Cross-platform video players

We provide simplified user interface tools including easily configurable buttons, subtitles, and thumbnail views.

Our range of PRESTOplay SDKs feature a common API for consistent playback behavior and simplified maintenance across different player platforms and devices. Common settings include: player configuration, ABR algorithm, latency, UI, and subtitles.

Accounts for non-standard manifest or MP4 files to ensure playback. Our low-level API allows us to add fixes to the player in case you have content not conforming to specifications. This is useful in case you’re dealing with non-spec conforming content libraries that you can’t update easily.

Network retry: Automated recovery from connectivity loss with separate configuration for manifests, chunks, and other parameters.

CDN rotation: Allow multiple CDN sources to be defined for a single playback session. If the player gets a connectivity error from a CDN, it will quickly switch to the next source in the background to avoid buffering or disruption. These fallbacks can be defined either in the manifest or at the application level.

Define sequences of VOD and live content to play. We enable instant content transitions with pre-caching of the next streams, multiple background players, and DRM license pre-fetching. IMA ads are also supported.

Allows content representation exclusion. This checks a user device’s resolution capability and ignores ABR renditions that aren’t supported. For example, if you offer UHD quality but a user’s smartphone only supports HD, then the player will automatically exclude the UHD rendition (as long as there’s also an HD rendition available). The user receives the best quality available on their device, and you save on bandwidth for unsupported stream qualities.

A common player API that ensures audio/subtitle tracks and video quality representations are exposed in the same way, independent of the content format (MPEG-DASH, Smooth Streaming, HLS). This saves time by allowing you to build a user interface once, independent of the actual streaming format.

Allows a stream to work where it otherwise wouldn’t due to a device-specific issue. For example: A fix may be needed to account for a device which didn’t implement a decoder in a standard way. Our player support team can help you with this even down to per-device models.

Optionally prevent playback on secondary displays.

For Apple devices, HLS transmuxing isn’t needed for improved battery life, faster stream start times, and faster seeking.

Allows a single content file-set to be used for playback as either MPEG-DASH or HLS formats as needed. DRM can also be used with the single file-set on devices/platforms supporting the AES-CBC encryption mode.

Our DVB stack can adapt to operator-specific networks via simple configuration rather than complicated code customization, reducing the need for firmware updates. Our XML-based structure also allows table configurations to be easily remotely updated.

Our player is capable of <1 second latency behind the live edge.
We also enable managed latency by defining a live edge latency goal to synchronize all players instances for similar playback timing. For example: a football game where all users see a goal at the same time by accounting for playback drift.

Enable stream downloading for secure local offline playback. Manifests can be accessed to transfer content to a user’s device with the video quality, audio, and subtitle track able to be specified. Content is downloaded with no transmuxing or transcoding to maintain video quality. DRM licenses are also stored securely: both during download and on a user’s device, your content remains protected.

Play recorded live streams on-demand, switch from live to VOD, or switch into a live mode where you can catch up from the beginning of the content.

Switch seamlessly from multicast or broadcast to an OTT stream with frame-accuracy. This is useful for pausing live IPTV or DVB streams and continuing to watch as VOD.

We support two trickplay modes:
Decoder mode: Speed up playback by downloading and showing all frames. This creates a smooth experience, but isn’t ideal at high speeds due to decoder/bandwidth limitations. You can’t rewind with this mode.
Seek mode: Our player continuously seeks, forward or backwards, based on the playback speed. This mode performs better at high speeds (> 6x) since you only need one frame at given time intervals. I-frame tracks are typically used here to reduce segment sizes and allow faster seeking.

Lets users switch streams as fast as broadcast TV. Avoid buffer delay by pre-caching neighboring content including pre-fetching licenses for a quick low-latency user experience.

Perform automatic catch up whenever the player position falls behind a certain limit. This is useful to closely follow the live edge or to avoid falling behind the live window. Catching up is accomplished by either speeding-up playback or seeking to the live edge.

Examples: Background loading, service integration, playing content when device screen is off, or playing content when another app has focus.

Handles HDMI/HDCP status changes to ensure smooth playback.

We’ve improved tunneled playback performance including better seeking stability, better frame display detection, and the ability to decode without audio.

Prevent user access to streams by denying licensing and license renewal requests. This controls how many streams can be accessed simultaneously by a given user, for example, to enable ‘limited device number’ business models.

This is useful, for example, in rental use-cases where a license will expire and requires renewal while a user is watching content. Our player renews and installs licenses automatically ahead of time so users experience uninterrupted streams.

If multiple DRM system options are available, our player prioritizes them based on security level and selects the best one. In case a DRM-related issue occurs, the player can fall back to other options as a backup for secure playback to continue. For example: If a device reports that Widevine is supported but an issue occurs when trying to open a session, our player can fall back to the next available DRM option.

Extend the reach of your existing encrypted library if it’s been packaged for a single DRM system only. Content previously packaged as Smooth Streaming with PlayReady-only signaling can also be used on Widevine DRM platforms. Likewise, content packaged as MPEG-DASH with Widevine-only signaling can also be used on PlayReady DRM platforms.
We allow on-the-fly content playback with no server-side changes needed as everything is handled client-side including: PSSH box conversion, video decoder initialization, and dynamic fragment conversion.

Keys can be rotated in short intervals (for example: every 10 seconds). This improves live stream security by better preventing pirating and helps combat CDN leeching.

Works seamlessly with our scalable DRMtoday multi-DRM and Widevine CAS cloud licensing service.

With images for IMSC & SMPTE-TT.
With automatic subtitle selection & preferred language.

The USA FCC requires that players must include the ability for users to set subtitle parameters such as font, font size, color, etc. We provide an API to easily configure these settings.

Sideloading allows you to add additional URLs as subtitle tracks. This means you can add subtitles without embedding the track into your manifest. For example, if you receive subtitles for content and they aren’t part of the manifest, you can sideload them for use without having to re-create your manifest.

Example: H.264, H.265, AV1, AAC, AC3/EAC3, Opus.

When playing content with VideoToolbox you can define a callback to intercept the audio samples and chain them to your own audio processing queue.

Frame-accurate impressions tracking including time-based, linear ads metrics. Player operation metrics including user-triggered, mute, pause, etc.

Nonlinear (overlays, squeeze backs, L-bands), audio, and interactivity (SIMID).

Click-through activation, trick-play control, non-skippable ads, and interactivity (SIMID).

If you’d like to avoid VMAP, you can use our API to manually set when ads are played within the playback timeline.