FREQUENTLY
ASKED QUESTIONS

Unlike other cloud playout vendors, Amagi’s services and solutions are based on in-house tech stack, automated, error-free, with faster deployment timelines. Amagi provides complete transparency and flexibility, and can launch channels on both TV or OTT platforms with ease.

Amagi’s offering is built on cloud native platforms, which allows TV networks to spin up new channels without high upfront CAPEX, and with lower OPEX.

Amagi can help you launch sports channels with either an end-to-end managed service model, or with CLOUDPORT playout platform. Amagi’s solution covers all aspects of live channel requirement such as:

• Cloud-based media asset management
• Live controls for ad insertion
• Scheduling
• 24x7 Multi-feed playout monitoring

Amagi has helped launch premium sports channels for leading networks such as DSPORT by Discovery Communications, and IMG EdgeSport.

Yes, Amagi can deliver directly to the headend using IP, satellite, or fiber. Amagi’s CLOUDPORT server can also be installed at the operator headend and still give you complete control of playout

Amagi’s offering is built on some of the most secure cloud instances available, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Content, playout, and all assets such as graphics are stored with advanced 128-bit encryption. Additionally, Amagi’s user interface is protected by user defined access to avoid any unauthorized access.

Amagi can guarantee an SLA of 99.99%. In case of an end-to-end playout and delivery service, distribution SLAs may vary based on the choice of satellite or fiber vendor. Amagi also guarantees resolution of critical issues within one hour and provides a 1+1 redundant playout configuration.

Amagi’s services are offered in ‘follow-the-sun’ model with a full-fledged playout management facility located in Bangalore. Amagi’s user interface enables the playout management teams to provide 24x7 support remotely. The playout management services offer three levels of support to ensure maximum uptime for your channel.

Amagi offers on-call and email L1, and L2 support, and L3 technical support for all customer deployments, and uses JIRA ticket management system for on-time resolution of all issues.

• L1 Support is the first point of contact for any issues and is responsible for ticketing and monitoring. - L2 support team includes direct phone or email-based ticket resolution for all CLOUDPORT playout platform issues. - L3 support team works on issues that may require bug fixes or enhancement requests.

Yes, Amagi’s platform can be configured for private or hybrid cloud deployments.

Amagi can create a regional or time-adjusted feed using the edge or cloud playout solutions. Both options eliminate the need to launch multiple satellite or fiber feeds.

For Edge playout, content can be sent to the CLOUDPORT edge playout servers using internet. Once the content is stored on edge servers, playout can be managed remotely as per regional schedule using the web user interface.

Cloud playout can be used for purely cloud-based delivery. In this case, the channel playout is completely on cloud, and final output is directly sent to the operator.

Yes. Amagi’s onboarding team takes care of all ingest, and asset-level requirements to customize the solution. Amagi also coordinates with delivery hubs, uplink centres, and other delivery partners such as Zixi.

Amagi’s playout platform has been used by global sports networks such as IMG EdgeSPORT , DSPORT by Discovery Communications, Horse and Country TV, Sports Illustrated among others.

Yes. Amagi can support customization requests, and even provide technical solutions to challenges such as unique ad-serving methodologies used by platforms such as Twitch, XUMO, Roku, and others.

Amagi supports 1:1, 1:K, and 1:N configurations for live orchestration, and CLOUDPORT -LIVE could technically be deployed for any number of live delivery destinations.

Event parameters are configurable. However, event duration, breaks duration, and graphics structure form the crux of any standard event.

Amagi’s CLOUDPORT -LIVE platform is a new-age intent-capturing system that can be deployed to execute a series of tasks that make up a live broadcast. For example, a sports broadcaster could have an intent to allocate ad breaks only in the middle of the sporting event such as soccer. In this case, this intent is captured in the CLOUDPORT -LIVE system, and executed by CLOUDPORT playout systems ‘subscribing’ to this event.

Currently Amagi’s solution supports customized graphics, and ad-breaks, but has been designed to support contextual interactivity such as online polls, and player-cards.

Yes, Amagi provides infrastructure monitoring for all channels as part of the support, and Amagi’s playout management team notifies the customer for any transmission issues. A fully managed monitoring service is also provided by Amagi as an add-on.

Amagi supports multiple live ingest formats including IP stream, SDI, or ASI. Content can be ingested directly on cloud, or on Edge servers installed at operator premises.

Amagi can support a highly secure, redundant set-up to ensure greater reliability for edge playout set-up. For true-cloud playout, Amagi relies on enterprise-grade, highly ‘available’, cloud infrastructure providers such as AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Yes, Amagi can deliver channels to popular vMVPD platforms such as Amazon Prime Video, YouTube TV, Sling, XUMO, Roku, Twitch, Verizon, Sony PlayStation Vue, Philo TV and others.

Amagi can guarantee the best-in-class playout SLA of up to 99.999 percent. In case of an end-to-end playout and delivery service, distribution SLAs may vary based on the choice of satellite or fiber supplier. Amagi also guarantees resolution of critical issues within one hour and 1+1 redundant playout configuration.

