Slicer Failover has been enhanced to have multiple Hot backups when using Hot-Warm Failover. This allows having a primary Slicer backup that will do near-instantaneous failover while having additional Slicer Warm backups on standby. It is currently recommended to use this feature using Priority Mode to avoid any possible ambiguity because Flat Mode may choose any Slicer, even if it is Warm. This will be changed in the future to remove this ambiguity.

Documentation available below: * (#) Hot Backup(s)

Contact Support or your Technical Account Manager with any questions.

Live Slicer Monitoring now offers a new view called "Penalty Box". This view allows you to quickly review all Live Slicers that are experiencing issues, all in one place.

Documentation can be found here.

Ad pod and boundary durations can now be found in the Control Center under assets' "breaks" tab, as well as via the /api2/asset/get endpoint. 

A sample API response with the new "break_offsets" property can be found HERE.

The following Google Ad Manager (GAM) & INVIDI ad server parameters are now searchable in the Ad Server Debug search & query results screens. These fields are found in the Transaction-Request screen under Ad Request URL.

Google Ad Manager (GAM)

• PPID

INVIDI

• Household Identifier

• Targeting ID

• Device Type

Note: These fields will be viewable even if you aren't using GAM or INVIDI integrations.

New channel and linear blackout APIs have been made available so you can integrate external channel management systems into Edgecast Control.  To find out more navigate over to the updated documentation found here.

Fixes:

• Fix static luminance monitoring that converged on 1 or more fixed values when using nvenc encoder.

• Fix muting and blank audio insertion on dolby subtracks.

• Fix dolby stereo downmix routing from dolby decoder to dolby stereo encoder.

• Fix slicing of WindowsMedia VOD file with 5.1 WMA Pro audio.

• Use correct time base to calculate frame pts/dts/dur when multiple audio tracks with different sample rates are present.

• Fix incorrect gain applied to AAC tracks when slicing with Dolby output option.

• Fix UDP liveslicer ingest of 5.1 AAC when liveslicer config doesn’t specify PID’s.

Other changes:

• Reduce slicer latency caused by unnecessarily long padding audio on the trailing edge of the slice.

• Change interpretation of [[gain1, gain2]] from [[aac, dolby]] to [[stereo, surround]].

• Take advantage of the render_608_buffer to aggregate CC updates.

• Add -suppress_608_input (same as -no608), and -suppress_608_output options to slicer and liveslicer.

Prerequisites:

• Due to the slicer being built on CentOS 7 it picks up a new library dependency on libnl-3.200, which is not included in the base install of Ubuntu 18.04. You may need to pre-install it: sudo apt install libnl-3-200

• Nvidia driver 418 or later is required for HEVC 4K HDR/SDR.

• Due to CentOS 6 reaching EOL in November 2020 this slicer release requires CentOS 7 or newer.

Bulk Delete is now available for the Channel Scheduler UI.

When clicking the Bulk Delete button above your channel schedule, all scheduled entries that start and end within the selected range will be deleted. Entries currently live or in the past will not be affected.

Fixes:

• VOD frame rate observer was inserting a discontinuity at the start of slicing when frame rate didn't really change.

• Liveslicer advanced audio routing was not generating dolby tracks automatically.

• Liveslicer advanced audio routing mono tracks were being up-mixed to left channel only.

• Liveslicer was down-mixing dolby audio tracks to stereo prematurely.

• Improves handling of some VOD sources having invalid packet duration on the 1st audio packet.

Enables:

• Advanced audio routing feature parity between Liveslicer and VOD Slicer.

Other changes:

• Added security safeguards to the slicer slicebot. Features vulnerable to attack are disabled by default and must be re-enabled explicitly.

Affected features include: hook_modules, start_url, done_url, fail_url, done_directory, fail_directory.

Prerequisites:

• Due to the slicer being built on CentOS 7 it picks up a new library dependency on libnl-3.200, which is not included in the base install of Ubuntu 18.04. You may need to pre-install it: sudo apt install libnl-3-200

• Nvidia driver 418 or later is required for HEVC 4K HDR/SDR.

• Due to CentOS 6 reaching EOL in November 2020 this slicer release requires CentOS 7 or newer.

Auto Start/Stop for Live Events will now be triggered from wallclock (system time) rather than timecode for customers using slicer version 21071400 or later.

Today the Edgecast Streaming platform released two new Smartplay capabilities - Virtual Linear Playlists and Smartstart APIs.

Virtual Linear Playlists enable the creation of linear, lean-back experiences by leveraging your existing VOD library.  Unlike channel scheduling, assets within a playlist are not bound by time, but are played back in sequence.  

Smartstart reduces lengthy start-up times associated with long-form ad-supported VOD assets.  Standard VOD playback fetches all ads upfront for an entire asset causing delays. Smartstart fetches ads for VOD before each ad break, similar to a live stream, improving startup times.

You will be able to view usage dimensions in the Analytics Dashboard for both Smartstart and Playlist streaming.

Additional information can be found below

• Virtual Linear Playlist & Smartstart User Guide

• Blog | How to Improve VOD Playback Performance Virtual Linear Playlists 

• Blog | How to Deliver Improved VOD Experiences with Verizon Media Smartstart