Skip to main content

Viewer Experience

The Viewer Experience report shows the streaming quality of your real viewers. Its data comes from the playback sessions that the Surfmeter Player SDK reports from your apps, not from probe measurements. Each data point is one playback session of one viewer.

You can reach the report from Reports > Viewer Experience in the sidebar.

Note

The report is empty until your apps send sessions with the Player SDK. To set up the SDK, create a key under APIs and Keys > Player SDK API Keys (see Player SDK API Keys).

Time range and filters​

Use the time range picker and interval selector at the top of the page, as on the Explorer pages. To zoom in, drag across a time range in one of the charts. Share copies a link to the report with the current settings. View in Explorer opens the video Explorer with the same sessions, time range, and filters.

The measurement filters apply to all cards of the report. Filters that only apply to probes, such as study, client, client group, or tag, are not shown. Instead, you can filter by device type, operating system and its version, and browser and its version.

Key metrics​

The Key Metrics card shows the totals for all sessions in the selected time range and filters, in three groups:

  • Audience: the number of sessions, unique viewers (distinct devices that played video), and the total play time.
  • Startup: the median and 90th percentile of the initial loading delay (time from starting playback to the first frame), video start failures, and exits before video start.
  • Playback: the stalling ratio (share of play and stalling time spent stalling), video playback failures, the average video bitrate, and the average ITU-T P.1203 overall MOS.

Select the icon on a tile to open the affected sessions in the Explorer, for example all sessions with a video start failure.

Failure KPIs​

The failure KPIs follow the definitions of CTA-2066. Each is a share of all sessions:

  • Video start failures: sessions with a fatal player error in which playback never started.
  • Exits before video start: sessions that ended before playback started, without a fatal player error.
  • Video playback failures: sessions in which playback started and that had a fatal player error. A session counts as failed even if playback recovered from the error.

Only fatal errors count towards these KPIs. Sessions whose only errors are configuration errors, such as no media item set in the app, are left out of all counts, because no viewer saw them.

Insights​

The Insights card lists audience segments that are clearly worse off than your viewers overall, for example an app version with many start failures or an ISP with frequent stalling.

Surfmeter compares each device type, operating system, app version, ISP, CDN, country, content type, and browser with all sessions. A segment is listed when it has at least 30 sessions and at least 1 % of all sessions, and when one of these conditions is true:

  • Its video start failures, video playback failures, stalling ratio, exits before video start, or initial loading delay are at least 1.5 times the overall value.
  • Its P.1203 overall MOS is at least 0.25 lower than the overall value.

Each segment shows its worst KPI. The card lists up to six segments, those with the largest difference first. Select View affected sessions to open them in the Explorer.

Charts​

Two charts show KPIs over time:

  • Audience shows the number of sessions, split by content type.
  • Experience over time shows the stalling ratio, split by ISP.

In both charts, you can choose another KPI and split it by another dimension, or show all sessions as one series. A split shows the six values with the most sessions. Volume KPIs (sessions and unique viewers) are shown as stacked bars, all others as lines. Time buckets with fewer than three sessions are left out of the line charts. Click a legend entry to hide or show a series.

Breakdown​

The Breakdown table compares the KPIs per value of one dimension. Choose the dimension from the dropdown:

  • Device type, operating system, browser
  • App version, player, streaming format
  • ISP, country, city, CDN
  • Content type, stream

The table shows up to 25 values, those with the most sessions first. Select the icon next to a value to open its sessions in the Explorer.

Player errors​

The Player Errors card lists the most frequent errors reported by the player, in separate tables for fatal and non-fatal errors. For each error, the table shows the number of sessions, their share of all sessions, and how many sessions had the error before playback started.

Group the errors by error code or by SVTA category:

  • By error code: one row per error, with the error type and code reported by the player, the standardized SVTA code (SVTA2070), and the most frequent error message.
  • By SVTA category: one row per SVTA error category. Errors without an SVTA code are grouped in a row of their own.

Select the icon next to an error or category to open the sessions with that error in the Explorer.