Add support for concatenation of AdsMediaSources

[priscila225]

Is it possible to have a DynamicConcatenatingMediaSource with multiple AdsMediaSource on this?

Example of one case:

mediaSource1 and mediaSource2 requesting AdsMediaSource for each media source, concatenate the results and then play :

val concatenatedSource = ConcatenatingMediaSource(mediaSource1 , mediaSource2);
dynamicMediaSource.addMediaSource(concatenatedSource)
player?.prepare(dynamicMediaSource, false, false)

When I tried without the AdsMediaSource, it works fine. But when i tried to add AdsMediaSource for each one and concatenate this i got a nullpointer.

Just want to know if this is possible and if yes, please provide a example of how to handle multiple ads with playlist.

Thank you!

[andrewlewis]

This is not possible at the moment, because AdsMediaSource asserts it is the top level source used to configure the player. You can't compose it with other media sources as ImaAdsLoader's logic makes assumptions about the player timeline when it handles player events, and these assumptions may be incorrect if the player is actually playing a concatenation.

I'll mark this as an enhancement to allow composition of AdsMediaSources, which will involve making ImaAdsLoader work with multi-period timelines. We'd need to decide whether to allow having just one ImaAdsLoader shared by all the AdsMediaSources in the concatenation (it would request each successive ad tag at the earliest time and the app wouldn't have to take care of creating/releasing multiple ad loaders). #3693 tracks a related enhancement, to support inserting ads in content that has a multi-period timeline.

[priscila225]

Thanks @andrewlewis ! And for now, you know a way to workaround this? maybe I can workaround this by creating the playlist manually without the DynamicConcatenatingMediaSource and requesting ima for each video of the list on the moment before the player start one by one?

[andrewlewis]

Yes. You can just play each AdsMediaSource separately, one at a time (re-preparing the player a new source each time the preceding playback transitions to the ended state). This has the disadvantage that the player can't pre-buffer the next source, so the transitions won't be seamless, and of course will add some complexity to your app for managing switching from one source to the next.

[priscila225]

Makes sense, this seamless transition is awesome! Hope to have this soon. Thanks to mark as enhancement

[victorraft]

Hi, @andrewlewis, are there any updates on this one? Any idea of when this functionality could be released?
Thanks!

[andrewlewis]

No updates, I'm afraid. At the moment we aren't planning to look at this soon, but if anyone else is waiting for the feature please leave a comment so we can prioritize based on demand. Thanks!

[cadalt]

I'm a dev working for a major media corporation... this would be a great feature for us

[13robot]

Hi,
In Brightcove sdk , we can add a playlist and a single ad URL to BrightcoveExoPlayerVideoView. But that ad will play with each video in the playlist. So is there any similar solution with Exoplayer.

[andrewlewis]

We don't have any updates yet I'm afraid. The recommended approach for now is for apps to change the player's source each time a playlist items finishes playing. #3636 describes how to pre-load ads, which may help reduce the delay when starting to play a new playlist item.