Staying up to date on all the tech talk in streaming video is no easy feat. From new video codecs to platform-specific lingo, it can leave you feeling lost. 

That’s why we’ve put together this glossary of video engineering terms to help you make sense of some of the more technical (and a few non-technical) video acronyms and words you may come across in discussions around streaming. 

AAC, or Advanced Audio Codec, is the follow up to MP3, consider it MP4 for audio :).  It is more efficient than MP3 so you get better sounding audio at the same rate (usually 128 or 192kbps). It is very widely supported in almost all devices.

ABR Streaming (Adaptive Bitrate Streaming)

Adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR) is a method of streaming video over HTTP.  The source content is encoded at multiple bitrates (renditions), which are small segments or chunks of the overall video content.  Segment size can vary anywhere from 2-10 seconds.  The streaming client is alerted to the available renditions by a manifest file - .m3u8 playlist for HLS and MPD (Media Presentation Description) for DASH.  The client requests a segment rendition based on the available bandwidth of the end-user device on a scaling ladder, starting with the lowest bitrate.  As bandwidth increases, a higher bitrate segment will be requested, and conversely, as bandwidth decreases, a lower bitrate segment will be requested.  To the end-user, content plays back smoothly without interruption, and bitrate changes may even go unnoticed. 

Audio Codecs (IMF, MXF, AS02, MP4, TS containers. J2K, ProRes, MP2,. ATMOS, Dolby E, AC3, EC3)

All of the terms here are different containers,  and containers are the thing that “contain” the codec, and have instructions on how to play the video file. An example is the container says where the metadata is for the video vs the actual video components themselves, vs the audio components like stereo and 5.1, etc.  Some of the above are intended for studio use only and are made for editing very large files, while some of these are consumer facing and you play them on your iDevice every day.

Bitrate is defined as “ the number of bits per second that can be transmitted along a digital network.” but what it really means in video is the amount of data I can send you reliably for you to watch the video.  If you want to watch a video in HD, it will take a higher bitrate than SD, but a lower bitrate than 4K because of the amount of information that’s trying to be sent to you. To put it another way, a 1080p stream will have a higher bitrate compared to a 720p stream because you’re sending much more information per frame.  In general, you might see a 3Mbps bitrate on the 720 but a 6Mbps bitrate on the 1080 one.

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a distributed platform of servers that helps minimize delays in loading web page content by reducing the physical distance between the server and the user. A Video CDN is a specialized server network that delivers live and on-demand, high-quality videos to connected devices through caching--temporarily storing content on multiple servers so when a viewer request is made, the nearest server that has cached the content can deliver the video. 

DRM is a way for companies to know that their video is not being pirated.  Before DRM, if a video leaked, it could be uploaded and played by anyone. With DRM, content owners can decide who/when/how/what gets played.  If they only want you to be able to watch something for a week, they can. Not watchable offline? No problem. Can’t watch outside the US? Done.  DRM is also able to be used down to the user, so the same file can work for one login and not for another. It's very powerful but expensive, so mostly the valuable content (movies, TV Shows, etc.) gets DRMed.

Encoding is the process of taking a video signal (usually from a camera or mixing board) and “encoding” it into a stream of data.  Think of it like taking the camera signal and putting it through some very impressive mathematical formulas so we can digitize it. One other goal of encoding is to reduce the amount of data in the signal yet still have it look great.  For example, we might take a camera signal that's 1 gigabit per second of data and compress it to only 10 megabits per second of data. The encoder is the thing that is converting that video from analog to digital.

FFmpeg is a piece of free software that does the actual encoding.  You type all of the settings that you want into a command line command, and then it runs and produces the finished video.  It is very powerful but has a steep learning curve. The training wheels version of FFmpeg is called Handbrake and uses a GUI.

FPS is a measure of how many times per second a video frame is made. So if you consider a rate of 24fps, this means that each second of video is showing 24 distinct images. 24fps and 30fps are the most common rates used, whereas a rate of 60fps would be considered slow motion. 

