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Recording video analytics with Mux Data

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    Now that we have customers watching videos, it would be nice to know what

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    videos are being watched for how long and by whom.

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    So far we've been using Mux for storing and transcoding and delivering videos, but

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    Mux also has a product for tracking video analytics called Mux Data.

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    Mux Data works with a large number of video players on different platforms, so

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    not only can we use Mux Data with web-based video players like we are,

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    but you can also use it to track videos in native apps and on devices like

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    smart TVs.

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    Mux Data works by adding metadata to your video player tag.

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    It allows us to specify things like video IDs, titles, and even series names if

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    the video is a single episode of something.

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    We can also record user identifiers to link views with users, and Mux Data will

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    also record other events, such as how long the video took to load on the user's

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    device, how much of the video the user watched, and so on.

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    Recording video statistics like this is handy for finding out what content you

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    use as a watching, and also allows you to make informed decisions on which

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    content to remove or invest in if you're going to have a routine library of

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    video content.

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    Mux Data works by setting metadata on the video player tag, so if you open up

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    our video show view, we can see we're already set a few attributes with a

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    "metadata" prefix.

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    Currently we're setting the video ID to the primary key of the video model,

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    video title to the video's name,

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    and the viewer user ID to the ID of the authenticated user only if there is one.

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    If we go to the docs for the Mux Player, to the "Core functionality" section, and

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    then to the "Mux Platform integration" section,

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    we'll see that there's a note saying that Mux Data environment is inferred

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    from the playback ID provided to the Mux Player.

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    This means that as we already have metadata set on our Mux Player tag, we've

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    already been sending statistics to Mux Data.

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    We can verify this by going to the "Data" section of the Mux dashboard.

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    In the "Data Overview" screen, you'll see a graph shown the number of views,

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    unique viewers, and playing time.

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    There's also statistics on the quality of experience for users, as well as the

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    titles of your top performing videos.

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    If we go to the "Views" section, we can see individual views of videos from our

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    platform.

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    Navigating to a particular view will show information on the video that was

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    viewed, as well as the details of that particular viewer's experience,

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    such as how smooth the view was, how long the watch for, whether they jumped

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    about by seeking, and so on.

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    There are a number of other metadata attributes you can set, depending on

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    what makes sense for your use case.

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    There's attributes for things like content type, so you can specify whether a

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    video is a movie, an episode, a trailer, etc.

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    There's also attributes to specify details such as a series name if the video

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    is a single episode.

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    And there's also a handy sub-property ID attribute if you have some sort of

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    multi-tenanted application.

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    So for example if you have a platform with multiple channels like YouTube, then

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    you could use a sub-property ID attribute to specify the channel ID,

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    and see which channels have the most views.

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