
Agama has a long history when it comes to device integrations. For more than a decade we've dealt with projects of all sizes/lengths. With every completed milestone, and even more with every obstacle, we've been steadily building up the knowledge required to succeed.
What are the plugins?One of the key parts of understanding the satisfaction of your users is to assess the quality of experience for the services they consume, their engagement, the type of content they like to watch etc. Agama has an excellent track record in providing such insights, in fact, this is the core of what we do.
The implementations of these important KPIs historically included, among others, the following steps: agreement on the desired metrics set, investigation of the available metrics in the target platform, and integration of these metrics towards the Agama core agent. A lot of these steps were unique for every integration. This was partially due to different wishes from different customers, but mostly due to the unique characteristics of each of the target platforms.
With the growing popularity of OTT platforms and the rise of players such as ExoPlayer, Shaka Player or AV Player, the target platforms became increasingly similar between integrations. The shift from everything is custom to common platforms and players enabled Agama to step outside its domain. We started actively investigating players and platforms, gathering knowledge about them, assessing what could be possible and feasible, and defining an absolute base of metrics that would benefit every customer. These are all implemented in what we call 'Player plugins .
The player plugins follow a few basic principles:
Agama develops and maintains the plugins
The plugins provide a good set of metrics, making them usable directly
No Agama domain knowledge is required for plugin integration - just a few, stable APIs are necessary
Ability to pass custom metrics to the plugin
Agama develops and maintains player plugins for most of the popular players, such as ExoPlayer, Shaka Player, AVPlayer, and for platforms such as Android, FireOS, iOS, tvOS, Chromecast, Browsers, WebOS, Tizen etc.
While the complete list of metrics differs slightly between plugins, they all share most of the metrics. Some of the features they have in common are:
QoS and QoE metrics
Device properties
Ability to understand asset consumption
Ability to understand playback errors (for instance, DRM errors)
Integration keep it simpleLet's take a closer look at what it takes to integrate Agama into your application. To make it as realistic as possible, let's use ExoPlayer as the target player and Android as the target platform.
ExoPlayer is currently one of the most popular players for Android. It is extremely customizable and flexible, yet easy to start with. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that it is used by everyone, from hobby enthusiasts to video operators and even YouTube.
RequirementsLet's start by describing what requirements and dependencies are needed to use the plugin in the first place. Players evolve quickly and so do their capabilities and APIs, and this truly applies to the ExoPlayer. Therefore, the plugin comes in multiple variants associated with various ExoPlayer minor versions. By using a relatively modern version, plugin-player compatibility should not be a problem.
Some metrics implemented by the plugin can be subject to platform permissions. These are not critical to have in any sense, but more on the good-to-have side and will only be included if permissions are granted. Also related to privacy issues, the plugin can be configured to skip certain sensitive metrics. Such information can be, for example, the collection of the device's longitude and latitude position.
Lastly, the plugin is to be included in the project as any other 3rd party library. And the empclient must be included in the same way as well.
Initialization and configuration stepsInitialize the plugin as early as possible. The plugin's lifetime shall reflect the application's lifetime. To initialize it, one needs an Agama configuration string. It is passed on to the Agama core agent - empclient, and includes information such as report heartbeat and the operator id. The configuration string is typically provided by Agama. The application properties such as the applications name and version are needed during initialization.
String agamaConfig =
emp_service=https://cdm1.company123.se/report;report_interval=60;id_report_interval=240;operator_id=fooSoo; ;
String appName = Company 123 Play App ;
String appVersion= 2.1 ;
// Initialize the plugin
EmpStats.getInstance().init(agamaConfig, Definitions.LogLevel.DEBUG, appName, appVersion, ExoPlayerLibraryInfo.VERSION, getApplicationContext());
Once the plugin instance is created, an account associated with the user should be set as well. This will enable (among other things) to find the customer in the Agama system by its account id.
// Set user account id for user John Doe
EmpStats.getInstance().setUserAccountId( johdo28 );
Monitoring videoNow the plugin is initialized, configured and sending data to the Agama backend. It's time to start monitoring the consumed assets. The user has switched to a new channel, started up an asset from the catchup library or simply opened a new episode of their favorite TV series. Opening any new asset shall be signaled to the plugin.
// Load asset & play
String assetUri= https://demo.agamatech.se/Manifest.m3u8 ;
EmpStats.getInstance().sessionOpen(assetUri, Definitions.AssetType.VOD, Sintel , player);
URI uri = uri.parse(assetUri);
player.setMediaItem(MediaItem.fromUri(uri), false);
player.prepare();
Analog to signaling the intent to start playing content, one needs to signal playback termination as well. There are two common ways of doing this: t
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
23/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/06/2026
Multifaceted Growth Executive Brings 20+ Years of Experience Leading Organizations Across Tech and M&E
Imagine Communications today announced the appointment ...
