Retroview statistics service¶

You can use our cloud service for collecting statistics and providing access to it through client area on our website.

Flussonic uploads the video session data to the cloud service, so that you can see the reports in real time. Retroview updates the data once a day. So the data for the current day will be available on the next day.

How you can use the statistics¶

Retroview provides you with the following data:

• What devices do your viewers use to watch your streams. Based on this data you can determine the best video quality to provide to your viewers. This way, moderate content resolution like 360p and 480p is enough for mobile phones, whereas TVs require Full HD.
• Amount of output traffic. You can provide reports to your clients on the amount of consumed traffic and the number of stream views. To get more accurate results, use other methods to evaluate the data and compare the results with the reports from the statistics service.

• Geographic distribution of your viewers. Knowing the geographic distribution of your viewers helps you determine the following:

  • Where to install the streaming servers.
  • Whether to move the streaming servers to other locations and which ones.
  • Whether to change the number of available servers in the current geographic locations.

• What channels or other streams are most popular with your viewers. This data can help you determine what content is popular with your viewers and what isn't. This way, you can add more popular content and remove the unpopular one.

• Do the viewers experience any errors when playing the content via HTTP based protocols.

What data is stored¶

Each of your Flussonic servers sends the following data about each session to the statistics service:

• Unique server ID that is generated on initial server launch

• Streaming session creation time
• Streaming session termination time
• Channel name or file name
• User IP address
• Unique session ID
• Auth token that was used to open the session
• Session streaming protocol
• Total number of bytes transferred during this session
• User ID that is provided by the auth backend
• HTTP or RTMP Referer for the session
• User-Agent of the session

Geotagging and User-Agent parsing are handled by Flussonic service.

The amount of traffic between the Flussonic server and the statistics service can be neglected.

The reports¶

The statistics service shows the following data:

• Summary statistics: top 10 servers and streams, according to the output traffic count and view time on the Dashboard page.
• All playback session data and data grouped by streams, servers, users, and unique session data on the Sessions page.

Dashboard¶

Top 10¶

The Dashboard page displays the following data sorted in the descending order per month:

• Top 10 streams by viewtime
• Top 10 streams by the output traffic
• Top 10 servers by the output traffic
• Top 10 servers by the viewtime

HTTP metrics¶

On the HTTP metrics tab, you can check how HTTP-based protocols (for example, HLS, DASH, WebRTC WHIP/WHEP) are played. Filter by the most common error codes 403, 404, and 500 is helpful for quickly identifying problems within a given period, for example, after a system upgrade. The data is grouped into several dimensions to make it easier to identify the source of problems:

• Response codes by protocol: show that a specific protocol is not playing.
• Response codes by stream name: show that a specific stream is not playing.
• Response codes by DVR: show that the archive is not playing.
• Response codes by hostname: show that the problem is on a particular server.

Sessions¶

The Sessions page shows the list of user sessions grouped into the following categories:

• All playback sessions
• By streams
• By servers
• By users
• Unique sessions

Playback all¶

The list of all playback sessions from all Flussonic servers sorted by the creation date: from the oldest to the newest. Here you can see the following data:

• stream name
• streaming protocol
• hostname
• country and IP address
• total output traffic
• creation date
• total view time

By streams¶

The list of streams with summary statistics from all Flussonic servers. The table provides the following data:

• stream name
• total consumed traffic
• total number of views
• total view time

By servers¶

The list of Flussonic servers with their summary statistics. The table provides the following data for each server:

• hostname
• IP address
• total output traffic
• total number of views
• total view time

By users¶

The list of users with summary statistics from all Flussonic servers. The table provides the following data for each user:

• user ID
• total number of views
• country and IP address
• total consumed traffic
• total view time
• User-Agent
• Referer

Unique sessions¶

With Unique sessions you can detect issues with session accounting or user's network connection. For example, if you see that a user often reconnects, it might indicate network connection issue.

The Unique sessions data displays a list of distinct sessions with the following data for each session:

• stream name
• streaming protocol
• country and IP address
• total output traffic
• creation date
• total view time
• User-Agent
• Referer

Filters¶

Use filters to limit the data in a view. For example, you can use filters to display traffic from particular IP addresses, sessions with certain duration, and so on.

To use the filters, follow these steps:

1. Open the filters by clicking the blue filter icon to the right of the Stream title here field.

2. Specify the values for the required filters. Here is the list of filters:

   • Date range in the calendar.
   • Stream title here is the stream name.
   • User ID is the client ID. The User ID received from the authorization backend.
   • IP is the client's IP address.
   • Useragent is a software and devices a viewer used to access video content.
   • Duration min (sec) is the minimum view time of a session in seconds.
   • Duration max (sec) is the maximum view time of a session in seconds.
   • Protocol is the streaming protocol used in the session.
   • Select servers allows to select particular servers from the list.

3. To apply the filters, click Apply.