Mapping of ESNI Media Id with service variants

Media Id is an important parameter for SCTE 224 ESNI metadata providers. Providers who are not aware of the packaging format can, for instance, address multiple services with a single ESNI Media API call. The same blackout slots can be applied to multiple variants (e.g. DASH and HLS) of a service through the use of service name suffixes.

There are two optional pre-defined suffixes ("_DASH" and "_HLS") which can be used at the end of a service name. They are intended to represent streaming format variants. If you use a single streaming format, you do not need to use any of those suffixes.

Whenever an ESNI API PUT/POST/PATCH/DELETE request is made referencing a certain Media Id, the received configuration (MediaPoints, ViewingPolicies, Audiences, Actions) is applied to all services that have this name followed by where is one of the defined formats.

Likewise, whenever an action references a replacement content name, use the source that has this name followed by where is the same as the service.

If none of the service formats is found or if the matching replacement source is not found, the request is ignored and an error is returned.

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Future release

This suffix scheme is a preliminary milestone. A future release will allow the ESNI Media Id to be mapped to a wider set of service variants. The future scheme will be based upon an optional list of streaming formats, and will, for instance, enable support for any combination of formats/versions/DRMs you may have:

• packaging format (DASH, HLS)
• packaging format versions (HLS v3, HLS v5, etc.)
• DRM versions (Fairplay, PlayReady, etc.)

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Configuration example

9 sources:

• name: "ESPN"
• name: "ESPN_DASH"
• name: "ESPN_HLS"
• name: "ESPN_Alt1"
• name: "ESPN_Alt1_DASH"
• name: "ESPN_Alt1_HLS"
• name: "ESPN_Alt2"
• name: "ESPN_Alt2_DASH"
• name: "ESPN_Alt2_HLS"

3 services

• name: "ESPN", original source: ("ESPN"), default replacement ("ESPN_Alt1")
• name: "ESPN_DASH", original source: ("ESPN_DASH"), default replacement ("ESPN_Alt1_DASH")
• name: "ESPN_HLS", original source: ("ESPN_HLS"), default replacement ("ESPN_Alt1_HLS")

In this case, all 3 services must receive the same MediaPoint configuration through ESNI "<Media id="ESPN"..." requests.
When the ViewingPolicy does not specify any replacement source, the default replacement source is used. Otherwise, if a ViewingPolicy contains an action referencing "ESPN_Alt2", the platform will use the:

• "ESPN_Alt2" source with the "ESPN" service
• "ESPN_Alt2_DASH" source with the "ESPN_DASH" service
• "ESPN_Alt2_HLS" source with the "ESPN_HLS" service