Exoplayer: IMA extension: Support playback of HLS ads

[jeevarajp]

I am using exoplayer version 2.5.3

I followed exactly same steps in https://medium.com/google-exoplayer/playing-ads-with-exoplayer-and-ima-868dfd767ea blog and was able to play mp4 ads. But I am unable to play HLS ads using exoplayer ima extension 2.5.3.

Please advise me whether this ima extension (2.5.3) has HLS ad support or not. If yes, what am I doing wrong? If no, please advise any alternative way for achieving it.

Thanks.

[andrewlewis]

It should work. What goes wrong when you try to insert ads with an HlsMediaSource as the content media source?

[jeevarajp]

Yes, I am able to play HLS content (using HlsMediaSource). But HLS advertisements are not playing for me (mp4 advertisement plays).

[andrewlewis]

We assume the ad media URIs provided by the IMA SDK are all playable with ExtractorMediaSource at the moment, so this isn't supported.

Please could you provide the ad tag you're trying to play here, or email it to dev.[email protected], then we can take a look? It's probably fairly straightforward to make this work if IMA supports it. Thanks.

[jeevarajp]

Below is the ad tag I am trying to play.

<VAST version="2.0"><Ad id="1"><InLine><AdSystem/><AdTitle/><Impression>../static/clear_dot.gif?impression</Impression><Creatives><Creative><Linear skipoffset="00:00:08"><Duration>00:00:30</Duration><MediaFiles><MediaFile delivery="progressive" type="application/x-mpegURL" scalable="true" width="" height="">https://www.outsourcelive.com/vast/advertisement_hls/Amazon_hls/amaz.m3u8</MediaFile></MediaFiles><TrackingEvents><Tracking event="creativeView">../static/clear_dot.gif?createView</Tracking><Tracking event="start">../static/clear_dot.gif?start</Tracking><Tracking event="firstQuartile">../static/clear_dot.gif?firstQuartile</Tracking><Tracking event="midpoint">../static/clear_dot.gif?midpoint</Tracking><Tracking event="thirdQuartile">../static/clear_dot.gif?thirdQuartile</Tracking><Tracking event="complete">../static/clear_dot.gif?complete</Tracking><Tracking event="skip">../static/clear_dot.gif?skip</Tracking><Tracking event="mute">../static/clear_dot.gif?mute</Tracking><Tracking event="unmute">../static/clear_dot.gif?unmute</Tracking><Tracking event="pause">../static/clear_dot.gif?pause</Tracking><Tracking event="rewind">../static/clear_dot.gif?rewind</Tracking><Tracking event="resume">../static/clear_dot.gif?resume</Tracking><Tracking event="fullscreen">../static/clear_dot.gif?fullscreen</Tracking><Tracking event="expand">../static/clear_dot.gif?expand</Tracking><Tracking event="collapse">../static/clear_dot.gif?collapse</Tracking><Tracking event="acceptInvitation">../static/clear_dot.gif?acceptInvitation</Tracking><Tracking event="close">../static/clear_dot.gif?close</Tracking></TrackingEvents><VideoClicks><ClickThrough> http://ya.ru/ </ClickThrough><ClickTracking> ../static/clear_dot.gif?click </ClickTracking></VideoClicks></Linear></Creative></Creatives></InLine></Ad></VAST>

[jeevarajp]

So Exoplayer IMA extension v2.5.3 doesn't have support for playback of HLS ads right now?

Is it possible to me to set AdsRenderingSettings mimetype as mentioned here in this post and add HLS ads support to IMA extension?

When can I expect HLS ads support? Please advise.

[andrewlewis]

Correct. We don't support this right now.

To implement it, we need to create the right type of media source in AdsMediaSource, and also handle media sources that don't allow immediate creation of a period. No promises when it will be done, but I expect we can push a change to support this during the new few weeks.

[rjlevesque]

Hi @andrewlewis, sorry to be a pest but any updates on HLS ad support?

[andrewlewis]

@rjlevesque No updates yet I'm afraid.

[jeevarajp]

@ojw28 / @andrewlewis could you please let me know release version of exoplayer which includes this feature?

[andrewlewis]

Please try it out on the release candidate branch dev-v2-r2.6.1 and let us know if you have any problems. Thanks!