SSAI Plugin for the Native SDK for Android

In this topic, you will learn about important changes to the Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) plugin in the Brightcove Native SDK for Android.

Overview

Starting with the Native SDK for Android version 6.18.0, there are some important changes to the SSAI Plugin that improve playback and seeking behavior, particularly in paused players.

Previously, when a user would seek forward and crossed an ad, the ad controls replaced the video controls immediately. This did not allow the user to keep seeking. The player would also keep the video content instead of replacing it with the ad content.

Now, users can seek forward and backward without the ads being played until the video is playing and the user has crossed an ad with the last seek.

Use case

Consider the following use case:

  1. The user loads a video with one or more mid-roll ads into the player and starts video playback.
  2. Before a mid-roll ad, the user pauses playback.
  3. While the player is paused, the user seeks across the mid-roll ad marker.
  4. While the player is still paused, the user seeks back across the mid-roll ad marker, back into the content just watched.
  5. After the seek, the player controls are available to the user. When the user presses Play, the content plays as expected.
  6. When playback reaches the midroll ad marker, the ad will play, with the ad controls displayed.
  7. After the midroll ad completes, the player completes the seek action to the seek target, where the content resumes playback, with the player controls.

Requirements

The following requirements are needed for this feature:

  • Brightcove Native SDK for Android 6.18.0 or newer

Plugin Behavioral Changes

The following classes have new behavior:

SSAIComponent class

This class now passes the BaseVideoView object to the TimelineManager class when a reference to this is created.

It removed passing the references for the video playback controller and the ticker to the SeekManager when this is created and, instead it passes the event emitter. It also sets the seek listener from the timeline manager object to this new SeekManager reference.

It also removed the SeekManager object from being passed as an observer to the Ticker class.

LastAdSeekStrategy class

This class is now public.

NoAdSeekStrategy class

This class is now public.

SeekManager class

This class no longer triggers the playback of ads. That functionality was moved to the TimelineManager where it makes more sense.

This class previously listened for SEEK_TO events and notified all the listeners subscribed to this class. With that action, it passed the new absolute time position and also emitted a new SEEK_TO event including the absolute position and the relative position. Now, SeekManager no longer emits a new seek event but still notifies all the listeners about the first seek event.

This class no longer implements the TickerObserver and SeekTask.Seekable classes and does not handle the events that those classes generate.

This class no longer handles Skip Ad events.

The constructor signature has changed from

public SeekManager(VideoPlaybackController, Timeline, Ticker)

to

public SeekManager(EventEmitter, Timeline)

TimelineManager class

This class now handles the playback and skip action of ads. It is subscribed to the SeekManager class to listen for seek events. Once a seek event is detected, this class checks if an ad was crossed. If so, it plays the ad. If not, it repositions the playhead in the video content and updates the absolute and relative positions.

The ads are played once the video is playing. If the video is paused, it will not play any ad crossed by seek events. This provides the availability to support many seek events. If the video is playing and an ad is crossed, the ad is played immediately.

When an ad is crossed while the video is paused, the TimelineManager will resume the playhead position at the position before the ad was played.

The TimelineManager resumes playback in the previous position when a skip ad event is detected.

The TimelineManager class now extends AbstractComponent.

In order to create a TimelineManager object, you need to pass a BaseVideoView instance along with a Timeline instance.

API Changes

The following classes have API changes:

SeekTask class

This class was deleted because its main functionality was integrated into the TimelineManager class where it makes more sense.

SeekManager class

The constructor SeekManager(VideoPlaybackController videoPlaybackController, Timeline timeline, Ticker ticker) was deleted since it no longer needs the VideoPlaybackController and the Ticker. Instead, it now receives the EventEmitter and the Timeline as follows:

SeekManager(EventEmitter eventEmitter, Timeline timeline)

TimelineManager class

The constructor TimelineManager(@NonNull Timeline mTimeline) was changed to the following:

TimelineManager(@NonNull BaseVideoView mBaseVideoView, @NonNull Timeline mTimeline)