Zype Product Updates: High availability in playout, SSO for Zype Admin, transcode and deliver to GCS and more!

By The Zype Team on November 21, 2022

We're focused on building the most comprehensive end-to-end video infrastructure platform available to help you increase engagement and monetization of content across all your streaming platforms. Read on for the latest Zype product updates out this month and a preview of what’s to come next month.

 

New in Streaming Platform

Introducing SSO for Zype Admin Users

Signing into your Zype account has never been easier. Now Zype customers can integrate their own SSO account and use it to authenticate users into Zype Admin using an external identity provider. Once SSO is configured and enabled, Zype Admin users can authenticate into the specific CMS property by using their own company’s credentials or leveraging any other authentication platforms reachable via SSO.  

This capability reduces friction for customers who want to use an external identity provider, like Okta, to authenticate their internal database. Reducing the log in set of credentials required by employees can also lead to improved enterprise security.

SSO can be configured on a per-property basis. To access this integration, visit the Integrations Marketplace in Zype Admin, and select the SAML integration to establish a connection with your SAML-based SSO provider and enable the integration. For additional help with SSO, please see our help center article for more information.

Configure SSO using the SAML Integration in the Integrations Marketplace

SSO in Zype Admin

 

Deliver Transcodes to a GCS Destination

For customers using Google Cloud Storage who want to integrate Zype into their existing workflows, we’ve made it possible to upload Zype transcoded video files to customer-supplied GCP storage buckets. This is especially useful for customers who want to use their own Google Cloud storage as an Origin Server for third-party CDNs. 

To create a new Google Cloud Storage destination from the Admin Dashboard go to Encoding  > VOD Presets > Manage Destinations and choose “Add A New Destination”. 

Deliver Transcoded Video Files to a GCS Destination

Deliver to Google Cloud Storage with Zype

Fill out the fields specific to your GCS bucket and authenticate with your Google Cloud Service account. Once the GCS destination has been enabled and verified with Google, all encoded renditions going forward will be transferred to the destinations listed as “Enabled” on the “Destinations” tab. 

To see the log detail status of your transcoded renditions, go to “VOD Encoding Logs”, click on the asset you want to check, and select the magnifying glass to review the status of individual transcodes. Within the log detail page, under the new “Destinations” section you’ll see the status of your different encoded renditions going to the specific Destinations indicated for that asset.

Monitor status of transfer to GCS destination

Check delivery status of transcodes in Zype Admin

For more on delivering renditions to your Google Cloud Storage destination, take a look at this article.

 

Enhancements to Zype Playout

Maintain a highly available channel configuration and uptime

To support reliable delivery and a stable experience for end users, Zype now offers high availability for Zype Playout channels on a per channel basis. This allows content owners to provide redundant stream fallback capabilities that are required by certain third-party streaming platforms or syndication providers to ensure uptime. Customers that have added redundancy to their plans can choose to provision channels and configure high availability delivery to destinations that require it, or can enable it for their owned and operated endpoints. 

If a destination requires high availability, but high availability is not enabled on the channel, customers will be asked to enable high availability on that channel in order to deliver to that destination. 

Customers who want to enable high availability for their playout channels can speak with their Account Manager to ensure their plan includes appropriate redundancy. Once redundancy is agreed upon, customers can enable high availability on a per-channel basis by navigating to the “Edit Channel Configuration” page of their playout channel.

Enable high availability for your Zype Playout channel

Set up channel configuration in Zype playout

Updates in Apps Creator

Showcase Previews, Trailers and other Extras to engage audiences

Want to provide a more engaging, dynamic content experience in your applications? Now Apps Creator customers can do just that by offering end-users additional content to engage with in the form of Extras or Trailers, or choose to engage users right away with Preview content that plays automatically on interstitial pages. 

Showcase Trailers and other Extras under the "Extras" section on interstitial pages

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For customers using Zype’s CMS, Apps Creator will automatically recognize if a video asset stored in the CMS has a “Preview” video selected, and automatically play the Preview on the interstitial screen (content details screen) when a user clicks into a content asset. Customers not using Zype’s CMS can also manually categorize content as “Preview” content manually within the Apps Creator dashboard. 

Additive content like Trailers and Previews enhances the end-user experience by encouraging engagement with more content of interest through explicit recommendations and increases end-user engagement with the app.

Automatically ingest ad timings from Zype CMS or input manually

For customers who want more control over their ad experience, Apps Creator now supports customer-supplied ad timings for VOD assets. For customers using the Zype CMS for their content management, Apps Creator can automatically ingest SCTE-35 ad timings via the API integration. Customers can also supply ad timings by manually entering them into the dashboard or through in-app feeds.

Read-only “Ad Timings” Field

Automatically ingest ad timings from zype cms

Manual-entry “Ad Timings” Field

Manually enter ad timings in Zype apps creator

Coming Soon!

Here’s a preview of some product enhancements we’re working on this month to further improve your video workflows:

  • Streaming on Entry in Apps Creator - Soon Apps Creator customers can engage end-users with a video or live stream that plays immediately upon their entry into the app

If you want to learn more about Zype and the products we offer to help content owners and distributors achieve their OTT goals, check out our newly launched Resource Center with links to previous webinars and downloadable assets such as eBooks, research reports and more. 


Have questions, feedback or additional requests? Please contact us!

 

Happy Streaming!

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