This article offers deeper insight into the most innovative and impactful product updates Zype recently released across Streaming Platform, Playout, and Apps Creator.
For a comprehensive list of new features, improvements, bug fixes, and more, be sure to check out our most recent Release Notes.
Updates in Zype Streaming Platform
Introducing Zype Analytics 3: Real-time Content and Consumer Analytics
Zype Analytics 3 is our most advanced analytics solution yet, designed to deliver real-time, actionable insights across all your video streaming operations. Now available for all Zype customers, this foundational analytics platform supports deeper data exploration and reporting, helping you optimize your content, increase viewer engagement, and drive revenue growth.
Zype Analytics 3 can be accessed directly from the main dashboard in the left hand navigation. Under the heading Zype Analytics 3, analytics dashboards are broken out into three sections: Engagement, Revenue, and Platform Dynamics.
Engagement Analytics Dashboard in Zype Analytics 3
Engagement Analytics - Allows you to monitor metrics like Plays, Hours Watched, and Viewers, with data segmented by platform, domain, application, or monetization type (e.g., Free, Subscription, Registration). You can drill down into top-performing videos and playlists, as our analytics are now enhanced with playlist-level analytics. This analytics view will help you understand audience preferences so that you can guide content strategy to enhance your user experience.
Revenue Analytics - Gain insight into subscription and transactional revenue. Monitor metrics like Total Revenue, Subscription Revenue, Transactional Revenue, Total Subscriptions and Transactions and more to see how your content and consumer monetization is driving revenue over time. This analytics view will help you monitor the earnings from your content to determine ROI and allow you to facilitate data-driven financial decision making.
Platform Dynamics - Analyze internal performance metrics like gigabytes streamed, player requests, videos managed, and stream hours to better manage your business operations. Discover content trends at the playlist and consumer level, empowering you to tailor offerings to audience behavior.
Additional aspects of the new Analytics 3 offering include:
- Real-time data: Updated every 60s, access up-to-the-minute data on viewer behavior and video quality, allowing for timely adjustments to your content and delivery strategies.
- Track concurrent viewers of your content: Receive up-to-the-minute data on every page in the dashboard, reflecting audience viewership for both live and VOD.
- View analytics by time and date range: View data across different time ranges, from hourly breakdowns to 30-day windows, or even set your own date parameters for customized insights.
- Convenient exporting of data: For all analytics, you can export raw data in various formats, including XLSX, CSV, PNG, and PDF for streamlined reporting.
- Unified Analytics Across Platforms: Gain a cohesive view of your content's performance across web, mobile, OTT/CTV and Smart TV apps, ensuring consistent and comprehensive analytics regardless of the distribution medium.
For more information on Zype Analytics 3, check out our Announcement article.
Ability to Update Self-Hosted URLs via the Zype API
Now API users who leverage self-hosted content and want to update the URLs for their content, can do so via the CMS API. With this update, you can programmatically modify the URLs of self-hosted videos and assets directly through the API, streamlining content management for external hosting solutions.
Create and add a Self-Hosted Video to your Library via Zype's API
This update gives API users greater flexibility and control over content hosted outside of Zype, allowing them to easily manage and update external URLs without manual intervention. It simplifies workflows, reduces downtime, and enhances the ability to keep content delivery current and efficient.
To learn more, visit our Zype API Reference resources for Developers.
Faster Video Search
Benefit from faster search performance, with more efficient and reliable video search capabilities that enable the scalability of your video infrastructure. We’ve updated our backend search architecture to provide you with improved performance and accuracy of video search in Zype CMS. This update particularly benefits API developers, administrators, and end-users who rely on robust and efficient video search capabilities within Zype’s system.
New Capabilities in Zype Playout
Faster Playout Channel Publishing
One advantage of using Zype Playout over competitive playout solutions is the fact that you can quickly update programming for on-the-fly changes that update live on-air within seconds. With this recent update, we’ve reduced the publishing delay across all Playout channels from 60-90 seconds to 30 seconds or less, enabling faster updates when critical, last-minute programming changes are needed.
