Frequency Documentation

• Live Feed Preparation: Scheduled Live Programs with Manual Switching can be Prepared in advance to enable quick playout switching to the live feed. Users are able to Prepare a live feed for manual switching up to 30 minutes prior to the scheduled Start time, or Frequency Studio would automatically trigger live feed preparation 30 minutes in advance based on the scheduled Start time.

  • When preparing a live feed for live switching, this process may take about a minute to provision live feed receivers. A progress bar is shown to the user to indicate the estimated remaining time until completion.

  • When a live feed is ready for live switching, the user can Start live and switch the channel’s playout to the live feed with high accuracy (within 4 seconds of the video shown in the Live Feed Preview).

  • The Live Feed Playout preview comes from the Live receiver’s output rather than the original live feed source to minimize video preview latency for improved live switching accuracy.

• New Manual Switch UI: Users can now manage the manual switch to live in the tab “Manual Switch” within the Live Program details modal. This replaces the existing workflow where the user would do so from the Broadcast pane side toolbar with the new workflow which can be found in the Live Program details modal in the Manual Switch tab, after a program has been saved with automatic switching turned off.

  

• The “Start & End as Scheduled“ switch is now called “Automatic Switching“. When it is turned on, a live program will start and end at the scheduled time. An automatic switching program’s duration can be modified and saved even after the program has already started. Reducing the duration of an Automatic Switching program until the channel’s playhead is at or before the program’s end time will end the program immediately. The “End Broadcast“ button has been removed.

  Frequency Administrators are now able to choose to record Live Programs that are scheduled for Automatic Switching. To do so, the toggle “Record Program” must be enabled in advance of the Start time. Additional configuration is required when recording a Live Program:

  

  

  • Since recorded Live Programs creates a new video found in MANAGE, additional metadata must be provided for Brand and Content Format. For special scenarios, optional metadata can be added such as Series, Content Type, Rating Descriptors, and Keywords. When setting a Series for the recording, the system would automatically set a season and episode number for each Live event in order to support episodic sequencing. The system would set the season to the current Year (4 digits, e.g. “2024”) and episode to the current month-day (e.g.: 130).

  • When recording videos, SCTE-35 ad markers are detected and ad slates are removed from the final asset. These ad break positions are then adjusted and stored as cue points for future ad pod insertion for the video.

  • Recorded videos are ingested and can be reviewed in MANAGE.

• There are changes to metadata fields for Live Programs:

  

  • Custom Metadata (new): This new field can be used to store any data for custom use as text or JSON. This value for this field flows through to the channel’s EPG outputs.

  • Required Fields: Description, Country of Origin, Parental Rating, Genre, Language, and Artwork are now required fields, consistent with the same metadata fields requirements as non-Live video content today. By default, the channel’s artwork is used and can be replaced by a HD-resolution 16:9 aspect ratio PNG or JPG asset.

• Similar to the new Scheduled Manual Live switching, Unscheduled Live Playout Overrides now also support the ability to Prepare live feeds for quick-switching. When setting up for bulk channel Playout Override, the user can trigger live feed receiver provisioning using the Prepare button.

• When performing an Unscheduled Live Playout Override, a schedule entry is now automatically added to the impacted channels. The Title and Description of this entry can be customized. Key details:

  

  • The Live Program Start time would be based on the actual Playout Override switch time.

  • The End time and Duration of the added Live Program is undetermined while a Playout Override is active (not yet concluded).

  • The End Time and Duration of the added Live Program will reflect the actual end time and total runtime when a Live Playout Override concludes (Restored to Scheduled Content).

• Program ID

• Season Number

• Episode Number

• Duration (now in seconds)

• The end time for the Live Program is only determined once the Playout Override has concluded. However, the EPG output would temporarily show an end time 3 hours into future for the live Program until the actual end time is determined.

• If Title or Description is not customized by the user, the default value used would be “Live Program” for either fields.

