Understanding Pre-Roll and Post-Roll

The scheduled start time for your event has arrived, and the player is activated all across your audience. These first few minutes of your stream are the most critical as this is where you will receive the most viewer feedback. 

If you are using a Player-Only layout, our system is just engaging your player, and your website or other platforms all request the stream at once. If your viewers are clustered in the same region or area, their ISPs may throttle traffic and slow down some of your viewers coming into the stream and cause them to miss the critical opening moments.

Viewers who have joined a curated experience using a layout in our Online Events setups will likely be logging into chat at the very beginning while their player is working to load the stream. These viewers could miss those early critical moments in both the chat and player experiences.

That's a lot happening in just those first few minutes. 

Events that feature Pre-Roll and Post-Roll can actually minimize or altogether avoid this negative experience.

Event Pre-Roll

Pre-roll is a buffer of time added before your scheduled event start time — think of it like doors opening early before a concert.

If a concert starts at 7:00[] PM, the doors open at 6:45[] PM so people can come in, find their seats, and settle in before the show begins. Pre-roll works the same way: it activates the player and chat experiences early so viewers can come in at their pace, get settled, and avoid ISP congestion.

If you enable Pre-Roll on your events, and you are using a paired encoder, our system will start your encoder just before the pre-roll window. This will mean that any video sent to your encoder will be seen by your arriving audience. Plan accordingly!

The practical result 

• Player goes live at 6:45[] PM
• Pre-roll video starts to play at 6:45[]–7:00[] PM
• Your main content should start around 7:00[] PM

Event Post-Roll

Once the event officially reaches its end, the player closes and your Sardius Channel turns into the break or post state. Anyone with chat and/or the player still open and active will be immediately removed from those experiences. 

Post-roll allows the experience to end organically. If your event is using post-roll, viewers can stay engaged, allowing chat conversations to wrap up naturally. If a viewer paused the player, they'll have some extra time to watch the end of your livestream.

When the Post-Roll period ends, the player and chat experiences will be closed.

 

Using Pre-Roll and Post-Roll

Pre- and Post-Roll can be easily added to any upcoming calendar event. Simply edit the event and check the Add pre-/post-roll under the date and time of the event.

Use the arrows to adjust the amount of time — in minutes — for pre-roll and post-roll.

When added, you'll see the extra time reflected on the calendar surrounding your event.

In calendar terms, Post-roll does not extend the duration of your event.