Monitor HTML5 video element

Features

The following data can be collected by the Mux Data SDK when you use the HTML Video Element SDK, as described below.

Supported Features:

• Engagement metrics
• Quality of Experience Metrics
• Web metrics such as Player Startup Time, Page Load Time, etc
• Available for deployment from a package manager
• Custom Dimensions
• Custom Beacon Domain

Live Latency is available for Native Safari HLS.

1Install mux-embed

Include the Mux JavaScript SDK on every page of your web app that includes video. You can use the Mux-hosted version of the script or install via npm. mux-embed follows semantic versioning and the API will not change between major releases.

If possible, use the SDK for your particular player (e.g. Video.js, JW Player, etc.). While the HTML5 SDK works with any modern HTML5 video player, the player-specific Mux SDK is preferable because it offers a deeper integration and in most cases collects more pieces of data. If you don't see your player listed then use mux-embed and let us know so we can prioritize creating an SDK for the player that you are using.

npm install --save mux-embed

2Initialize Mux Data

Get your ENV_KEY from the Mux environments dashboard.

import mux from 'mux-embed';

const playerInitTime = mux.utils.now();

// Initialize Mux Data monitoring by passing in the "id" attribute of your video player
mux.monitor('#my-player', {
  debug: false,
  data: {
    env_key: 'ENV_KEY', // required
    // Metadata fields
    player_name: 'Main Player', // any arbitrary string you want to use to identify this player
    player_init_time: playerInitTime,
    // ...
  }
});

Call mux.monitor and pass in a valid CSS selector or the video element itself. Followed by the SDK options and metadata. If you use a CSS selector that matches multiple elements, the first matching element in the document will be used.

Log in to the Mux dashboard and find the environment that corresponds to your env_key and look for video views. It takes about a minute or two from tracking a view for it to show up on the Metrics tab.

If you aren't seeing data, check to see if you have an ad blocker, tracking blocker or some kind of network firewall that prevents your player from sending requests to Mux Data servers.

3Make your data actionable

The only required field in the options that you pass into mux-embed is env_key. But without some metadata the metrics in your dashboard will lack the necessary information to take meaningful actions. Metadata allows you to search and filter on important fields in order to diagnose issues and optimize the playback experience for your end users.

Pass in metadata under the data key when calling mux.monitor.

mux.monitor('#my-player', {
  debug: false,
  data: {
    env_key: 'ENV_KEY', // required

    // Site Metadata
    viewer_user_id: '', // ex: '12345'
    experiment_name: '', // ex: 'player_test_A'
    sub_property_id: '', // ex: 'cus-1'

    // Player Metadata
    player_name: '', // ex: 'My Main Player'
    player_version: '', // ex: '1.0.0'
    player_init_time: '', // ex: 1451606400000

    // Video Metadata
    video_id: '', // ex: 'abcd123'
    video_title: '', // ex: 'My Great Video'
    video_series: '', // ex: 'Weekly Great Videos'
    video_duration: '', // in milliseconds, ex: 120000
    video_stream_type: '', // 'live' or 'on-demand'
    video_cdn: '' // ex: 'Fastly', 'Akamai'
  }
});

For more information, view Make your data actionable.

4Set or update metadata after initialization

There are some cases where you may not have the full set of metadata until after the video playback has started. In this case, you should omit the values when you first call monitor. Then, once you have the metadata, you can update the metadata with the updateData method.

mux.updateData({ video_title: 'My Updated Great Video' });

5Changing the video

There are two cases where the underlying tracking of the video view need to be reset:

1. New source: When you load a new source URL into an existing player.
2. New program: When the program within a singular stream changes (such as a program change within a continuous live stream).

Note: You do not need to change the video info when changing to a different source of the same video content (e.g. different resolution or video format).

New source

If your application plays multiple videos back-to-back in the same video player, you need to signal when a new video starts to the Mux SDK. Examples of when this is needed are:

• The player advances to the next video in a playlist
• The user selects a different video to play

In order to signal the Mux SDK that a new view is starting, you will need to emit a videochange event, along with metadata about the new video. See metadata in Make your data actionable for the full list of video details you can provide. You can include any metadata when changing the video but you should only need to update the values that start with video_.

It's best to change the video info immediately after telling the player which new source to play.

const myPlayer = document.querySelector('#my-player');
myPlayer.src = 'https://muxed.s3.amazonaws.com/leds.mp4';

mux.emit('#my-player', 'videochange', {
  video_id: 'abc345',
  video_title: 'My Other Great Video',
  video_series: 'Weekly Great Videos',
  // ...
});

New program

In some cases, you may have the program change within a stream, and you may want to track each program as a view on its own. An example of this is a live stream that streams multiple programs back to back, with no interruptions.

In this case, you emit a programchange event, including the updated metadata for the new program within the continuous stream. This will remove all previous video data and reset all metrics for the video view, creating a new video view. See Metadata for the list of video details you can provide. You can include any metadata when changing the video but you should only need to update the values that start with video.

Note: The programchange event is intended to be used only while the player is currently not paused. If you emit this event while the player is paused, the resulting view will not track video startup time correctly, and may also have incorrect watch time. Do not emit this event while the player is paused.

mux.emit('#my-player', 'programchange', {
  video_id: 'abc345',
  video_title: 'My Other Great Video',
  video_series: 'Weekly Great Videos',
  // ...
});

6Advanced options

Disable cookies

By default, Mux plugins for HTML5-based players use a cookie to track playback across subsequent page views in order to understand viewing sessions. This cookie includes information about the tracking of the viewer, such as an anonymized viewer ID that Mux generates for each user. None of this information is personally-identifiable, but you can disable the use of this cookie if desired. For instance, if your site or application is targeted towards children under 13, you should disable the use of cookies. For information about the specific data tracked in the cookie, please refer to: What information is stored in Mux Data HTML cookies.