• DVR - Videos ingested from recording of Live Programs

• CC - Videos ingested from a custom ingestion integration (Custom Connector)

• Support for concurrent video uploads and multi-part chunking to maximize the throughput of the user’s internet connectivity

• Support for additional video container types and validation steps (MP4/AVI/MPG/MXF/MOV)

• Support for uploading larger video file sizes via the web browser for high bitrate formats such as ProRes and UHD

• Support for uploading larger video file sizes via the web browser for high bitrate formats such as ProRes and UHD

• Default video metadata when none is provided from the Brand for Genres, Sub-genres, Region, Parental Rating, and Language

• Expanded coverage for additional video processing exceptions scenarios

• Programs (with or without Programs): Find content that requires creation of Programs

• Cue Points (with or without Cue Points): Find content that requires preparation of ad break positions

• Subtitles (with or without Subtitles): Find content that requires addition of subtitles

• Contextual and technical metadata filters

  • Status, Content Format, Series Name, Season #, Episode #, Rating, Languages, Genres, Availability, Duration, Programs, Cue Points, Subtitles

• New Live View metadata columns

  • Format, Series Title, Season / Episode, Programs

• Expanded sorting in List View

  • Clicking on the table header allows for sorting specific column:

    • Video Title, Duration (new), Season / Episode (new), Format (new), Programs (new)

• Dashboard- Real-time summary with actionable alerts for exceptions

• Feeds- Combined ingestion feed types, including native S3 ingestion, email notifications, and exception management

• Videos- Parallel video components validation with detailed error messaging to support exception resolution. Video uploads are now performed here instead of from MANAGE

• File - Individual file processing statuses, including Manifest parsing results and Manifest matching evaluation

• Dashboard - Real-time summary with actionable alerts for exceptions

  

• Feeds - Combined ingestion feed types, including native S3 ingestion, email notifications, and exception management

  

• Videos - Parallel video components validation with detailed error messaging to support exception resolution. Video uploads are now performed here instead of from MANAGE.

  

• Files - Individual file processing statuses, including Manifest parsing results and Manifest matching evaluation

  

• Restrict by Start/End Times - When using the Back-to-back pattern, the user can further Restrict by start and end times of the day. The programs scheduled would only be added per day when they fit within those start and end times daily. This would improve scheduling channels having multi-series and/or date-parted blocks.

  

  Date-part repeated programs

• When uploading a video, the toggle to Automatically Approve is no longer displayed nor required

• When the video upload completes, it moves on to transcoding (when applicable) without requiring a separate Approval step

• When managing in progress manual video uploads, the sub-status Pending Approval is removed

• SCHEDULE | Remove Gaps - When removing gaps/overlaps for multiple weeks at the same time where the user selects the first program and then jumps multiple weeks/months into the future to select the last program, scheduled programming was not loaded in between weeks. Therefore, Remove Gaps would not include scheduled programs from the skipped/jumped timeframe. This fix would load all scheduled programs in this scenario between the schedule weeks/month jump in order to calculate the correct remove gaps logic is executed.

• MANAGE | Video Search - When searching for videos after a previous search and not in the first page of a multi-page result, search would not execute due to a pagination bug. This fix resolve this and subsequent search would continue as expected.

• SCHEDULE | Calendar View - Studio users who use the Ctrl + Left Mouse Click via the Safari browser (MacOS) to perform Right Clicking operations was not triggering the right-click menus. This fix adds support for this scenario.

• Number of Times Until This Date - As an alternative to scheduling based on the number of programs count, the user can also choose to schedule until a specific date. This would not require the user to calculate the number of times required and instead focus on an end date of the scheduled Repeat Programs pattern. For example, the user can set the end date of December 31, 2023 and programs would be scheduled until the end of December 31, 2023.

  

  Repeat by number of times or until a specific date

• Restrict by Seasons - When scheduling with episodic content belonging to a Series and using the Next Episode or Shuffle content selection, the user has the ability to restrict the episodes by one or more season(s). Doing so would limit the episodes belonging to the restricted set of seasons, while retaining the episodic sequences across seasons. Furthermore, we are also showing the total number of seasons based on your selection.