H.264 is a video codec, and is the most widely used one today.  Almost every device (TVs, Mobile Phones, iPads, etc) can playback H.264 video files efficiently.  It has been surpassed by a more efficient technology called H.265 or HEVC, but HEVC has been hampered by patenting issues.  If you needed to encode a video to stream online, this would be your best bet to reach as many devices and users as possible.

H.265, or HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Codec), is the follow-up to H.264 and is the current “new thing” in Codec’s.  Apple has provided support for it, which should help its adoption and usage, has a very complicated patent/license setup that makes it expensive and scary to put your whole video library into.  Technically, H.265 can produce 2x as good of a picture at the same bitrate, or and equivalent picture at half the bitrate, when compared to H.264. This is due to the encoding complexity, it takes much more CPU to encode and decode H.265 vs H.264.

HTML5 allows you to embed videos directly onto a webpage with specific player adjustments, such as autoplay or automatic mute. Prior to HTML5, a plugin like Adobe Flash was required to play videos in a browser. HTML5 video format capabilities include three options to play: MP4, WebM, and Ogg.

Adaptive streaming means the same video is produced in different quality levels that the user can change between based on their bandwidth at the moment.  If you’re alone in a coffee shop on the wifi you will probably get the highest quality stream. If a group of gamers come in and start using up all of the bandwidth then your quality level might drop and the video won't look as good.  This way we don't have to try and pick a one size fits all approach, you can watch a video on your phone while on the bus and then when you home finish watching it on a big TV and both will look good.

HLS, or HTTP Live Streaming, is an HTTP-based media streaming communications protocol implemented by Apple Inc. as part of their QuickTime, Safari, OS X, and iOS software. It works by breaking the overall stream into a sequence of small HTTP-based file downloads, each download loading one short chunk of an overall potentially unbounded transport stream. As the stream is played, the client may select from a number of different alternate streams containing the same material encoded at a variety of data rates, allowing the streaming session to adapt to the available data rate. At the start of the streaming session, it downloads an extended M3U playlist containing the metadata for the various sub-streams which are available.

Latency in live streaming refers to the delay between the time a video stream is requested versus when it is delivered, or in other words, the delay between the time the video is captured and the time it appears on your screen. Low latency is typically defined as less than 100ms, at which speed, the delay is not noticeable by humans. 

A linear livestream is a series of videos stitched together into a single stream and it essentially provides the same experience as a traditional TV channel, but it is delivered over the internet. When you tune into a linear livestream, you're watching whatever is live at that moment (as if you had turned on your TV). You cannot fast forward or skip through. 

Metadata is the information about a video, such as title, year made, genre, etc.  It can be made very rich and can help a lot with searching for videos based on keywords.

DASH is a container, and contains a CODEC, usually H.264 or H.265.  The benefits of DASH over things like HLS is in the complexity of the manifest that is delivered with the video chunks.  DASH made some great improvement over HLS, but is more complicated and therefore hasn't taken off as much as expected. Also, Apple has kept up HLS so it has stayed the dominant container.  The largest companies use DASH, and so about 50% of internet video traffic is in the format.

An MRSS feed is a media feed of data that's used to syndicate videos from one company to many others.  So if MTV wants to send our their videos for other people to watch on their site, they would send an MRSS feed and that’s how people would know where to get the video and all of other metadata (name, year,etc).

OGG is an open source and free version of MP3, so you don't need to pay any licenses to use it,  it’s not as good as MP3, nor AAC. it has some device support but should be an option and not the only option for audio on your project.

OTT, or Over The Top video, is the idea of not using the cable box to send video into the home.  It might seem weird in today’s world, but it used to be that if you wanted to watch things at home without a VHS/DVD player, you needed to watch it through your cable box.  When the internet got fast enough, we started to see video delivered “over the top”, meaning not through the cable wire going into your home, but through the internet wire instead.  This was a big problem for the cable companies, who wanted to be your only link to the video in your home.

