Live Clipping

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Limited Availability

This feature is currently in the Limited Availability phase. If you would like to try the feature, please contact your Dolby account executive or the support team.

With Live Clipping you are able to capture multiple simultaneous recordings while a broadcast event is in progress. The duration can be customized to capture the whole event as a single recording or a series of shorter clips that offer highlights that can be shared while still live.

This opens up new possibilities for engaging audiences with dynamic and interactive viewing experiences.

Creating a clip

To activate the Live Clipping feature, you must first enable the clip flag on your publish token. Then, you can use the Record Files REST APIs that let you create, delete, and get clips. Call the Create Clip REST API to create recordings for parts of a stream. The API requires providing a stream name and a time range to capture. If you want to use Google Cloud Storage (GCS) instead of the default Dolby.io storage bucket, you have to specify your storage preferences and grant Dolby.io upload access to your bucket. For more information, refer to configuration instructions. If you use the Dolby.io storage bucket, you can additionally set an expiration time for each clip to remove it automatically after a specific time period.

Setting an end time for recording a clip is optional. If left unspecified, the recording stops either at the current time or the end of the stream if it has already ended. When the specified end time extends beyond the stream's end, the recording stops at the end of the stream. When the beginning of the recording is set before the beginning of the stream, the platform initiates recording when the stream begins, provided the stream has started before clip creation. Otherwise, the platform returns a bad request. It is not possible to request clips for future timestamps.

Configuring storage

The Streaming platform supports storing recorded clips either on Dolby.io or a private GCS. The Dolby.io storage is used by default and does not require setting any storage parameters. If you want to use your own storage, you have to grant Dolby.io upload access to your bucket and provide storage details in the REST API request.

Granting Dolby.io access to your GCP storage

The following procedure explains how to grant Dolby.io upload access to third-party GCP storage buckets. Upon completion, the Dolby.io service account will have the storage object creator role for the selected storage bucket.

1. Log in to your GCP account.

2. Within your GCP console, navigate to the bucket you wish to grant access to Dolby.io and select the Permissions tab.

   

3. Click the Grant Access link.

   

4. On the side panel that appears, enter the Dolby.io service account email ([email protected]) into the New Principals text box, and select the Storage Object Creator role. These are the minimum recommended permissions for enabling reliable upload access to your storage bucket.

   

5. Click Save to confirm the provided details.

6. Check if the newly added service account is visible on the permissions list.

   

GCP storage parameters

If you want to use your own GCS storage, enter the following parameters of the storage object in the Create Clip REST API request:

• storageType: The type of storage, which should be set to Gcs.
• objectPrefix: The prefix to the object in your GCS storage bucket. To access the list of your objects, log in to your Cloud Storage, select your bucket, and open the Objects tab. Each object has a gsutil URI file path that contains the object prefix if it exists: "protocol://bucketName/optionalObjectPrefix/objectName.ext".
• gcsStorageConfig: An object for setting the bucket name for your GCS storage.
  • bucketName: The name of your GCS bucket to upload clips to. To find the names of your buckets, log in to your Cloud Storage and select the Buckets tab.