HLS qualification checklist
Use this checklist to qualify HLS ingest streams.
Akamai uses the following test cases to qualify HLS ingest.
| Test | Description |
|---|---|
| Basic streams test |
Verify if the first line of the bit rate playlist files is Verify that the number of streams received is the same as the number of streams expected. |
| Bit rate playlist alignment. | Verify if the tag EXT_X_MEDIA_SEQUENCE is consistent across playlists (optional). |
| Bit rate playlist upload interval | Verify that the bit rate playlist upload interval is almost equal to the segment upload interval. |
| Directory rollover | Verify if directory rollover happens at consistent intervals. |
| ENDLIST tag when the stream stops | Verify if the EXT-X-ENDLIST is present in the playlist when publishing stops. |
| Error recovery test (failover to a different entry point – DNS lookup test) | Check if the transition to the secondary entry point is seamless. |
| Error recovery test (streams reconnect to same entry point) | Verify the ts segment IDs on reconnect. |
| HTTP request type | Verify that the HTTP request type for the ts segments is either PUT or POST. |
| Long duration publish | Verify playback and analyze the stream publish after 48 hours of publish. |
| Master playlist upload interval | Verify that the master playlist file does not get uploaded too frequently. |
| Playback | Verify playback on QuickTime, Safari, and iPad. Refer to Primary and backup HLS stream URLs |
| Segment numbering | Check that the segment numbering is not close to (2^32)-1. |
| Segment retry on 5xx error and verify the retry interval | Trigger a 5xx response to the encoder by modifying the delivery-hostname for the
stream-id. Trigger a 5xx response by modifying the forward target host and verify encoder behavior. |
| Segment upload interval | Verify if the segment upload interval is almost equal to the advertised values. |
| Session ID verification. | Verify that the master playlist file does not have session IDs
mentioned in the bit rate URLs. Verify that the session IDs are same across all bit rates. |
| ts segments and bit rate URL | Verify that the segment numbers are sequentially increasing. Verify is response received is 200 by requesting random ts segments (first one, last one, and a middle one). Verify that EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE corresponds to first segment in the bit rate playlist. Verify if any of the #EXTINF has negative values in the bit rate m3u8 files. |
| User-Agent string | Verify if the encoder is sending a valid User-Agent string. |
| Verify if the session ID and directory path is unique during republish. | When an encoder stops the publish and starts another one, the path must be unique. |