RTMP is a streaming protocol that is primarily used to deliver content from an encoder to a video host. In order to deliver streams smoothly and transmit as much information as possible, it splits streams into fragments, and their size is negotiated dynamically between the client and server. It began as a proprietary protocol, owned by Adobe, but has since been opened up for public use.

SCTE 35 is a standard created by ANSI and the Society of Cable and Telecommunications Engineers that lays out guidelines for inline cue tone insertion in streams. Also referred to as markers, these signals indicate where content distributors could insert or splice content into a stream. For example, if a local news station received a stream from a national news broadcaster, the stream might be marked in areas where the station could replace national ads with others that were more relevant to the community.

SSAI, also referred to as DAI (dynamic ad insertion), is a means of dynamically inserting ads into video content. 

Transcoding is the practice of converting a video from one format to another.  For example, you have to create a certain file format to use on Apple devices, so a transcoder might take something created for XBOX and convert, or transcode, it for use on Apple devices.  You can think of encoding as getting a signal from analog to digital, and transcoding from digital to digital.

VAST is a way for ad servers and video players to be reading and writing from the same playbook.  It makes a standard for ads to be delivered so that the ad companies know the video player has all the information it needs, so there is no finger-pointing.  Before VAST, everything was a custom implementation and things were much slower to get done.

A Video Content Management System is a tool that media companies use to tag and manage their video so they can find things easily and approve/deny things for air in the same system.  They are very powerful and at the enterprise level can be set up to approve or deny a cable company or even individual user from accessing content based on date and last payment.

Video API is an umbrella term for any API that relates directly to the streaming and facilitating of video content. The API that a company elects to integrate with their video player or application will be the key determining factor that will dictate the quality of the end user’s viewing experience. There are many different types of video APIs with different purposes. A few examples are video platform APIs, content rule APIs, player APIs, authentication APIs, and video analytics APIs.

A Video Origin is where a media company keeps their video files.  Some people keep them in a data center that they own and control, and some companies keep them on the public cloud, but it's the place that the CDN's go to receive the content from the content owner

Encoding codecs are the different formats that the analog to digital conversion can end up in.  Examples are H.264/5, VP9, ProRes, etc. All of these have pros and cons that are a little out of scope, but generally, there is a trade-off between how much CPU it takes to encode/decode and how much power is available. For example, a CODEC might take lots of CPU to encode and decode but have a very small file size.  The problem is your cellular phone only has so much battery, so while the picture looks great it's eating up all of your juice to watch it. The goal is to find a midpoint between CPU cycles and file size.

vMVPD (Virtual Multichannel Video Programming Distributor)

vMVPDs aggregate live and on-demand video content and deliver this content in the form of a linear channel over the internet. The user/viewer experience resembles traditional cable TV where you can browse through a TV guide or flip through channels to see what is on. A few examples of vMVPDs are Pluto TV, Youtube TV, and Sling TV.

VP9 is very similar to H.264 but was bought by google and is used on some YouTube videos because it takes less time to encode into VP9 vs H.264.  It has been superseded by VP10/AV1.

AV1 is based on VP10, but is also the new codec du jour in the industry.  It is royalty free and very efficient, although very cpu intensive. Expect to see this in products from Google/Facebook/Amazon etc.

The 2021 Video Engineer Dictionary

A glossary of common technical video terms and acronyms

By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic — 15 times higher than it was in 2017 ( Cisco)

More video content is uploaded in 30 days than the major U.S. television networks have created in 30 years ( Invisia)

According to Forbes, 90% of customers say video helps them make buying decisions and 64% of customers say that seeing a video makes them more likely to buy.

Whether you’re B2B or B2C, selling to enterprises or consumers, one thing is clear: digital video is here to stay.

How does your organization take advantage of this growing trend and own the monetization, distribution, and management of your expanding digital video strategy?