23/06/2026
Australians in Film and Screen Australia's talent development initiative UNT...
23/06/2026
Visual Productions Unveils RdmRelay2 Four-channel Relay Control at InfoComm 2026
Brie Clayton June 22, 2026
0 Comments
New Relay Solution Combines DMX, ...
23/06/2026
SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible, Opening Standards Library to the Gl...
23/06/2026
Newly identified molecule strengthens the eye's response to damage in retinal disease Scripps Research discovery finds that restoring the naturally occurrin...
22/06/2026
Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...
22/06/2026
Cosm has announced the appointment of David Ho as Chief Legal Officer, a newly created executive role reporting to President and CEO Jeb Terry. Ho will oversee ...
22/06/2026
Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced the developm...
22/06/2026
Daktronics has completed an audio control system upgrade at Petco Park in San Di...
22/06/2026
Accelerate Media has named John Willi as President and announced the launch of the Accelerate Sports Network (ASN), a prep sports media and streaming platform c...
22/06/2026
All Women's Sports Network (AWSN) and 3XBA (3 3 Basketball Association) have announced live television coverage of the annual 3XBA tournament on Friday, Jun...
22/06/2026
OWL AI has announced the appointment of Jay Prasad as Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors. Prasad succeeds Josh Gwyther, who has served...
22/06/2026
CP Communications delivered RF video and audio support for TNT's Inside the NBA at the 2026 NBA Finals, providing main show coverage in San Antonio and ea...
22/06/2026
Polymarket has announced a partnership with GRID, an official esports data platf...
22/06/2026
As sports venues continue to evolve into more video-centric, fan-engagement-driv...
22/06/2026
As the regional sports production scene shifts toward streaming, this Texan helps lead the engineering behind Victory+'s growing live platform...
22/06/2026
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
the memories of your elders [are] a scaffolding for you to build your identity on - and t...
22/06/2026
New hyper-resolution analyser EQ revealed
CEDAR Audio's all-new Icons plug-in series has just gained its newest member, Blade. Described by the compan...
22/06/2026
Turn any live input into a cinematic soundscape
Designed for use in the studio and on stage, Sampleson's latest creation is capable of taking any audio ...
22/06/2026
Adds guitar strings to Eurorack rigs
ADDAC System are renowned for their weird and wonderful synth designs, and their line-up includes plenty of gear that...
22/06/2026
FIFA World Cup 2026 fever grows, as more than one third of Australians tune in ...
22/06/2026
In our latest blog, Tim Pearson explores NAGRA Venturi, the new streaming security solution for the AI era from NAGRAVISION. Designed to aggregate and analyze ...
22/06/2026
Expanded integrations give advertisers access to distinct contextual signals acr...
22/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/06/2026
Xilica today announced the release of Dynamic Voice Lift, a new feature in Xilica Designer v4.12 that brings adaptive speech reinforcement to large meeting spac...
22/06/2026
Telecom operators have seen remarkable returns from using generative AI to automate network management, customer care and back-office operations. Most of that i...
22/06/2026
Monday 22 June 2026
Official trailer released for Katie Price: Nothing to Hide,...
22/06/2026
The next era of AI will not be defined by compute alone. Its growth will be dete...
22/06/2026
Mission, Vision and Veritas - new Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) supercom...
22/06/2026
At the ISC conference running in Hamburg this week, NVIDIA is introducing new so...
22/06/2026
For the past two years, the U.S. National Science Foundation's National Arti...
22/06/2026
JUPITER, Europe's first exascale supercomputer at Germany's Forschungszentrum J lich, runs on NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips and NVIDIA Quantum-X800 Inf...
21/06/2026
To call the 2026 FIFA World Cup a big undertaking would be a big understatement....
21/06/2026
New series now live on Udemy
Regular SOS contributor and Cubase workshop columnist John Walden has just released a new Cubase video course that is now avail...
21/06/2026
Hot tubs sit at about 38 to 40 degrees Celsius, warm enough that most people can only soak for about 15 minutes. NVIDIA's newest AI servers can run their co...
21/06/2026
Sunday 21 June 2026
Sky announces immersive documentary series The Wargame
The Wargame first looks
ZIP (2MB)
Sky today confirms the commission of The Wargam...
20/06/2026
New add-on creates doubles & vocal stacks
IK Multimedia's latest ReSing add-on kits the innovative software out with the ability to automatically genera...
20/06/2026
What exactly is Apogee Control V3?
Control V3 is a new mixer application that controls Apogee interfaces. The new hit feature is that V3 finally allows for...
19/06/2026
Split compound eases operational challenges at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club...
19/06/2026
North Carolina, Oklahoma meet in the best-of-three Finals as ESPN leans into spe...