Overview

Quality of Experience (QoE) is a crucial aspect that ensures users have a high-quality video performance while using applications. QoE is closely related to analytics in the context of video streaming and application performance. Analytics play a crucial role in measuring and understanding the QoE of users when consuming video content. QOE insights are obtained through analytics and can be used to identify, analyze, and resolve Quality of Service (QoS) issues, leading to a significant boost in the QoE for users. 

 

Users benefit from specific analytics that cover during and after-delivery statistics for every viewed video. Users then can use these analytics to assess video delivery experience, identify and resolve any Quality of Service (QoS) issues, therefore improving the QoE for end-users. VIDIZMO provides out-of-the-box analytics to you for improved user experience and allows you to achieve efficiency in your network resource utilization. Moreover, you can also monitor increased network traffic and balance network performance without compromising on the user experience with the use of Quality of Service (QoS) for networks. 

 

QoE is an industry-wide set of standards and mechanisms for ensuring high-quality performance for critical applications and is widely used by network administrators to make efficient use of existing resources and to ensure the required level of service is achieved without overwhelming the network. To learn more, read Understanding Media Quality of Experience (QoE).


Prerequisites

Users with the Moderator+ role can view the QoE dashboard in EVCM. 


Viewing Media Quality of Experience(QoE)  

Accessing QoE Dashboard  

  1. Navigate to the Media Manager. 
  2. Within the Media Manager, select the video for which you wish to assess the QoE.  
  3.  At the top navigation, you'll see a header menu with different options. Select the QoE option to open the QoE dashboard. 




Overview of QoE Dashboard

A QoE dashboard will be visible for the selected media.




The QoE dashboard has been created to give you crucial information about how well your video is performing. The dashboard consists of different sections:

  1. Time frame selection: You can view the media analytics data on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis by choosing your time frame from the dropdown available and choosing your date range located in the upper left corner. 
  2. Views and Viewers: This panel provides a precise count of the views your video has received, as well as the number of viewers who have interacted with it.
  3. Time Played: This section showcases the total time duration for which your video has been played within the platform. 
  4. Load time: The Load Time parameter provides you with the average time taken to load the first frame of your video. It's an important metric because it directly affects how users perceive your material at first.
  5. Player buffering: This is the average of total buffering time and total time the video was played. It helps identify potential improvement areas and sheds light on how smooth the watching experience was.  
  6. Player errors: These are the errors that are caused by events such as network disconnection from the video source, content unavailability, or, for any reason, the player crashes. 
  7. Player Load Time(seconds): The purpose of this chart is to provide a visual comparison of how the video player's load time varies across different geographical locations or regions.  


Note: All the charts within the platform offer you various options for deeper analysis. As you explore the charts, you'll notice key options: 

  1. Using the Download button on the upper right corner, you can download the information in a .CSV format. So you can easily analyze the data to track and make decisions. 
  2. Click on the graph Legends on the chart to show or hide data on the graph. 
  3. You can examine the same data in a table or graph by switching between the tabular grid and the chart from the upper right corner. 
  4. Hovering over the bar displays the information as a tooltip. 



8. Cache Hit Ratio: Understanding the Cache Hit Ratio is an important parameter as it affects how your users engage with your content. Here is an insight of this idea: 

  • Cache Hit Ratio: It refers to the ratio of content served by the VIDIZMO cache. When a user requests content, the cache mechanism checks if the requested content is already stored in the cache. If it is, then it is served directly from the cache, resulting in a cache ratio hit. 
  • Direct Hit: A direct hit refers to the ratio of requests for content that is not available in the cache and must be retrieved directly from the server. When a requested piece of content is not present in the cache, the server has to deliver it to the user directly. 

The Cache Hit Ratio chart shows the number of user requests received by the Origin and Edge servers in the network. The cache hit ratio and direct hit ratio are important metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of VIDIZMO's caching mechanism. In this specific case, the user requests have been from ECDN servers, as shown below: 



9. Device Buffering: When users experience buffering during video playback, the system records the percentage of buffering that took place during the playback of the video. Device buffering is monitored over each device used to access the video.  


 

10. Device Errors: You can examine the devices and the frequency of errors by looking at the device errors chart. These issues are brought on by factors like network disconnections from the video source, unavailable videos, or player crashes for any other reason. In our instance, no errors were discovered.



11. Buffering Heat Map: This displays a Geographical Heat Map that highlights locations experiencing the most performance issues, such as content loading or buffering. You can access the map in two different ways, either graphically or in a tabular form for better insights. You can also view the Buffering Heat Map as a map view or as a satellite view by toggling between the two options.



The tabular form of the Buffering Heat Map shows which location has the highest percentage of issues globally in the table.



12. Error Heat Map: This Error Heat Map identifies locations where errors are occurring during playback both graphically or in a table form. This can also be viewed in a map or a satellite view.



13. Media Quality: This chart visually depicts the different video qualities played throughout the entire playback duration. This allows users to easily analyze which video quality was most frequently used during playback. Video quality is automatically selected when videos are transcoded and played in the system.  




The QoE dashboard encompasses a range of key performance indicators through which you can make informed decisions, proactively address any QoE-related concerns, and take appropriate measures to enhance the overall video performance and user experience while maximizing optimal network resource utilization.