant and media in HLS) to the origin server.

This is available as advanced options for all types of services both through our API (see our API reference for Content Replacement, Virtual Channel and Ad Insertion) and our WebApp.

Please see the below screenshots of the Content Replacement Service edition page and API showing these advanced options.

Pause services (WebApp)

Following our August 4th release, which made available this feature by API, you can now temporarily pause services from the Services page of the WebApp.

This allows you to avoid consuming and paying for resources that you don't use, without having to delete the service and recreate it later.

Please see the below screenshots, which show the Pause button, in the actions menu and the resulting state in the Services list .

Sample sources and profiles

You can now create a set of sample sources and transcoding profiles, to help you test the possibilities of broadpeak.io.

These samples are created by default when you create a new broadpeak.io account.

You can also use our API and the WebApp to recreate them at any time.

Please see our API reference for more details.

Please see below a screenshot of the Sources page of the WebApp, where you will find the "Create Samples" button.