Frequency Documentation

Frequency Studio only natively supports HLS and RTMP Pull URLs. If another source is required you must contact Frequency for additional help and there may be additional costs associated with airing live programming.

Frequency does not support SCTE insertion for live events at this time so all ad markers should be present in the source feed for Frequency to pass through to the endpoint.

Frequency does not support closed caption creation for live events so all captions must be provided as embedded 608/708 captions for Frequency to pass through to the endpoint.

All changes to a schedule are reflected immediately in Frequency’s EPG outputs. However, distributors refresh data at their own regular intervals which can vary from once a day to several times a day. Keep this in mind when making day-of changes to a schedule. Depending on the platform, these changes might not be reflected in the EPG.

Automatics switching should be used for live events that have a known start and stop time.

Manual switching should be used for live events with an unknown start and stop time.

If an automatic switching live event has ended early or needs to be extended you can update the end time in the Schedule UI for the event to accommodate the new end time.

Receivers warm up 1 hour in advance for Manual Switching live events and the Prepare Live Switch button can only be enabled 30 minutes prior to scheduled start time.

All distributors have their own QA windows ranging from 1-8 weeks and commences upon receipt of the feeds from Frequency.

QA feedback is generally relayed back to Frequency and not the content provider. In these instances, Frequency will work with the content provider if necessary to fix any QA issues.

Upon the signing of a work order authorizing Frequency to deliver a channel, we require 3-5 business day to provision, configure and deliver the channel.

Content providers should maintain a line of communication with their distribution platforms as not all distributors provide updates to Frequency. This includes any services leading up to delivery, launch and post launch.

When removing a channel from a platform, the content provider should notify both Frequency and the distributor, coordinating with the distributor for a takedown date.

When migrating a channel origin source to Frequency playout, coordination of migrating live feeds on a distribution platform must be coordinated by the content provider. Live feeds should not be taken down until the new feed has been delivered by Frequency and passed the distributor’s QA period.

Frequency is not in the direct ad sales business. We enable advertising on behalf of all constituents. This includes cue point detection, automated insertion, and SSAI.

Frequency performs SSAI and CDN for distributors that request us to do so.

Frequency uses MediaTailor for SSAI and charges on a CPM-basis.

Frequency does not provide an ad decisioning system or an ADS wrapper. We interface with VAST-tags (ADS) to execute decisioning, insertion, and beaconing when applicable.

When performing SSAI, Frequency configures the VAST-tag provided by the distributor. All content provider VAST-tags should be sent directly to the distributor. Any exceptions to this should be requested by the distributor.

Frequency does not support inventory splits. The only exception to this would be for Vizio in which case Frequency can route multiple VAST tags from both the distributor and content provider.

Content providers can implement their own ads via ADS waterfall or schedule as an interstitial (optional).

CDN and SSAI charges (among other variable costs) are billed monthly in arrears.

For the distribution platforms that handle CDN, CDN charges will come from those platforms.

For the distribution platforms in which Frequency handles end-user CDN, Frequency would bill based on bitrate and watchtime in terms of data delivered (GB per stream).

All Frequency feeds are configured for specific endpoints in order to meet their spec requirements.

Many distributors will request marketing materials in addition to the images we deliver in the EPG. Distributors will provide guidelines and specs for these additional creatives and they should be sent directly to the distributor.

Some distributors have specific ad load requirements so variant channels might be needed for distribution if the channel as built in Studio does not adhere to those specs. For example, Roku requires 8 minutes of ads per hour and will flag any ad loads that exceed this.

Some distributors like Prime Video and Fubo require specific playout redundancies which carry additional cost to the content provider.

Playlists work best with short form content (3-10 minutes).

If using content longer than 10 minutes, or full episodes, ensure that cuepoints are present so any automation or playlist program can insert ad breaks.

You can "detect cue points" on a video in Manage in the video details, which will overwrite cue points with any black frames it detects.

To maximize the features of Rule playlists, use the "+" button at the right of the search box to add the current query as a rule to your playlist. Note that the number of videos searched is the number that will be added, if available. You can modify this in the advanced search options.

The default search retrieves 50 videos per rule, but this can be extended as needed.

Series title searches require an exact title match in Playlists (unlike Manage).

Add a rule for short-form content at the end of your playlist to minimize time fill.

Keep playlists under 1,000 videos to maintain optimal performance.

