Function Introduction

In addition to free videos, video-on-demand websites or applications often offer some premium paid videos. To attract users to watch, websites often allow users to watch a certain amount of content for free, such as 60 seconds or even shorter. Even with CDN acceleration, video websites can still implement video preview functionality through CDN nodes.

eSurfing Cloud CDN acceleration product supports the preview function for MP4, FLV, and TS files. Users can initiate a preview request to the CDN node by sending a URL like: http://www.example.com/a.mp4?shikan=30.

Applicable Scenarios

Video-on-demand websites or applications requiring support for video preview functionality.

Considerations

The preview function for MP4 and FLV files can be implemented by carrying the ending parameter from the video dragging parameters in the request URL, details can be found in: Video Dragging.
The preview function for TS files supports custom parameters. For example, you can customize the preview parameter as "shikan". Then, when a user makes a request like: http://www.example.com/a.ts?shikan=30, the CDN node will only return the first 30 seconds of the TS video file. If the total duration of the TS video file is less than 30 seconds, there will be no preview effect for this request, and it will play until the end of the video.

Instructions for Use

This functionality is not currently available for self-service configuration by customers. If you need to use it, please contact our customer support team via hotline (852)31000000 or email global.noc@chinatelecomglobal.com for manual operation.

Please provide the following information:

Parameter	Description	Example
Preview Parameter	Parameter used in the URL request to indicate the preview time.	shikan. For example: http://www.example.com/a.ts?shikan=30, then preview the first 30 seconds of the a.ts file.
Preview Redundancy Time	Because the byte position of the preview time in the TS file is an estimated value, to ensure that users can get the expected preview effect, the CDN node can add n seconds of redundancy based on the expected preview time.	2, in seconds. Indicates that the expected preview redundancy is 2 seconds. For example, when the user carries a preview request parameter of 30, such as: http://www.example.com/a.ts?shikan=30, the CDN node will return the content of the first 32 seconds of the video file.

Content Delivery Network

Video previewing