  

  Restrict by specific season(s) to narrow down to specific episodes

• Scheduling Pattern: Days of the Week - Number of times refers to the number of weeks. If the pattern is MWF and the number is 5, that means it would schedule programs for specific days of the week (MWF) for 5 total weeks.

• High Maximum for Number of Times - For Back-to-back scheduling patterns, we now allow a maximum of 2,000. For Daily, we now allow a maximum of 365. For Days of the Week or Weekly, we now allow a maximum value of 52.

• Multiple Linear Programs per Episode Exceptions - Pre-selection of linear programs are now based on previous selections for the same Series. This pre-selection is stored at the browser level per user based on the last effort selecting programs per episode for the same series.

• Choose content

  • For all content (VOD, Automation, Live):

    • Same as Selected

  • For episodic content (VOD):

    • Next Episode (On last episode: Loop or Stop)

    • Shuffle

• Number of times

  • 1 to 1,000

• Choose programming pattern

  • Back-to-back (i.e.: marathon)

  • Daily (i.e.: episodice stripping

  • Days of the Week (Mo, Tu, We, Th, Fr, Sa, Su)

  • Weekly

• Visibility: System notifications are visible at the top of the tool (e.g.: Save was successful) while page validations are in-line where the validation occurs (e.g.: Date field should be in date format).

• Dismissal: All notifications can be dismissed by the user. Non-critical notifications are automatically dismissed after 5 seconds.

• Channels need to be configured to use the Live Switching V2 engine to take advantage of the new capability

• With Live Switching V2, bulk live switching via Playout Override to a live stream would trigger the playout override in 2.5 minutes. This time is required to spin up live stream receivers for each channel in parallel before the actual playout switch.

• Create new schedule blocks from scratch. The user can also create one from an existing selection of scheduled programming as they are able to today by using the right-click menu while editing a schedule in Calendar view.

• Edit an existing schedule block’s sequence of programming, as well as edit the block’s metadata such as title, notes, or which channel it is intended for.

• Delete existing schedule blocks.

• User Details - When a user with no last name set is editing a linear channel, it will no longer display as "null".

• Automations - Playlists using dynamic rules now display the correct number of videos when creating an automation.

• Linear - Videos that are only encoded in an HLS format will now display that they are ineligible to be made into linear programs.

• Edit Schedule - Days shortened in the schedule due to Daylight Savings will no longer display a program gap when fully scheduled.

• Preview Broadcast - The broadcast pane now correctly displays the time in program for automations.

• Broadcast - Removed the "Kill Broadcast" button in the broadcast pane as its function has been replaced by the override function in Connect.

• Playlist Program - The error message when creating invalid playlist programs will not appropriately show in front of the modal the user is viewing.

When channels are overridden to playout their Rescue slates or a Live stream, they would show as “Overridden” in the user interface. Overridden channels can be restored to original scheduled programming.

• Override to Rescue Slate- Switch the selected channel(s)'s playout to their rescue slates. Each channel would use its own rescue slate (also known as “technical difficulty channel creative”), which are managed in ACCOUNT/Linear Channel details.

• Override to Live Stream - Switch the selected channel’s playout to a user-input live stream. We currently support HLS and RTMP Pull sources

• Return to Scheduled Programming - Resumes the channel’s originally scheduled programming.

• Support for the ability for Automation Programs to execute Immediately instead of a specific number of minutes before its scheduled Start time.

• For Series (episode selection), we support the Additional Task of “Shuffle FIFO” (first-in-first-out) when used with Do Not Repeat within X Minutes. This allows for Do Not Repeat to repeat episodes when all episodes have been chosen within the Do Not Repeat timeframe, and would repeat the first episode within the range. This ensures that repeated episodes within the timeframe are as far apart as possible when necessary.

• Linear Program that matches the scheduled Automation Program duration, and:

  • Linear Program containing the channel’s title in the Internal Title

  • Linear Program containing the word “default” in the Internal Title

  • First linear program that remains based on last modified date

• Playlist Lists - Added spacing between word Updated and Time integer under the Created column for Playlist in Build.

