Manage Cloud Slicer Live

Manage

List View

Opening the Ingest -> Cloud Slicer tab displays a list of Cloud Slicers in your account. This gives a single view of the characteristics of all your slicers, along with quick status indicators and operable commands.

Status Indicators

Along the horizontal bar there are headers, and below are lines associated with each Cloud Slicer in your account.

ID

This is the name of each slicer in the system. This name was provided by you at the time the slicer was created.

Status

This is a property of the slicer. Values are as follows:

Status	Description
Stopped	Indicates that your Cloud Slicer has been created in the system, but will not be available for use until it is started and running.
Initializing	Indicates that our service is in the process of starting your Cloud Slicer so that it can be used to receive a stream.
Failed	Indicates that our service could not create your Cloud Slicer.
Ready	Indicates that your Cloud Slicer is running and ready for a live feed.

A Ready Cloud Slicer that is receiving an input feed and processing the stream will change from Ready to one of these slicer states:

State	Description
Capturing	Indicates that your Cloud Slicer is active and sending content to the encoding engine.
Replace	Indicates that your Cloud Slicer is active but set to 'replace' state.
Ad	Indicates that your Cloud Slicer is active but has been set to reflect an active ad break.
Blackout	Indicates that your Cloud Slicer is active but has been set to Blackout mode.

Protocol

This is the streaming property selected during creation.

Region

This is the cloud location that the Cloud Slicer Live platform uses for this slicer.

Highlighted Icons

A highlighted icon indicates that this is a selectable option.

Actionable Options

There are actions that can be taken to affect a slicer listed on this page.

Action	Description
Start	This action takes a non-instanced 'stopped' slicer and begins the build process to make it active and usable.
Stop	This action takes a 'running' slicer that is instanced and shuts down the running instance. All information including location, profile, configurations, and addressing remain valid and can be viewed as the properties of the 'stopped' slicer.
Restart	This action forces a restart of a running slicer. This interrupts the operation of the slicer while it is restarting, and affects the encoding and playback of any output stream using this slicer. On rare occasions the slicer may become locked up due to issues such as errors in the source feed. A restart is a simple way to re-start the application and restore it to a working state.
Delete Slicer	A slicer may be deleted directly from the list view. Select the box at the beginning of the line for one or more slicers listed, and then select the 'Delete Slicer' button on the lower right. Deleting removes the configuration information and removes it from your slicer list. The deletion process is not reversible.
+ Slicer	Selecting the '+ Slicer' button opens a modal. This is your first step in creating a new slicer. Field details and the overall process of creating a slicer are summarized in both the Quick Start section and the Detailed Slicer Setup section.
Search	This allows you to find part of, or the full name of, a Cloud Slicer in the list. This may be helpful for finding a specific slicer or group of slicers if your account uses a large number of Cloud Slicers.

Single View

Selecting a slicer in the list view switches to the single view for that slicer. This provides more details, monitoring capabilities, and additional management options.

Actions

Action	Description
Start	This action takes a non-instanced 'stopped' slicer and begins the build process to make it active and usable.
Stop	This action takes a 'running' slicer that is instanced and shuts down the running instance. All information including location, profile, configurations, and addressing remain valid and can be viewed as the properties of the 'stopped' slicer.
Restart	This action forces a restart of a running slicer. This interrupts the operation of the slicer while it is restarting, and affects the encoding and playback of any output stream using this slicer. On rare occasions the slicer may become locked up due to issues such as errors in the source feed. A restart is a simple way to re-start the application and restore it to a working state.
Duplicate	This action creates an identical slicer with a new name. Selecting this opens a modal that allows you to provide a new Slicer ID, and change the protocol and region prior to creation. All configuration customizations are cloned as part of this process.

Monitoring Sidebar - Live Preview

Live Preview Viewer

When a running slicer is capturing a healthy stream, the video is viewable in this preview window. These previews come from the Uplynk monitoring system and are generally a number of seconds behind the live stream being ingested. No customizations are required to make the stream viewable in this window.

Details of the Slicer

Below the Preview Window are a number of status and health indications.

Slicer Status displays the operational condition (e.g., Running, Stopped, Initializing, Restarting, or Error) or, when running, displays the current slicer activity (e.g., Capturing, Ad Break, Replacing Content, or Blackout).

Input health shows 'healthy' if the connection between the source and the slicer is functioning properly. 'No stream' indicates that the slicer is no longer receiving the stream from the source.

Slicer ID is displayed along with a copy icon to assist when entering the ID while configuring a channel, event, or failover group.

API URL shows the URL used to access the slicer directly from a remote system. This uses the slicer APIs and is different from the APIs used to communicate with the Cloud Slicer platform.

Stream URL and Passkey list the information needed by the source device to send the content stream to this slicer. Copy icons are present in the display. If a streaming device requires the passphrase to be included in the URL, form it as follows:

TheStreamURL?passphrase=ThePassphrase

The other information below those entries consists of information described as part of the create process.

Monitoring Sidebar - Link Monitoring

Link monitoring is available when using the SRT protocol. Recent improvements in streaming standards help improve the reliability of the connection between the source streaming device and the Cloud Slicer. The protocol automatically adds forward error correction (FEC) packets that can assist in reconstituting small errors in packets. ARQ is also available and allows the Cloud Slicer a brief window to request missing or errored packets from the source, allowing the Cloud Slicer to repair the stream prior to the encoding process.

Generally speaking, when the link is healthy, whatever is produced by the streaming source is what the slicer receives. Link health is unrelated to any analysis of the video itself.

A stream that does not show any link status usually means that the source is not sending, not sending to the correct URL, not using the correct passkey, not set up with the right protocol, or there is a firewall interfering with the traffic.

Link health is collected for the overall stream during the duration of the link, and also shows the health for the recent interval. Recent interval health generally reflects the last minute or so of the link. Having both of these available helps with troubleshooting and provides insight over the longer term.

Statistics available are:

Statistic	Description
Stream Bitrate	The bitrate of the stream, usually slightly higher than the video bitrate
Packets Inbound	The number of packets received by the Cloud Slicer
Percent Link Success	Percent of packets that were sent without error or corrected
Packets Errored	The number of bad packets received by the Cloud Slicer
Percent Errored	Percentage of packets errored in the overall stream
Packets FEC Corrected	The number of packets fixed using Forward Error Correction
Percent fixed by FEC	Percentage of packets overall fixed by FEC
Packets ARQ Corrected	The number of packets fixed using ARQ
Percent Fixed by ARQ	Percentage of packets overall fixed by ARQ
ARQ Requests	The number of packets the Cloud Slicer requested to be resent
ARQ Fails	The number of packets requested with ARQ that were not successful
Percent Failed ARQ	Percentage of packets overall where ARQ was unsuccessful
Round Trip Time	An SRT parameter reflecting the measured roundtrip time between the source stream and the cloud slicer
Link Uptime	The duration of the link
Latency Setting	The delay to the live stream imposed by the slicer to provide a short window for ARQ to be successful