PRESTOplay for Android

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, UI, ABR algorithm, latency, and subtitles.

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 content representation exclusion. Our SDK 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Allows a stream to work where it otherwise would not due to a device-specific issue. For example: A fix may be needed to account for a specific device you’re targeting 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.

Our API simplifies ExoPlayer functions for extra coding efficiency. We also continually maintain our API to ensure compatibility with ExoPlayer updates.

We enable protected HLS content using Google’s Widevine DRM system (where HLS content uses the fMP4 container format).

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

Software-based Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) for improved security on devices without hardware-protection.

Extend the reach of your encrypted Smooth Streaming libraries. Content previously packaged specifically for PlayReady can be used with Widevine instead.

We allow PlayReady-protected Smooth Streaming content to playback on-the-fly across Widevine DRM platforms. No server-side changes needed as everything is handled client-side including: PSSH box conversion, video decoder initialization, and dynamic fragment conversion.

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.

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 as well as a user preview.

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.

Allows you to ‘pass-through’ audio track data to external connected devices. For example, if you deploy to an Android TV STB, the box itself may not support a desired audio codec (for example Dolby 5.1), but if the connected TV does support it then our SDK allows you to ‘pass’ the track to the TV to leverage its decoder.

Allows you to control the audio volume independent of the device’s system volume. This feature is mainly used to mute an audio track without interfering with a user’s volume settings (for example during ad playback).

We support multithreaded rendering where operations are offloaded to different threads for added efficiency. We also provide decoder buffer management enhancements. This improves performance by reducing stuttering and dropped frames, particularly with high framerate content or on low-end devices.

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