It all starts with taking back control of your video infrastructure. If you’re relying on Youtube or other simplistic, one- or two-dimensional video platforms, your opportunities are limited.

You need infrastructure that can expand as quickly as the business team can ink deals.

So, what are the core components of a modern digital video infrastructure?

Origin/Source - Location of digital video content

Video Content Management System (VCMS) - Manage metadata, organization, and distribution of your digital video

Content Delivery Network (CDN) - a CDN is a system of distributed servers (networks) that deliver video and other content as quickly as possible to end-users and consumers

Encoding Pipeline - A video encoding (sometimes called “transcoding”) pipeline comprises of systems, hardware or software that compresses and optimizes digital video for distribution.

Clients/Players - A client or player is a software application that allows your viewers to actually watch your video content.

Now let’s dive deeper into each of these.

A video origin or source is where a video file is stored by an organization. For small companies, this might only be Youtube. For larger organizations, they often have custom-built or SaaS solutions to store and manage all of their video content.

Highly scalable - Enough to handle a large volume of origin requests.  This is particularly true for live streaming events

Multi-regional -   Localizing an origin as close to the majority of the users that consume the content as possible.

Efficiently Optimized for Costs - All cloud providers charge fees for data leaving their networks.  As such, optimising efficiency in terms of cost, between origin and CDNs, is paramount to maintaining a healthy margin.

Located Near CDN - An origin and CDN should be close to each other.  In terms of geographic proximity to each other, this reduces latency and overall quality of service for content distribution. We’ll talk more about this in a moment.

A video encoding (sometimes called “transcoding”) pipeline comprises of systems, hardware or software that compresses and optimizes digital video for distribution.  It is an essential piece of video preparation and delivery that ensures proper formatting for end-user experiences. For example, it is a best practice to ensure that video is encoding into various bitrates so that users on varying qualities of connection can watch without interruption.

Encoding pipelines should have the ability to:

Encode content using widely supported industry standard codecs

Encode to different bitrates and formats to support streaming to viewers with varying quality of connection and bandwidth

Encode to multiple file formats for delivery to multiple end players and/or download use cases

Encrypt content for digital rights management

Detect  and preserve advertising signaling metadata so that ads can be stitched in later on advertising breaks

Before your videos can be streamed, you need to ensure metadata has been set and is available to end viewers to provide sufficient context when showcasing your content. Beyond this, you need to be able to organize your content, whether that’s on your site, an OTT channel, or an MRSS feed to your partners.

Video content management systems should feature the ability to edit:

According to Akamai, a  CDN is “a highly-distributed platform of servers optimized to deliver content including web applications and streaming media. This network of servers is dispersed across many physical and network locations, in order to respond directly to end user requests for web content and fast, secure media delivery. It acts as an intermediary between a content server, also known as the origin, and its end users or clients.

Without a CDN, content origin servers must respond to every single end user request. This results in significant traffic to the origin and subsequent load, thereby increasing the chances for origin failure if the traffic spikes are exceedingly high or if the load is persistent.”

CDNs are typically priced in a way that allows for high-scale so organizations do not have to incur prohibitive network and computing costs to deliver content to end-users at scale. The goal of a CDN is to provide end-users with the same quality viewing experience regardless of where they are in the world.

Global - Make sure your CDN partner(s) can deliver high-quality video playback to where your users are with as many edge nodes geographically near your consumer base as possible.

Able to Optimize for Different Types of Content - A CDN should have different options for types of content like VOD, progressive media, and live streams along with a high cache hit ratio

Scalable - As your audience and overall success grows, your CDN partner(s) should be able to expand service alongside your organization.

A client or player is a software application that allows your viewers to actually watch your video content.

