Overview

This document outlines the requirements and best practices for preparing HLS and DASH streams for Serverside.ai. Following these standards ensures optimal streaming quality and user experience.

General requirements

The manifest must satisfy the following requirements:

• Manifests must be accessible on the public internet via the origin (PULL). 
• The endpoint or origin must be accessible without any authentication. 
• The endpoint or origin must be accessible without any authentication method. If authentication is required, contact your account manager to discuss custom configurations.
• The origin must deliver the stream (manifest, submanifest, and segments) via HTTPS. HTTP is supported but not recommended. 
• Sources (HLS and DASH segments) can be hosted on your infrastructure and may be CDN-enabled (for example, Akamai). 
• The SSAI service requests only the manifest file. The player requests the content segments from the origin or CDN.

Packaging requirements

Configure your packager or origin server to produce manifests for HLS or DASH that comply with the following requirements:

• Codec and profile (such as, resolution, fps, bitrate) must be consistent for each content item in a given channel (live) or playlist (VoD).
• GOP size (also known as keyframe interval or keyframe rate) must be 1.92 seconds to ensure optimal compatibility and aligned audio and video segments. 
• For live content, ad markers must be present as SCTE-35 inline markers, including cue-out information and the duration of the break.
• Ensure that the origin or server sets the following HTTP Access-Control headers:
  • Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
  • Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: *
  • Access-Control-Allow-Methods: *
  • Access-Control-Allow-Headers: *