Series Automations must have existing programs created and must match the automation duration to fill properly. As a result, static-length series, where programs have predictable durations, are the best use case. (For example, if all of your 22-minute shows are exactly 26-minute programs, the automation should also be set to 26 minutes).

Series Automations have fallback rules available that allow for a playlist to be used in the case it fails to execute. Any content can be used for this fallback rule and not just the content in the series.

Test your automations using the "Immediate" set schedule before the start time to ensure they fill as expected. Check that time fill is minimal (it should be less than the duration of a 30 second ad slot). Run multiple tests, as results may vary.

When using "Do Not Repeat" rules, err on the side of caution. Set them so content doesn't repeat within a few hours rather than several days. The amount of content available and the frequency of automation use can dramatically impact how long an automation runs before resorting to fallback content.

You can combine several series into one automation (up to 5). If you need more, create multiple automations (e.g., Series 1-5: Automation A, Series 6-10: Automation B).

Use an Internal Title to label any specific details about your automations.

When series automations are replaced, they use the Program Title on the schedule, not the automation title.

When configuring a series automation, note that the left side represents rules and behaviors for the Series component of it, and the right side "Select Content Fallback Source" is only relevant if fallback content is forced to be used. For example, the ad load settings used will always be the existing programs, but if the fallback is used, it will use that ad load % and ad pods per hour instead.

If an automation fails to execute before playout, you can still modify the underlying content/rules to get it to execute while playing out on the schedule. It will take up to 5 minutes to see if the set of rules is executed successfully. If you've waited over 5 minutes and it still says that an automation "has not been executed", it likely has failed again.

Note what the "Additional Tasks" mean for playlist automations/series automation fallback sources. They have different behaviors based on the set of static rules:

Create additional "Brands" to give yourself more control over your dynamic interstitials.  You can create brands for active interstitials per channel or archive old ones no longer in use that you don't want to delete. You can also "disable" interstitials.

You cannot disable or delete interstitials that are currently scheduled. Interstitials are selected 6 hours in advance. To permanently move these out of the dynamic interstitial collections, you have a few options:

If you try to disable an interstitial a validation step will prevent you from disabling/deleting it if it is currently scheduled.

Using different "content types" or brands is a great way to slice your interstitial groups, as these are parameters that you can search in your collections.

Ensure your collection has at least one video before using it in your programs or program templates.

Create a generic interstitial collection as a fallback source for all your other collections as a safeguard.

Err on the side of caution when using Do Not Repeat rules, if you run out of interstitials it will use time fill.  Make sure your fallback collection does not run a do not repeat rule.  Shuffle is your friend here in most circumstances for your "Interstitial Selection."

Every component break, whether interstitials or ad pods will use a cue point available, ad breaks and interstitials can be combined into one cue point.

Try modifying the ad pods per hour and ad minutes per hour in order to achieve the results you want if you're unhappy. You can always delete the ones you don't like the results of if you're not happy and try with a different set of settings in the next pass.

When creating programs from templates in bulk, please scan every title to make sure no ad breaks are too near each other, and nothing else seems unusual with the program before advancing to the next screen.

Using the Manage filters "Videos without programs", "videos with cue points" can be a great way to find videos that still need programs created that a template can help with.

Be mindful when creating programs via templates if you want to use the series title or not. If you've selected multiple in the list view with both movies and shows, you may want to title those using different pieces of metadata. You can filter by program format and series to help with this as well.

Program templates can be set to use more cue points than the video and still work successfully, provided the breaks are not set to "must have."

If you are getting "not enough cue points" for a video, check several things:

It is advisable to create your programs by series at a time since the nature and number of cuepoints can change between shows (or even seasons).

You can order your programs by season and episodes and the programs will be created in that order.  This can make selecting them when adding to schedule a little simpler, since they will be in the correct order without filtering needed.

You cannot select more than 100 videos at a time when creating programs.

You can include as many rows of metadata on a single CSV for ingestion as you would like. A CSV does not need to be uploaded per title, but Frequency can support it if the content provider chooses to do so.

All metadata must be formatted to Frequency’s specifications

All Frequency S3 buckets are provisioned with a 60 day content retention policy

Frequency can support pulling files from a content provider’s existing S3 bucket as well as provisioning a new Frequency hosted S3 bucket for the content provider to upload files to.

Frequency transcodes all files on ingest to our output spec so higher resolution and bitrate files are not needed unless otherwise specified.

There are exceptions to bypassing transcoding but these must first be discussed with Frequency Operations.