Every web-based video client or player should support:

The latest video codecs for both audio and video

Support adaptive bitrate playback for different bandwidth scenarios

Casting to Chromecast and , Apple Airplay, etc

Multiple language closed captioning and subtitles

An Open Javascript API framework so clients can manipulate the player surface for their own implementations

Advertising support through industry standard VAST tags

Supported across multiple devices and/or browsers; HTML5 web player as a standard for desktop and mobile web, as well as native applications for playback on mobile and OTT/Connected TV apps and marketplaces

Video players are constantly evolving and changing, and a video player on a closed-system like Apple TV is a completely different animal than an open HTML5 browser optimized for desktop browsing.  Managing the variety of players in the wild can become daunting once a publisher moves beyond their website. Dynamic Player Technology (DPT) allows teams to scale their video without investing in various video players based on the end-point.

 Deciding How to Build the Core Components of Your Digital Video Infrastructure 

When it comes to expanding your digital video infrastructure to distribute your content anywhere and anytime, there is one critical question...how? Do you piece together your CDN, utilize AWS’ suite of media-specific products, and develop your own analytics? Do you utilize video SaaS providers like Zype to facilitate the entire management, distribution, and monetization of your digital video? Or, do you utilize a hybrid model where you might bring your own CDN but rely on SaaS providers for specific pieces?

However you decide to build your core digital video infrastructure, having the power to control your future without huge investments is critical to the ever-evolving digital video landscape.

Want to dive even deeper into these core components? Download Zype's Digital Video Infrastructure: The Complete Guide to learn more.

The 5 Core Components of Every Digital Video Infrastructure

A few lines of code to a ready-to-watch video player and stream

Developers can use the Zype Video API to upload video files to the Zype platform, transcode them, and receive back a fully integrated video player and ready-to-watch HLS stream to integrate into websites and applications in just a few lines of code.

In this example, we will show how to upload a file via multipart HTTP POST request, along with additional video metadata.  Zype will automatically transcode the video as soon as the upload completes. We will then show how to get back a fully integrated video player that is ready to embed, as well as a ready-to-watch video stream.

NOTE:  This example is written in ruby and leverages the ‘httpparty` and `json` ruby gems.  Any language is supported that can speak http.

First, you will need a Zype account. If you don’t have one please request one here. You'll need to retrieve your Upload API Key and Player API Keys from the platform from the API Key Settings section.

3. Retrieve your VideoID (from the Upload API call response) 

Now that you’ve uploaded the file, you can start using the unique Video ID

You can do a lot with the video file outside the scope of this article. Learn more in our Dev Center.

 4. Retrieve a Video Player to embed  or a Streaming URL 

For the player_response, you’ll get back a video player that is ready to embed into your website. It will look something like this:

"https://player.zype.com/embed/5de9664fe6ab785e13bc882a.html?api_key=9d376352-1f60-42e3-9f4e-6ffd12fb72eb"

You can also embed using JavaScript, or have the video automatically show up in your OTT or mobile app endpoints.

For playing directly using your own player infrastructure, use the streaming URL. This will be a fully functional HLS Manifest URL  that is ready to attach to any video player on any device. It will look like this:

https://player.zype.com/manifest/5de964dbb2540e5e22945970?api_key=9d376352-1f60-42e3-9f4e-6ffd12fb72eb

This will render a well-formed HLS Manifest that looks something like this:

#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=1239040,RESOLUTION=1128x480,CODECS="avc1.4d001f,mp4a.40.2"

https://manifest.zype.com/eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ1cmwiOiJodHRwOi8vdnNtLnp5cGUuY29tLzU2ODJiMGJiNjk3MDJkMmEwYjAwMDAwMC81ZGU5NjRkYmIyNTQwZTVlMjI5NDU5NzAvNWRlOTY0ZGNiMjU0MGU1ZTIyOTQ1OTcxLzVkYzllNjAwZGExNjMxZTMzMGIwOTI1Mi8yYzdkMjQyNS1hYTM5LTRkMjAtYjM5NS03M2YwODljMTQxMjIubTN1OCIsInBhcmFtcyI6eyI2cExLTVEzeSI6IlNxaTNOZzkwIn0sImV4cCI6MTU3NTU5MTU3NX0.XHxjbH_UT5NBQ538sOInKUTptZoVXvLhYVFsRgDeZ48

