Bumper Videos with the Native SDKs

Introduction

A bumper is typically a very short video (10 secs or less) automatically inserted before any pre-roll ads and your content. A bumper is not used for monetization but instead relays information such as your company logo or branding.

Here is an example of a bumper video playing before the main content.

Requirements

The following requirements are needed for this feature:

Brightcove SDK version

• Native SDK for Android (coming soon)
• Native SDK for iOS 6.11.0 and newer

Functionality

Here are some details about Bumper videos:

• Bumpers are compatible with both Client-Side Advertising (CSAI) and Server-Side Advertising (SSAI)
• Bumpers play before any pre-roll ads and your content
• The player is configurable during bumper video playback:
  • Show/hide the player controls
  • Prevent seeking during playback
  • Change the seekbar color to indicate a bumper
• Analytics data will be tracked the same as for any content video

Configuration

A bumper video can be set for the player or for an individual video.

Player-level bumper

By default, bumper videos are a player-level feature. This means that all videos in a player will have the same bumper.

A bumper consists of a single Video Cloud video, referenced by either:

• Video ID
• Reference ID

Video-level bumper

To assign a bumper to a video, you can define a custom field in Video Cloud Studio. The custom field must have the following:

• Custom field name of bumper_id
• Custom field value must be a valid video ID

Android Implementation

A player requests a bumper from the Playback API like any other video and insert it before ads and content.

There are two ways to configure a player to play a bumper video:

1. Playback Service (BCOVPlaybackService) methods.

   The bumperID is the unique reference to find and play a bumper video before other content.

   //Building the instance of the bumper component, providing the existing videoView and catalog.
    bumperComponent = new BumperComponent.Builder(brightcoveVideoView, catalog).build();
    bumperComponent.setVideoBumperID("Bumper ID");
    //Initializing the bumper.
    bumperComponent.init();
    

2. Custom Fields.

   The bumper_id field can be defined in Custom Fields in Video Cloud. The bumper_id can be used without the signatures previously defined. It must be a valid video ID or reference ID.

   //Building the instance of the bumper component, providing the existing videoView and catalog.
    bumperComponent = new BumperComponent.Builder(brightcoveVideoView, catalog).build();
       //Obtaining the bumper id from the video custom fields
       Map customFields = (Map) mVideo.getProperties().get(Video.Fields.CUSTOM_FIELDS);
       if ((customFields != null && !customFields.isEmpty()) &&   (customFields.containsKey(bumperComponent.getVIDEO_CUSTOM_FIELD_BUMPER_ID()))) {
           bumperComponent.setVideoBumperID((String) customFields.get(bumperComponent.getVIDEO_CUSTOM_FIELD_BUMPER_ID()));
       }
    //Initializing the bumper.
    bumperComponent.init();
    

You can access the video view for the bumper to modify it as any other video view by using:

bumperComponent.getBumperVideoView();

iOS Implementation

The Native SDK for iOS/tvOS supports bumper video playback.

For details, see the following:

• Bumper Support