This update enhances the responsiveness of channel updates, allowing broadcasters to react quickly to scheduling changes, make last-minute edits, or adjustments for live events. Reducing the delay between the “Publish Rundown” action in Playout and the synchronization of the related channel provides an improved viewing experience, minimizes the risk of scheduling mismatches, and boosts operational efficiency for broadcasters managing time-sensitive or dynamic content.
Default Support for WebVTT Subtitles on HLS Destinations
Making your content accessible to all audiences is important if you want to maximize its impact. Zype Playout HLS WebVTT Support has always enabled seamless integration of WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks) for subtitles and captions within the HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) framework in Zype's Playout platform.
With this new update, WebVTT subtitles will be provided automatically on all HLS outputs across all playout channels by default, ensuring that subtitles and captions are consistently available for every stream without additional setup.
This update benefits content creators, broadcasters, and streaming service providers who aim to enhance their audience's viewing experience while adhering to accessibility regulations. Adding WebVTT support enhances accessibility for viewers by providing accurate subtitles and captions, which is crucial for compliance with accessibility standards and for reaching a broader audience, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing. This feature will help improve your user engagement and satisfaction while opening up additional revenue opportunities through targeted advertising and international markets that require accessibility standards be met.
Support for SSAI (Client-Side) Ad Beacon Strategy Selection
Zype Playout customers can now choose between client-side and server-side ad beacon strategies in their streaming workflows. With this update, customers can select their preferred ad beacon strategy for all HLS-type destinations, whether it's client-side or server-side, when Ads are enabled. While the bulk of the implementation work will be handled by the application team or client, the Playout team will ensure that this setting can be configured across all relevant destinations.
Impactful for customers using SSAI in their video streaming workflows, particularly those on Roku, O&O platforms, and other HLS-type destinations, this update gives Playout customers the flexibility to optimize their ad delivery strategies based on their specific requirements and platform capabilities. This new option to choose an ad beacon strategy enhances their ability to maximize ad revenue while ensuring compatibility across various devices, environments, and platforms.
To leverage these options, select the Dropdown called “Beacon Strategy” and choose from two options: “Server-Side” or “Client-Side”.
Select SSAI Ad Beacon Strategy
View Transcoded Status of Asset in the Asset Inspector
When programming Playout channels, it is crucial to know what assets are Active and ready to be added to programming on the timeline, and what assets are Inactive or not yet available to be added to a channel.
With this update, Playout users can now see whether an asset is transcoded or not in the Asset Inspector right beneath their timeline, so it’s easier to see which assets are transcoded and ready to be programmed.
New fields in the Properties tab of an asset show whether or not an asset is Transcoded, and whether or not that Asset is Active.
If the asset has a mezzanine file available, but it hasn’t been transcoded yet, a new display message will pop up alerting users to the fact that the asset will be transcoded as soon as it is dragged into the timeline.
Message alerting that asset has not yet been transcoded
Alternatively, if an asset does not have a mezzanine file available, and has not yet been transcoded, the asset is marked as inactive, and an explanatory message is displayed to say the mezzanine file will need to be re-uploaded in order to transcode and use it for programming purposes.
Message alerting that asset has been set to inactive because no mezzanine file is available
Ability to Create Scheduler Only Channel
With a “Scheduler Only” channel, Playout users can experiment with channel programming without the channel running and incurring costs. This helps customers plan their programmatic scheduling strategy and can be useful for customers training programming personnel.
If a channel type is set to “Scheduler Only - No Infra”, in the All Channels view, a yellow label will be added to the channel so that it is clear the channel is a "Scheduler-Only" channel.
Scheduler-Only Flag on Channel
The Latest in Zype Apps Creator
Expanded Descriptions in Series Layout
We’ve added a “More” button to the series layout to ensure that lengthier Series descriptions can be read across all Roku TV applications. If the description of your Series extends beyond the preview text with ellipses, a “More” button will now appear allowing end-users to click to reveal the full description.
Support for Google Login when using OAuth on Android & iOS
To facilitate easier login for end-users, we’ve added a customization on Android & iOS applications that enables Google sign-in on internal webviews while authenticating an user using OAuth. If you are using OAuth for authentication on Android or iOS mobile apps, end users with Gmail credentials can choose to login using their Google credentials, without needing to create a new unique login email and password combination to use the application.
Google Login on iOS