Events

QoS events

Quality-of-service events let you catch playback regressions before your audience tweets about them.

startup_time

Fire once, immediately after first frame. Measure from user intent (tap Play) to first visible frame.

typescript

const intentTs = Date.now();
player.on('firstframe', () => {
  rd.track({
    eventType: 'startup_time',
    content: { contentId, contentType: 'series' },
    properties: {
      startup_ms: Date.now() - intentTs,
      manifest_type: 'hls',
      drm: 'widevine',
    },
  });
});

buffer (rebuffer)

Fire every time playback stalls and resumes. SeePlayback events for the API.

bitrate_change

Fire on every ABR ladder switch. Paired with heartbeat, this gives you time-weighted average bitrate per content and per region.

error

Standard error categories:

Code	Meaning
`MANIFEST_LOAD_FAIL`	m3u8 or mpd fetch failed
`MANIFEST_PARSE_FAIL`	Corrupt manifest
`SEGMENT_LOAD_FAIL`	CDN 4xx/5xx on segment
`DRM_LICENSE_FAIL`	License server rejected
`DECODE_ERROR`	Codec failure
`NETWORK_TIMEOUT`	Client-side timeout
`UNKNOWN`	Anything else

typescript

rd.trackError('SEGMENT_LOAD_FAIL', 'GET https://cdn/.../seg_012.ts -> 504');

cdn_response (advanced)

For deep CDN diagnostics, fire cdn_response on segment load with timing breakdown. This is optional — only enable when debugging a specific regression.

typescript

rd.track({
  eventType: 'cdn_response',
  properties: {
    cdn: 'cloudfront',
    pop: 'BOM53-C1',
    segment_kb: 512,
    ttfb_ms: 82,
    download_ms: 145,
    http_status: 200,
    edge_cache: 'HIT',
  },
});

QoS metrics in the dashboard

Metric	SLO target	Alert threshold
Startup time p95	< 1.5s	> 3s for 10 min
Rebuffer ratio	< 1%	> 3% for 5 min
Error rate	< 0.5%	> 2% for 5 min
Avg bitrate	> 3 Mbps	< 2 Mbps for 15 min
Completion rate	regression-based	>20% drop vs 7d baseline

Per-ISP and per-CDN breakdowns

The admin panel automatically slices every QoS metric by ISP (derived from IP via GeoIP2), device type, and region. Use this to answer questions like “Is Jio fibre worse than Airtel on our Maharashtra ABR ladder today?”