Amagi supports wide range of graphics: simple TGA/MOV, automatically rendered AEP files, DVR, audio ducking, Credit Squeezes, L-bands, HTML and live overlays like Singular. Live

CP-PLANNER is a content planning and scheduling tool and enables content schedulers to create a programme guide in an efficient manner.

Absolutely! Through CP-PLANNER, you can schedule horizontally across multiple days or vertically i.e., in a ‘binge watch’ back-to-back mode. You can define scheduling patterns like daily, weekends only, or specific custom patterns. You can also provide repeat times so that EPG creation becomes easier.

Currently, it can only be integrated with CLOUDPORT, Amagi’s channel playout platform

No. CP-PLANNER is used for creating the EPG i.e., scheduling at a program level. We have an auto scheduling algorithm that will take the EPG exported from CP-PLANNER and displays it in the CLOUDPORT playlist with all the segment information along with breaks. The scheduler can thus use CLOUDPORT edit playlist feature only for all the fine tuning i.e., advertisement, promo and graphic scheduling.

Please contact our sales team for enquiries

Yes. Amagi’s onboarding team takes care of all ingest, and asset-level requirements to customize the solution. Amagi also coordinates with delivery hubs, uplink centres, and other delivery partners such as Zixi.

Yes, Amagi provides infrastructure monitoring for all channels as part of the support, and Amagi’s playout management team notifies the customer for any transmission issues. A fully managed monitoring service is also provided by Amagi as an add-on.

Amagi’s solution includes content ingest, storage, and QC, as well as infrastructure monitoring, and signal transmission. The solution also enables services such as automated playlist validation as part of the playout platform.

Amagi has offices in UK, USA, India, and Singapore. Amagi’s centralized playout monitoring centre can be reached 24x7 across time zones.

Amagi has a well-established security framework based on enterprise-grade cloud security, and best-practices for broadcast-grade security. Know more about Amagi’s security features.

The web dashboard provided by Amagi for the playout platform includes real-time status of each asset, and daily email reports are available for each channel.

Yes, Amagi can ensure a redundant set-up for greater channel integrity. By default, Amagi’s cloud infrastructure provides built-in redundancy and is built on leading cloud vendors such as AWS and Microsoft Azure to offer greater reliability.

Amagi can create a regional or time-adjusted feed using the edge or cloud playout solutions. Both options eliminate the need to launch multiple satellite or fiber feeds.

Amagi can guarantee the best-in-class playout SLA of up to 99.999%. In case of an end-to-end playout and delivery service, distribution SLAs may vary based on the choice of satellite or fiber vendor. Amagi also guarantees resolution of critical issues within one hour and 1+1 redundant playout configuration.

Yes, Amagi can integrate with your existing content management system and facilitate delivery of your channel to desired destination.

Traditionally, replacement triggers such as DTMF, Packet 31, and SCTE 35 have been used to insert local ads on common feed. These triggers are not part of the content stream and are inserted as part of a separate workflow. Amagi Watermark is an inaudible and invisible audio signature that is embedded in the media assets, thus inserted as part of the stream.

When using Amagi Watermark in combination with STORM, there would not be any changes to your workflow. Standard modifications may be required in case of DTMF and SCTE markers.

Unlike conventional ad triggers such as SCTE 35 and DTMF, STORM supports Amagi Watermark that eliminates the need to manually mark opt-in and opt-out points for commercials and ensures granular level of control on content/ad replacement.

STORM can receive replacement ad via cloud or even via satellite trickle bandwidth. Amagi has even created unique architectures that involve secured transfer of ads directly from Ad partners to operators/affiliate headends.

STORM has been built to be an extremely secure system, with rigorous security policy governing all transmission of data.

STORM has a built-in memory to store thousands of hours of video. Since every STORM IRD can be linked to cloud, content can be refreshed on a regular basis, ensuring that the IRDs keep playing out latest content and ads in event of a catastrophe.

Amagi’s services are offered in ‘follow-the-sun’ model with a full-fledged monitoring facility located in Amagi’s operations center in Bangalore. Amagi’s web-based user interface enables operations team to provide 24x7 support remotely.

Amagi offers on-call and email L1, and L2 support, and L3 technical support for all customer deployments, and uses JIRA ticket management system for on-time resolution of all issues.

• L1 Support is the first point of contact for any issues and is responsible for ticketing and monitoring.
• L2 support team includes direct phone or email-based ticket resolution for all product/platform issues.
• L3 support team works on issues that may require bug fixes or enhancement requests.

Yes, Amagi’s platform can be configured for private or hybrid cloud deployments.

Amagi’s managed broadcast services is different in many progressive ways. To begin with, it’s a cloud-led managed services. So, there’s no need for large physical infrastructure and workforce to manage operations. Unlike other managed services, Amagi relies on its own cloud-based playout platform, CLOUDPORT, to deliver the core playout services. This gives customers enhanced flexibility to spin up new feeds for different regions/platforms as all the content is ingested and stored on cloud. Additionally, Amagi managed services packs in advanced automation to improve overall broadcast efficiencies. Finally, at all times the customer has full visibility into all the workflows through a web UI.

Yes, Amagi provides live events and sports broadcast services. You can contact us to know more.

