For answers to common troubleshooting questions, see the following sections.

To better understand exactly what you need to debug, please refer the following diagram which illustrates the typical ecosystem:

During your troubleshooting session, please make sure you can also check the availability of the third party components:

• Sources from Origin
• VAST responses from Ad Server
• Reachability from CDN/Players
• Streaming compatibility of Players for HLS Discontinuity tags and DASH Multi-Period

Scenarios which can lead to no content Substitution/Insertion

In a number of situations, broadpeak.io will not be able to perform an insertion or a substitution. Some of the cases are listed here, and should help you understand why you are not getting the result you expected.

Live Scenario

If you don't get any Ad replacement, it is worth checking that any of following is not happening:

1. The end of the manifest is more than 10 seconds in the past (when compared to a wallclock time-synchronised with the Amazon Time Sync Service)

Ad Insertion

The ad server responds to the call from broadpeak.io

1. with an error code other than HTTP 200
2. with a non-VAST payload
3. with an empty VAST payload
4. with an invalid (unparseable) VAST payload
5. with a VAST payload that is not compatible with the VAST 3.0 specification
6. The ad server does not respond to the call from broadpeak.io
   1. within 2 seconds
7. When transcoding is not activated, none of the Ads in the VAST response is usable, because:
   1. the broadpeak.io transcoding functionality is configured for that channel, but the Creative/MediaFile has never been encountered before. It needs a bit of time to be transcoded.
   2. the transcoding of a previously encountered Creative/MediaFile has not yet completed.
   3. the MediaFile points to a file that is not valid, or cannot be retrieved, or transcoded.
8. When transcoding is activated, none of the Ads in the VAST response is usable, because:
   1. there is no Linear Creative with a MediaFile (or Mezzanine) with a suitable type
      The selection rules and supported types are documented at https://developers.broadpeak.io/docs/vast-vmap-and-creatives
   2. the MediaFile is pre-packaged (HLS/DASH), but:
      1. cannot be accessed over HTTP(S)
      2. cannot be parsed
      3. is in a ladder/profile not compatible with the source (especially for HLS)
      4. the MediaFile is not pre-packaged (MP4) 😀
      5. the broadpeak.io transcoding functionality is not configured for that channel.
      6. the broadpeak.io transcoding profile configured for that channel is not compatible with the content source (HLS).
9. The process of retrieving the source manifests, calling the ad server, processing the response and manipulating the manifest takes more than 5 seconds