MSL4 to MSL5: Key Benefits and Rationale
Live streaming requires purpose-built capabilities for delivering unmatched reliability, scale, and video quality at scale. As new video formats and monetization solutions are introduced, businesses that can quickly take advantage of these solutions have a higher chance of success. MSL5 accelerates your ability to optimize the viewing experience for your customers, maximize advertising revenue, and grow your business. Akamai selected Harmonic as the technology provider best able to provide these capabilities for MSL5.
Please note that some of features listed in the table below not be available until MSL5 reaches General Availability.
| MSL4 | MSL5 | MSL5 Roadmap | |
|---|---|---|---|
| First-Mile Reports | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Live DVR Window Duration (no Archive option) | Max. 30 minutes | Max. 12 hours | |
| Live DVR Window Configuration | Control by encoder | Control by MSL5 | |
| Self-Healing Network | ✓ | ✓ | |
| End-to End Transport Layer Security (TLS) support | ✓ | ✓ | |
| DVR and Unlimited Archive | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Max. Advanced Archive duration | 31 days | 62 days | |
| HSL/DASH/CMAF/LL-DASH Support | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Advanced Event creation & management (Live clipping) | Alpha | ✓ | |
| Merged Playlist creation | Manual upload | Manual upload | Automatic generation |
| Stream Provisioning time | ~ 3 hours | < 5 seconds | |
| LL-HLS support | ✓ | ||
| Access to ingest logs | ✓ | ||
| Logs export | ✓ | ||
| Event Monitoring | ✓ | ||
| Origin capacity reservation | ✓ | ||
| Frame accurate clipping | ✓ | ||
| Manifest filtering | ✓ | ||
| nPVR/cDVR | ✓ | ||
| Dynamic Ad Insertion: full screen & in-stream formats | ✓ Dynamic manifest manipulation |
How does MSL5 improve on MSL4?
MSL5 provides the following improvements to MSL4:
- Performance
- Faster subscriber onboarding, greater scalability
- Near real-time stream provisioning (5 seconds)
- Sliding DVR Window support
- End-to-end 6-8 seconds low latency DASH and HLS
- User Experience
- More intuitive user interfaces with powerful metrics displays and system status overview
- Event Monitoring Support
- Logs management: Access to ingest logs and ability to export logs to third-party observability providers
- Administration
- Simple event creation and management.
What new features can we expect in future product updates?
MSL5 will introduce a range of new features, including:
- Origin capacity reservation: This will ensure that enough origin resources are available during peak times, preventing service interruptions and performance degradation, enhancing the stability and reliability of the user experience during critical events.
- Frame accurate clipping: This will allow precise trimming of videos to specific moments, improving content sharing and viewer engagement.
- Manifest filtering: Customization of video streams to deliver only the necessary segments, optimizing bandwidth usage and loading times.
- Personal Content Recording: Cost-effective and flexible recording and time-shifting capabilities, support both nPVR (Network Personal Video Recorder) and cDVR (Cloud Digital Video Recorder). This will enhance the viewer experience by offering personalized content access.
- Transcoding: Support popular codecs such as AVC, HEVC, and VVC, with industry-leading video quality.
- Content Monetization: Introduction of cloud-native server-side ad-insertion(SSAI) technology to maximize advertising revenue.
Your feedback is highly valued and significantly influences our product roadmap. Stay tuned for official announcements and release notes for detailed information on new features and enhancements.
Updated 2 days ago