Time-shifting allows viewers to pause and resume an ongoing live stream.

The implementation of this feature depends on the video player. It relies on a long playlist through which the player can browse to select and play the required segments.

Quortex Play supports the generation of playlists up to 2 hours long, enabling users to pause a live stream for up to 2 hours.

This article explains how to configure time-shifting in Quortex Play.

Enabling long playlists

The generation of long playlists is tied to the Startover feature.

Therefore, you must first activate Startover, as described below.

Startover is a per-pool feature. It must be enabled in the pool settings under the “Time Shifting” tab. Once activated, all inputs within that pool become “Startover-enabled.”

You can configure a Startover depth of up to 6 hours. However, time-shifting is limited to 2 hours due to the long playlist constraint.

As a result, if you only need time-shifting (and not Startover), you can set the Startover duration to 2 hours.

Configuring long playlists

The maximum pause duration for time-shifting is determined by the following formula:

(segment duration) × (maximum number of segments in the playlist).

To configure this, go to the Packaging Settings and set both the segment duration and the playlist length to achieve the desired maximum time-shift delay.

For example, with 6-second segments, you can include up to 1,200 segments in the long playlist:

6 s × 1,200 = 7,200 s = 2 hours.

Quortex Play will generate long playlists including the number of configured segments. The player can then browse inside the long playlist to manage a time shifting use case.

Updated on: 04/11/2025