Segment settings fields

The segment settings fields hold general information about the segment.

1. For Segment name, enter a name that describes the segment. The name is the base name of the segment used in all content manifests inside of the endpoint. Supported characters are A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _ (underscore), and - (hyphen) with a length of 1 to 256 characters. You can't use spaces in the name.

2. For Segment duration (sec.), enter the duration (in seconds) of each segment. Enter a value equal to, or a multiple of, the input segment duration. The maximum segment duration is 30 seconds. If the value that you enter is different from the input segment duration, MediaPackage rounds segments to the nearest multiple of the input segment duration.

3. Select Include IFrame-only stream to include an additional I-frame only stream along with the other tracks in the manifest. MediaPackage generates an I-frame only stream from the first rendition in the manifest. The service inserts EXT-I-FRAMES-ONLY tags in the output manifest, and then generates and includes an I-frames only playlist in the stream. This playlist enables player functionality like fast forward and rewind.

4. Select Use audio rendition group to group all audio tracks into a single rendition group. All other tracks in the stream can be used with any audio rendition from the group. For more information about rendition groups, see Rendition groups reference in AWS Elemental MediaPackage.

5. Select Include DVB subtitles to pass through digital video broadcasting (DVB) subtitles into the output. By default, MediaPackage excludes all DVB subtitles from the output.

6. Select Enable SCTE support to include SCTE configuration options. If you select this, you can further define your SCTE configuration in additional fields.

7. For Force endpoint error configuration, choose the types of problematic situations where you want MediaPackage to return a 404 response on manifests and segments requests:

   • Stale Manifests: MediaPackage stops receiving ingest streams on its input, indicating the encoder or network path have failed. This results in output stale manifests that don’t get updated any more, which results in playback sessions stopping.

   • Incomplete Manifests: MediaPackage is receiving ingest segments, but there are gaps in the timeline. This results in manifests presenting an incomplete timeline for some renditions, potentially generating playback problems.

   • Missing DRM Keys: MediaPackage was unable to retrieve an encryption key on a key-rotation operation. This results in the old encryption key still being used after the key-rotation time. While it will not affect playback, it could be problematic from a business or content-rights-entitlement perspective.

   • Slate Input: MediaPackage detects that the ingest stream(s) are flagged as including a significant proportion of slate contents (black video frames, audio silence). While playback continues, no content will be displayed by the players, which is a valid reason to failover to a different MediaPackage origin.

   When MediaPackage is configured to react to these problems, it will return 404 responses until it can present a consistent timeline in the manifests - meaning that all problematic segments will need to be evicted from the exposed DVR window in the manifest.

   Important

   Triggering such forced 404 responses is an optional behavior that should be used only if you want to implement CDN-driven failover between multiple MediaPackage origins. For more information on this types of workflow, see Cross-region failover.

8. For SCTE filtering, choose the SCTE-35 message types that will be ad markers in the output. If you don't make a selection here, by default, MediaPackage inserts all ad markers in the output manifest.

   • Splice insert

   • Break

   • Provider advertisement

   • Distributor advertisement

   • Provider placement opportunity

   • Distributor placement opportunity

   • Provider overlay placement opportunity

   • Distributor overlay placement opportunity

   • Program