Considerations and best practices

To use TVSDK most effectively, you should consider certain details of its operation and follow certain best practices.

Considerations

Remember the following information when using TVSDK:

• Adobe Primetime does not currently work on Android emulators.

  You must use real devices for testing.

• Playback is supported only for HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) content.

• Main video content can be multiplexed, where video and audio streams are in the same rendition, or non multiplexed, where video and audio streams are in separate renditions.

• The TVSDK API is implemented in Java.

• Currently, you need to run most TVSDK API operations on the UI thread, which is the main Android thread.

  Operations that run correctly on the main thread might throw an error and exit when run on a background thread.

• Video playback requires the Adobe Video Engine (AVE). This affects how and when media resources can be accessed:

  • Closed captioning is supported to the extent provided by the AVE.

  • Depending on encoder precision, the actual encoded media duration might differ from the durations that are recorded in the stream resource manifest.

    There is no reliable way to re-synchronize between the ideal virtual timeline and the actual playout timeline. Progress tracking of the stream playback for ad management and Video Analytics must use the actual playout time, so reporting and user interface behavior might not precisely track the media and advertisement content.

  • The incoming user agent name for all media requests from the TVSDK on this platform is assigned the following string pattern:

    "Adobe Primetime/ +
    <varname>
    originalUserAgent
    </varname>"
    

    All ad-related calls use the Android default user agent or the custom user agent if you set it while setting up ad-insertion metadata.

Best practices

Here are recommended practices for TVSDK:

• Use HLS version 3.0 or above for program content.
• Run most TVSDK operations in the main (UI) thread, not on background threads.