This is done by setting disableCookies: true in the options.

mux.monitor('#my-player', {
  debug: false,
  disableCookies: true,
  data: {
    env_key: 'ENV_KEY',
    // ... rest of metadata
  }
}

Over-ride 'do not track' behavior

By default, Mux plugins for HTML5-based players do not respect Do Not Track when set within browsers. This can be enabled in the options passed to Mux, via a setting named respectDoNotTrack. The default for this is false. If you would like to change this behavior, pass respectDoNotTrack: true.

mux.monitor('#my-player', {
  debug: false,
  respectDoNotTrack: true, // Disable tracking of browsers where Do Not Track is enabled
  data: {
    env_key: 'EXAMPLE_ENV_KEY',
    // ... rest of metadata
  }
}

Customize error tracking behavior

By default, mux-embed will track errors emitted from the video element as fatal errors. If a fatal error happens outside of the context of the player, you can emit a custom error to the mux monitor.

mux.emit('#my-player', 'error', {
  player_error_code: 100,
  player_error_message: 'Description of error',
  player_error_context: 'Additional context for the error'
});

When triggering an error event, it is important to provide values for player_error_code and player_error_message. The player_error_message should provide a generalized description of the error as it happened. The player_error_code must be an integer, and should provide a category of the error. If the errors match up with the HTML Media Element Error, you can use the same codes as the corresponding HTML errors. However, for custom errors, you should choose a number greater than or equal to 100.

In general you should not send a distinct code for each possible error message, but rather group similar errors under the same code. For instance, if your library has two different conditions for network errors, both should have the same player_error_code but different messages.

The error message and code are combined together and aggregated with all errors that occur in your environment in order to find the most common errors that occur. To make error aggregation as useful as possible, these values should be general enough to provide useful information but not specific to each individual error (such as stack trace).

You can use player_error_context to provide instance-specific information derived from the error such as stack trace or segment-ids where an error occurred. This value is not aggregated with other errors and can be used to provide detailed information. Note: Please do not include any personally identifiable information from the viewer in this data.

Error translator

If your player emits error events that are not fatal to playback or the errors are unclear and/or do not have helpful information in the default error message and codes you might find it helpful to use an error translator or disable automatic error tracking all together.

function errorTranslator (error) {
  return {
    player_error_code: translateCode(error.player_error_code),
    player_error_message: translateMessage(error.player_error_message),
    player_error_context: translateContext(error.player_error_context)
  };
}

mux.monitor('#my-player', {
  debug: false,
  errorTranslator: errorTranslator,
  data: {
    env_key: 'ENV_KEY', // required

    // ... additional metadata
  }
});

If you return false from your errorTranslator function then the error will not be tracked. Do this for non-fatal errors that you want to ignore. If your errorTranslator function itself raises an error, then it will be silenced and the player's original error will be used.

Disable automatic error tracking

In the case that you want full control over what errors are counted as fatal or not, you may want to consider turning off Mux's automatic error tracking completely. This can be done by passing automaticErrorTracking: false in the configuration object.

mux.monitor('#my-player', {
  debug: false,
  automaticErrorTracking: false,
  data: {
    env_key: 'ENV_KEY', // required

    // ... additional metadata
  }

Use TypeScript with mux-embed Beta

TypeScript support for mux-embed is currently in beta, so you'll need to take a couple extra steps in order to use it.

Use TypeScript's triple slash <reference path="..."/> directive. At the top of your .ts or .tsx file where you want to use the types, add a line that looks like this:

/// <reference path="../../node_modules/mux-embed/dist/types/mux-embed.d.ts"/>

Note that the triple slash directive requires passing in the relevant path from your .ts or tsx file to the source d.ts file in node_modules/.

Also, you may have a linting rule that prevents you from using the triple slash directive, you can disable that with and eslint-disable line:

// eslint-disable-next-line @typescript-eslint/triple-slash-reference

Here's an example directory structure and component file:

├── node_modules/
│   └── mux-embed/
│       └── dist/
│           └── types/
│               └── mux-embed.d.ts
└── src/
    └── video-component/
        └── video-component.ts

// NOTE: You may also need to disable linter rules, such as this example for @typescript-eslint
// eslint-disable-next-line @typescript-eslint/triple-slash-reference
/// <reference path="../../node_modules/mux-embed/dist/types/mux-embed.d.ts"/>
import mux from 'mux-embed';

// ...

let videoEl?: HTMLVideoElement;

// This should now be type valid, too!
videoEl?.mux.destroy();

This opt-in approach is temporary while we're in beta with TypeScript support. If you run into any issues with the types, please let us know so we can improve them.

Customize beacon collection domain

If you have integrated a custom domain for Data collection, specify your custom domain by setting beaconCollectionDomain.

mux.monitor('#my-player', {
  debug: false,
  beaconCollectionDomain: 'CUSTOM_DOMAIN', // ex: 'foo.bar.com'
  data: {
    env_key: 'ENV_KEY', // required
    // ... additional metadata
  }
});