#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=2793472,RESOLUTION=1692x720,CODECS="avc1.4d001f,mp4a.40.2"

https://manifest.zype.com/eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ1cmwiOiJodHRwOi8vdnNtLnp5cGUuY29tLzU2ODJiMGJiNjk3MDJkMmEwYjAwMDAwMC81ZGU5NjRkYmIyNTQwZTVlMjI5NDU5NzAvNWRlOTY0ZGNiMjU0MGU1ZTIyOTQ1OTcxLzVkYzllNjVhZGExNjMxZTMwODZmNTJkNC9hZTA1NjViNi1jODE4LTRhMjctYTNiZS04NjczMWRjZGE3ODcubTN1OCIsInBhcmFtcyI6eyI2cExLTVEzeSI6IlNxaTNOZzkwIn0sImV4cCI6MTU3NTU5MTU3NX0.PT2917E26tIn4KO3J0NucujQn8RPQMHknWU-A-G1teg

Introduction to the Zype Video API

DIY solutions seem like a great way to grow your video business. You can be fully independent and own your content at the same time, what's not to love? Well, it’s an idea that seems a lot better than it actually is.

A do-it-yourself OTT solution is a complicated process of creation, development, and business strategy that can quickly become very expensive and time consuming — especially for those who are new to video businesses and video platforms. Let’s take a look at what goes into a DIY OTT solution.

Smaller libraries are easier to manage and organize, but as your content grows, your system needs to keep up. Keeping track of different file versions for different platforms, like mobile, web, or set-top devices becomes more and more difficult as you continue to add to your library. Also, if your platform restricts certain monetization policies, you are now looking at separate systems to manage your AVOD vs. SVOD vs. TVOD content (at Zype, we handle all three, including hybrid models. Click here to learn more).

Application Development, Administration and Maintenance

There’s a lot that goes into developing and maintaining your video business. Maintenance becomes your responsibility. Every time your hosting platform or streaming destination endpoint updates their platform and software, you will need to make sure your apps are still compatible. Eventually, custom systems become too complicated for everyone to understand, and only the system administrator can do this.

With a DIY solution, it is your responsibility to make sure your videos are viewable on all of your endpoints. Streaming quality, internet connection, and bandwidth are all important factors to consider when evaluating a streaming service. Also, delivering to multiple platforms only makes it more complex when accounting for the viewer’s internet connection, device of choice, mobility and localized infrastructure in other regions. Also, you must make sure that your content is encodable so everything is up to the viewer’s internet speed.

Discoverability is also another area where a DIY solution adds an extra layer of stress. You need to create, manage and present your metadata in a way where you can reach your desired amount of viewers. Metadata, information that describes the key characteristics of the video, like the title, author, actors, description, etc, is so important because it allows for your content to show up in search engines and app stores. You also need to consider indexing, so that someone visiting your website can find your videos.

Digital Rights Management is a crucial aspect of content licensing that designates legal regulations around geographic availability, but it can also get extremely complicated. There are a bunch of third-party vendors who do this for you, but you need to make sure that their solutions are compatible with yours. If DRM is not properly implemented, there are very serious potential legal consequences.

A DIY OTT solution seriously distracts you and your team from the main reason why your customers flock to your OTT service — your content. It’s challenging and extremely difficult for one person, or a small team to accomplish; it involves third parties, coordination and discipline. Keeping track of all the moving parts while managing multiple vendor bills and paying higher rates for each usage component means the cost of doing business can get extremely high.

There are better solutions. Request a demo from Zype right here.

Why You Should Hesitate About a DIY OTT Solution

A DIY OTT Solution Sounds Great, But Should Make You Hesitate — Here's Why

Video-centric publishers, broadcasters, and enterprises typically have an outsized focus on content programming and distribution decisions: “ What content am I publishing, where am I publishing it, and how many viewers can I reach? ”

While these decisions are incredibly important to focus on, a challenge that may not always be top of mind is thinking about the Content Management Lifecycle, with a specific eye towards digital asset preservation.