• Upload Video Format - The messaging under the video asset upload field was incorrectly stating video files must be at least mp4. This has been updated to reflect all video formats accepted for upload.

• Automation Programs - The Add to Schedule button is now clickable when an Automation Program was selected from the Programs list in Schedule.

• Program Preview -  The Preview button is no long clickable when zero Playlist Programs have been selected.

• Error Messaging  - Program titles are now truncated when displayed in Schedule error messaging.

• Dashboard - Playout, scheduling, and streams alerts

• Channels - Channels (distributed and non-distributed)

• Streams - Streams configurations (channels-to-distributor)

• Monitor - Monitoring and playout snapshot history for distributed channels

• Randomize episodes based on selected Series of the Automation Program with Linear programs in selected series containing specific Internal Title.

• Do Not Repeat Within (X Minutes) look-back for unique episodes to prevent re-scheduling. If all episodes are eliminated due to look-back, the fallback logic will choose the oldest episode first within Do Not Repeat Within (X Minutes) timeframe. This results in an evenly distributed set of episodes across the given look-back timeframe.

• Linear program in the selected Series with Internal Title containing the current channel's name.

• Linear program in the selected Series with Internal Title containing the text "Default".

• Linear program in the selected Series with empty Internal Title text.

• First linear program in the selected Series if no matches to the above sequence.

• Contact Support - The information in the "Contact Support" modal has been updated, and there is now a link to a full Support Manual.

• Schedule - Event colors have been changed for VOD program, Live stream, Automation program and Draft type. Schedule rows now support taller sizes.

• Connect - This is now the default page on accessing Studio for users who have access to it.

• Connect | Channels - The count of your linear channels is now displayed.

• Manage - The loading circle now displays once when editing metadata.

• Account - The linear channel thumbnails now load the correct aspect ratio.

• Connect | Streams - Notes now load correctly when clicking into a status in the distribution matrix.

• Graphics - Fixed an endless loop when accessing channels without a graphics set up.

• Linear Program Components - Dynamic interstitials can now be placed next to ad pods when creating or editing a Linear Program.

• Manage | Collections - Fallback Collections are no longer required and the option “None” can be selected to clear previous configurations.

• Account - Channel logos that are 1:1 or 16:9 can now be uploaded.

• Schedule Templates - Overlap errors caused when scheduling Templates into the following weeks has been fixed.

• Manage | Linear Program - The magic wand will no longer trim interstitial segments.

• Manage | Collections and Automation -Increments of less than one hour for Do Not Repeat rules are now supported. Duration is set in minutes with a max of seven days or 10,080 minutes.

• Manage | Do Not Repeat - Automations that have Do Not Repeat and Shuffle selected now generate different results.

• Do Not Repeat for Playlists Automation Programs - Added an option to not repeat videos when configuring a Playlist Automation, until the set amount of hours have passed when an automation is used multiple times on a schedule

• Login Case Sensitivity - Account Name and User Names are no longer case sensitive.

• Internal Titles - Will now display when adding templates to the Schedule.

• Live Programs - Can now select additional metadata such as Rating and Country.

• Automation Programs - Improved ad placement logic when selecting ad breaks for playlist automations.

• Surface Series Id - From the Video Details view in Manage you can now copy the Series Id when hovering over the info icon next to the Series name. This feature has also been added to the Video title.

• Schedule Paging - The issue with paging through past and future weeks in the Schedule tool has been resolved.

• Schedule DST - UI changes to notify you about Daylight Savings Time are available in the Schedule tool. In the Calendar view, the day header will be highlighted based on the DST timezone of each schedule. Please review the start/end times and adjust as necessary. The schedule should show continuous start/end timestamps when there are no gaps. Time slots 11 pm - 12 am are blocked to account for DST.

Features

• Manage Collection - Brand names configured per Collection are displayed in a column when viewing all Collections and as a field in Collection Details.