Amagi’s offering is built on some of the most secure cloud instances available, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Content, playout, and all assets such as graphics are stored with advanced 128-bit encryption. Additionally, Amagi’s user interface is protected by user defined access to avoid any unauthorized access.

Amagi can guarantee an SLA of up to 99.999%. In case of an end-to-end playout and delivery service, distribution SLAs may vary based on the choice of satellite or fiber vendor. Amagi also guarantees resolution of critical issues within one hour and provides a 1+1 redundant playout configuration.

Amagi’s services are offered in ‘follow-the-sun’ model with a full-fledged playout management facility located in Bangalore. Amagi’s user interface enables the playout management teams to provide 24x7 support remotely. The playout management services offer three levels of support to ensure maximum uptime for your channel.

Amagi offers on-call and email L1, and L2 support, and L3 technical support for all customer deployments, and uses JIRA ticket management system for on-time resolution of all issues.

• L1 Support is the first point of contact for any issues and is responsible for ticketing and monitoring. - L2 support team includes direct phone or email-based ticket resolution for all CLOUDPORT playout platform issues. - L3 support team works on issues that may require bug fixes or enhancement requests.

Amagi can create a regional or time-adjusted feed using the edge or cloud playout solutions. Both options eliminate the need to launch multiple satellite or fiber feeds.

For Edge playout, content can be sent to the CLOUDPORT edge playout servers using internet. Once the content is stored on edge servers, playout can be managed remotely as per regional schedule using the web user interface.

Cloud playout can be used for purely cloud-based delivery. In this case, the channel playout is completely on cloud, and final output is directly sent to the operator.

Yes, Amagi supports ad insertion services on Connected TV platforms. In fact, in situations where early implementation of HLS-based Connected TV platforms do not support time-based discontinuity (TBD) on streams, it’s challenging for most SSAI systems to insert ads. Amagi’s managed service has a unique re-timestamping workflow for ad-serving, which automatically makes the stream a time-continuous event during ad insertions. This enables the platform to provide a uniform experience across all edge devices including Connected TV platforms.

No, Amagi serves a single instrumented manifest to all devices, where the manifest has redirections for ad segments.

No, Amagi supports extensive ad network configurations dynamically and doesn’t require separate ad servers to enable programmatic advertising.

Yes, Amagi THUNDERSTORM platform can be licensed without services layer for delivering server-side ad insertions on live, linear and VOD content.

Yes. In the current system it will be a match, but it will be flagged as a “duplicate” in the system as two ads of different duration will respond positive and hence, both will be discarded. This can be improved if we can track the ad till the end and this is on our product roadmap.

Google DFP is mostly used as a campaign management system by everyone. If someone has in house ad sales, they need an ad server to manage and serve ad campaigns. It is a very powerful campaign management system that also supports integration with third-party ad networks.

There are two versions for Google DFP.

DFP Small Business and DFP Premium

• DFP small business is free for everyone but has a limited feature set. For example, it can support only in-house ad sales and cannot connect with third-party ad networks and it cannot connect with AdX as well.
• DFP Premium is an extensive campaign management system for tier-one customers. In our case, if the customer wants to use in-house ad sales, then they can use DFP small business and set a waterfall mechanism in THUNDERSTORM. But most of the customers prefer to control ad decisioning on their own and hence, they use DFP that provide a lot more flexibility and transparency on reporting.

AdX supports SSAI but only the specific version allowed by Google. THUNDERSTORM cannot integrate with AdX because it needs client-side SDK integration. Currently, AdX does not allow third-party SSAI.

Fill Rate is a mathematical term. Low fill rate also can give higher monetisation at higher CPM. And even high fill rate can give insignificant monetisation if CPM is very low. Fill Rate is used to determine how the system is performing in comparison to number of requests made. That means, it only determines if there is a demand in the market for the inventory we possess.

Demand is driven by the profile of users watching the content. If a channel’s viewers are considered valuable for a particular segment of advertisers, then yes, it can be valuable. For this particular example, if the viewership numbers of the channel are not great, then the revenue will not be significant despite higher CPM. Typically, this works as per the multiplier effect. Try multiplying 10,000 viewers $10 versus 100,000 viewers $2 for an accurate estimate.

Currently, Amagi is channel-agnostic while serving ad impressions.

No changes are required on client-side since THUNDERSTORM only transmits the unified stream of content and ads.

No dependencies exist as Amagi THUNDERSTORM is completely device-agnostic.

We are compatible with devices that can support OTT streams.

VAST tag is just an http URL like any other with query parameters that contain user and content information.

It’s the choice made by app developers. We support every leading player, including native players.

As soon as the ad is played for the user, a beacon is fired and it gets registered in the ad network system counting as an impression. We also do quartile reporting. That means, we fire beacons for start, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% complete. We also check creative view and viewability to make sure ad networks register all types of beacons they need.

Yes. The THUNDERSTORM UI and console are given to customers in a self-served model. Contact us to set-up a demo.

HLS is used for Apple devices and DASH for Android. Clients prefer DASH for Android as they want to use the native player and not a third-party player like Exoplayer. If someone uses Exoplayer in Android apps, then they do not need DASH.