How do you make sure the video content you own and manage digitally is secure, highly available, and will be formatted and distributed in the right protocols as new distribution opportunities emerge?

A snapshot of the contemporary Content Management Lifecycle:

In this diagram you can see what a sample content import, storage, transcoding, delivery, and publishing/distribution lifecycle might look like for video enterprises.

Increasingly important is ensuring your video content storage and management solution ensures support for both the present and the future.

Evaluating digital asset preservation needs:

Video enterprises should evaluate format portability, security, availability, and redundancy as important factors in their content management lifecycle. This way you can ensure your evergreen content will not only be distributed efficiently today, but available for future distribution opportunities as well!

Interested in learning more about Zype? Check out zype.com/request-demo/

Thinking About the Content Management Lifecycle

Since launching Zype Playout, we've been excited to show an in-depth look at the easiest way for video product teams to create, monetize, and distribute broadcast-quality, linear live IP-delivered streams. Awarded NAB Product of the Year Award for B2B Streaming at NAB Show 2019, Zype Playout boasts channel creation, program management, support for multiple monetization setups, among other exciting features. And we think it's pretty awesome that Zype Playout contributed meaningfully to Zype's full-stack video content management and distribution service, helping Zype secure the title of OTT Exec Company of the Year 2019.

With Zype Playout, you'll be able to build, program, and broadcast linear channels created from playlists of videos that already exist in your Zype library

 What are the key features of Zype Playout? 

Distribute to your Owned and Operated websites and video apps, plus OTT marketplaces

Syndicate to partners like YouTube, Twitch, and any other RTMP or HLS standard-based destination

Monetize O&O by using subscription and purchase paywalls

Gain more audience metadata by adding a registration wall

Keep your channel fresh by adding or editing your Playout channel rundown through your source playlist

For those of you who have configured Zype Live to broadcast a live event in the Zype platform, Zype Playout will be a synch. Even if you don't have familiarity with live events, we doubt you'll have any issues understanding the steps outlined below. Remember that with Zype Playout, you'll be able to build, program, and broadcast linear channels created from playlists of videos that already exist in your Zype library.

Step 1 - Determine where your channel will be distributed - Playout destinations determine where you'll distribute your Playout stream, whether it's to existing owned and operated websites and videos apps, to YouTube and Facebook Live, or to custom destinations.

Step 2 - Review and edit your channel rundown - Because your Playout channel is created from a playlist in your Zype library, you can use an existing playlist for your channel rundown, or build a new source playlist to use when you create your channel.

Step 3 - Create your channel - Once a Zype Playout channel is created, it exists in your Zype library just as a video or live event would. You can add or edit metadata like a custom thumbnail image, and test the broadcast to view your channel rundown (Zype Live customers will be familiar with this) right from the Manage Channels page.

Zype handles all of the complex underlying video packaging, broadcast server management, and infrastructure; we work to normalize video bitrates, renditions, and aspect ratios from different videos in your library to provide a cohesive, high-quality stream experience to successfully broadcast your Playout channel.

Glad you asked! We always recommend our Help Center as a good source of knowledge when trying to dig deeper. We've created a Zype Playout section covering playout destinations, playout channels, monetization, and more.

Visit the Zype Playout product page to for a high-level overview of the product and it's capabilities. If you aren't working with Zype today but would like to learn more, request a demo with our team.

Up Close and Personal with Zype Playout

Zype Wins Third Stevie Award for Customer Service and Support

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Zype Acquires MAZ Systems to Extend Leading Video API and Infrastructure Platform with No-Code TV and Mobile App Publishing Framework

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Digital Video Infrastructure: The Complete Guide

Webinar - Build and Monetize Linear TV with Playout 2.0

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