• Schedule Copy/Paste Expansion - Copy and paste weeks of programming while editing your schedule. To do this hold shift, select multiple weeks of programming, copy, and paste.

• Shuffle Automation Programs - Shuffle is available as a rule for Linear Program Selection when creating or updating automation programs.

• Linear Program Editor Shortcuts - Using Shift + D, while editing a linear program, brings up the page Add Dynamic Interstitial.

• Linear Channel Creatives - Duration requirements have been removed when uploading creatives to allow for assets longer than 5 minutes.

• Support Modal - Contact information for Frequency support is provided across all tools. Located in the top right corner under “Contact Support”

• Manage - Show real-time character count while editing video metadata

• Linear Programs - Dynamic interstitial title now displays in linear program preview / editor

• Automation Programs - Can no longer set target ad load 50% or higher

Features

• Manage Automation Programs - From Manage you can now create or edit Automation Programs. This functionality was previously done within Schedule. Now all automation program configurations are completed within Manage.

• Improved Automation Program Series Workflow  -  From the Automation tab in Manage you can now use Series to create Automation Programs. Select up to three different Series, configure advertising, and choose additional business rules to schedule your series automation program.

• Interstitial Collection By Brand - Interstitial Collection now supports filtering by Brand to power dynamic interstitials in linear programs.

• UI/UX Improvements - Studio now has more cohesive styling across all tools.

• Manage Interstitial Collections - Manage Interstitial Collections - From Manage you can now create and manage collections of interstitials such as bumpers, idents, promotions and more. Interstitial collections allow you to add sets of interstitials to linear programs that will be dynamically populated in a program based on predefined business rules. By managing interstitials dynamically, programmers can now setup rules that will automatically update promotional content across many linear programs saving significant amounts of time.

• Linear Program Editor - When editing a linear program you can now double click on the components, such as ad pods, interstitials, and video segments, to open the editing modals for each component.

• Manage - Cue points can now be imported into linear programs that contain interstitials.

• Linear Program Editor - The timeline position indicator no longer resets to zero when adding components but maintains its location respective to the last component added to the linear program.

• Build - Up to three complete advanced search queries can now be used to return results for building dynamic playlists.

• Manage - Videos are no longer deselected when managing them from the list view.

• Manage - Series and Linear metadata is now displayed within the List view.

• Schedule - Double click feature no longer pastes programs after copy/cut of programs.

• Linear Program Editor - Keyboard shortcuts are now available when editing a linear program.

• Schedule - Users can now drag and drop multiple linear programs. In edit mode hold the Shift button on your keyboard and select several inline programs. Then release the Shift key and all programs remain highlighted. Finally click the highlighted programs and drag and drop to the desired location.

• Schedule - Saving the Schedule with overlapping VOD programs is no longer allowed. In order to save the Schedule all over lapping VOD programs must be corrected.

• Schedule/Manage - Video and Program previews player now show captions when present.

• Schedule - Live programming can now be added into a channels play-out. There are two paths for this feature. First is scheduling live programs automatically in the schedule by double clicking on the time block and selecting the Live tab. Second is located at the bottom the broadcast pane is a One-Time Live section where you can switch to a live stream in real time.

• Manage - Subtitle files can now be included when manually uploading a video through Manage. Below the video asset upload is now a subtitle file upload which can take either a URL or a local file.

• Linear Program Editor Magic Wand - Updated linear program component validation.

  1. If the sum of video/interstitial components and ad pod components are less than the target duration the magic wand feature increase the ad pod component to satisfy the target duration. If the duration sum of component is greater than the target duration the magic wand will suggest increasing the target duration.

  2. If the duration sum of component exceeds the target duration press the magic wand will remove the time fill.

  3. If the duration sum of components exceeds the target duration the magic wand will reduce the duration of ad pods by 30 seconds while maintaining a minimum of 30 seconds for ad pods. 

• Schedule - A Paste button has been added to the editing actions that a located at the top of the schedule while in edit mode.