A cue point is a marker at a precise time point in the duration of a video. You can use cue points to trigger mid-roll ads (that is, ads that occur during playback of the video content, like a commercial break) or to separate chapters or scenes in a long-form video.
There are three types of cue points:
There are four ways to set cue points in videos. You can set cue points using:
Some of these methods have certain limitations you should be aware of so that you can choose the method that best meets your needs.
You can set ad cue points (not chapter or code cue points) using the Brightcove Advertising module. You can set ad cue points for a single video or for multiple videos and you set the ad cue points by specifying a time code for each one. All ad cue points that have been set for the video (either from the Advertising module or using one of the other methods) can be viewed (and modified or deleted) from the Brightcove Advertising module. You can view non-ad cue points (chapter or code cue points) from the Advertising module, but you cannot add, modify, or delete them.
You also cannot delete all cue points created using a single action from the Advertising module. To delete cue points, you must select them one at a time and delete each one. However, if multiple videos have common cue points, you can select all the videos and delete the common cue point from multiple videos in a single action.
NOTE: If you are upgrading from the Brightcove Console to the Brightcove Studio and using the Advertising module to set cue points, note that metadata that was associated with the cue points in Brightcove Console is now passed as Key/Value Pairs in the Brightcove Studio.
You can use the Brightcove Media Write API to add cue points to a video. There are no limitations to the cue point functionality available from the Media Write API. All three types of cue points (ad, code, and chapter) can be set using the API.
You can add cue points to a video using the cuepoint XML element in your batch provisioning manifest. There are no limitations to the cue point functionality available when you create cue points using FTP Batch Provisioning. For more information, see Using batch provisioning and Cue points in the batch provisioning manifest. All three types of cue points (ad, code, and chapter) can be set using the API.
You can also add or remove cue points using the CuePoints Module of the Player API. When using the player API to set cue points, the cue points are temporary, and only exist for that player load (session). The cue points are not stored on the video in the Brightcove system.