we're attempting to track a streaming video with SiteCatalyst.
The issue comes in as this video has obsviously no end and the s.media Module can't know how to set the seconds or milestones segment views.
This is resulting in no tracking calls except for the starting one.
Could a possible solution be the usage of s.media.monitor custom functions?
Here's explained how to use them together with the basic Media module settings.
Maybe a timing deployment of "sendRequest()" method could help...?
I use this occasion to ask a brief how-to example of media.monitor methods, because I've been just using the basic settings till now, as below:
s.loadModule("Media");
s.Media.autoTrack = false;
s.Media.trackMilestones = "25,50";
s.Media.segmentByMilestones = true;... ...
Thanks a lot
Yeah.. i really, really dislike the Media module. Video tracking is getting more and more popular with the clients, so it has become the biggest thorn in my side, because the nature of videos over the internet is a big mess with all kinds of moving parts internally, that make it extremely difficult to get truly accurate tracking beyond basic "start" and "stop". (actually I take that back.. I think mobile/sdk tracking is quickly becoming the thing i shake my angry fist at the most, but that's a different post!)
I think Adobe has made some heroic efforts to automate video tracking and it more or less works okay if you just have a regular (not flash) object or html5 tag embedded on the page but in practice, MOST of the time, sites implement their videos through 3rd party scripts (e.g. jwplayer, vimeo, youtube api) and the Media module automation basically goes down the drain on that count.
I understand that it needs to know how long a video is to know when to autopop the events, but I swear, 99% of the time in practice, the way Media module expects things to pop in certain orders etc.. it just doesn't align with how videos work in the real world. Even if you attempt to do it the "manual" way, more often than not it's still buggy,e.g. autoplay and buffering ALWAYS seem to screw up the open+play sequence that MUST happen in that order.
Basically, the Media module desperately needs to be rewritten to better handle streaming videos, and also just "manually" using it in general. Anyways..
Two things I have done in your situation. Overall, neither one of these options are a perfect 1:1 to normal videos with a duration, but then, streaming videos aren't really the same, so it doesn't really make sense to treat them the same.
Option #1: Use an estimated duration for your streaming video. So you said it yourself: your streaming videos have no end. Well as I mentioned, you can't calculate percent viewed unless you have a duration, pretty basic math. So, estimate a duration.
I have clients that have streaming webinars or whatever and it's true that there's technically no duration according to the player, but in reality they don't really conduct that webinar 24/7 forever. In reality it's for a set amount of time like 30 minutes or an hour or something. So, just specify the duration as that.
Yes, this will require extra custom work on your end to store/associate an estimated duration. And yes, this does have the potential for being misleading (e.g. if a webinar ends early or runs late). This option is generally good for sites that have set windows for the stream to actually be active.
Option #2: Ditch the notion of % viewed, record it as n time consumed. So the overall point of the milestones is to know how much of a video was actually watched, yes? Well, who said it has to be measured by % viewed?
How about instead, you just record n seconds consumed every n seconds. You can do this with an incrementor eVar, and/or counter event. (Part of the normal video tracking actually does include a counter event "Video Time", or a.media.timePlayed).
So basically, you'd basically just pop the events/props/eVars yourself, and ignore milestone/segment reports.
Note: This option only really works if you are using the older style video tracking that has events/props/eVars assigned for it. If you are using the newer style video tracking that does not use events/props/eVars.. well, AA does not currently offer an official way to manually pop that stuff directly. It is surely possible to unofficially do so, but I have not yet reverse engineered the latest Media module to figure out how to do that. So, in this case your only option is #1.