Reel: A streaming service from four sides

Reel is a sample app with a server behind it. Viewers watch films, series and courses on a phone, a tablet, a desktop or in a browser, and pick up on one screen where they left off on another. Creators upload video and publish it. Moderators decide what gets published. An administrator runs the service. The app and the server are one Maven project, written in Java on both sides.

This chapter is the user’s guide: what each of them sees and can do. Reel: Building on the sample is the other half. It explains how the project is built, how playback is protected and what to change to make the service yours.

One app serves everyone. The server gives every account a set of roles, and the app opens on the screen that fits them.

Start the server on its development profile and it creates a set of accounts, all with the password reel-demo, the plans, two ad campaigns and a catalog of the Blender open movies and a short course:

scripts/reel/README.adoc has the two commands that start the server and the app, and the one that fetches the films. Without the films every screen works; the artwork and the picture are missing.

A viewer with more than one profile in the household is asked who is watching. A kids profile sees only titles rated for children, and a profile can be locked with a PIN.

The home screen leads with one title and then rows: continue watching, recommendations based on what the profile watched, the list, and the catalog by genre. Search finds titles by name, synopsis, genre, and creator.

On a desktop or a tablet the sections of the app sit along the top bar, the featured title’s text moves to the left of its artwork, and the rows show as many titles as the window has room for.

A title’s page shows its episodes or lessons, plays it from where the profile stopped, adds it to the list, rates it, downloads it, shares it and reports it. Under the name are the year, the age rating in its box, the length, the best quality the title was packaged in and a CC mark when it has subtitles. The content advisories say what the rating is for: violence, frightening scenes, strong language, sexual content, drugs or alcohol, flashing lights. Further down the page lists the audio and subtitle languages. A title that’s not in the plan offers the plan that has it, or a rental.

Share shows how the link will look where it’s pasted and offers the device’s share sheet or a copy of the link. The link opens a public page on the server with the poster, the rating, the advisories and the synopsis, which is what a chat app or a social network shows in its preview. Its Watch button opens the app on that title, after signing in where needed. A draft or a removed title has no public page.

The player draws its own controls over the picture: back and forward ten seconds, play and pause, a scrub bar with the time played and the time left, chapters, Audio & subtitles and, in a series or a course, the next episode. The controls fade after a few seconds of playback and come back on a tap. When an episode ends and autoplay is on, the next one starts.

Audio & subtitles picks the subtitles (or none), the audio track and the quality: Auto, or one of the heights the title was packaged in, up to what the plan allows. Subtitles change at once. A different audio track or quality reopens the stream where it was.

Subtitles are WebVTT files kept beside the video and drawn by the app, so they look the same on every device and work with every kind of protection. The audio track is chosen by the server, which marks it as the default in the playlist the player reads.

On a plan with ads, short ad breaks play before and during the title, and some can be skipped after a few seconds. A course pauses for a quiz or a poll and, where the course branches, moves on to the lesson the answer leads to. While a protected title plays, screenshots and screen recording are blocked where the device allows it, and a faint mark naming the account sits over the picture.

A plan allows a number of screens at once. Starting one more ends with a message saying so, and an administrator, a suspension or a sign-out on another device can end a stream that’s playing.

The library holds the profile’s list, its downloads and what it watched. A title can be taken out of the history, which also takes it out of what the recommendations learn from.

Settings hold the playback preferences (autoplay, data saver, the streaming quality), the subtitle language and size used whenever a title has a track in that language, notifications, the language and the theme of the app, and privacy. The account screen shows the devices signed in and what’s playing on each, and signs any of them out.

On a plan with downloads, a title can be kept on the device. The file stays encrypted, and playing it asks the server for the key, so a download stops playing when its license runs out, when the device is signed out or when the account is suspended. The library lists downloads without a connection. Signing out removes them from the device.

The development profile offers three plans: Basic with ads (one screen, HD), Standard (two screens in Full HD, downloads) and Premium (four screens, the best quality there is, downloads). A plan starts with a trial where the administrator gives one, a coupon takes money off, and the plan can be changed or cancelled at any time; a cancelled plan runs to the end of what was paid. Invoices are listed in the account.

Cards are added in the wallet. On the development profile 4242 4242 4242 4242 is accepted, 4000 0000 0000 0002 is declined and nothing is charged. On a phone the plan can also be bought through the app store.

On a service with courses, a course is a title whose episodes are short lessons. The Courses row on the home screen says so, and a course’s page explains how it works: the lessons are watched in order, the video pauses on a quiz and carries on when it’s answered, and finishing every lesson and passing the quizzes earns a certificate. The page shows how far the profile got. Progress is kept per lesson, and a certificate opens from the learning screen, where anyone can verify it by its code.

The demo course has subtitles in English, Spanish, French, and German.

The studio lists the creator’s titles with their status: draft, in review, published, changes needed or removed. A title has a name, a synopsis, genres, a rating and its videos. A video is uploaded in pieces, so a dropped connection costs one piece and not the file, and the server packages it into the protected formats the players need. Its chapters are lines of m:ss Title, and its quizzes, polls and branches are added at a time in the video.

A video’s subtitles are added one language at a time, as WebVTT: a language such as en or pt-BR, the name viewers see, and the text. A title’s age rating comes with its content advisories, which the creator ticks when making or editing the title.

A finished title is submitted for review. A rejected one comes back with the moderator’s note, and the creator can correct it and submit it again, or appeal. The analytics show views, minutes watched and where viewers stop, over the last thirty days.

The queue holds submitted titles, reports from viewers and appeals. Every upload is checked on arrival against the keyword blocklist and against the frames of video that were taken down before, and what matches is marked in the queue. A moderator approves a title, which publishes it and tells whoever follows the series, or rejects or removes it with a note the creator sees. Every decision is kept on the account’s record.

The dashboard shows the service at a glance: accounts, subscriptions and trials, monthly revenue, streams now, minutes watched today, titles, ad impressions and ad revenue, with thirty days of sign-ups, minutes, revenue and cancellations drawn as charts.

An account’s page grants and removes roles, suspends and reinstates the account with a reason, flags it, and lists its devices, its sessions, its sharing alerts and its invoices. Watching now lists every stream that’s playing and ends one. Account sharing raises an alert when an account streams from more places than a household plausibly does; the administrator dismisses it or signs the account out everywhere.

Features switches the service between three presets, a streaming service, a video platform and a training academy, and then turns single features on and off: subscriptions, rentals, ads, open uploads, interactive video, certificates, profiles, downloads, sharing detection, hardware DRM, the watermark and reports. The app follows on its next start, with no new build. Branding sets the name, the tagline, the logo and the colors.

The server can host the app itself, so a browser opening the server’s address gets Reel with nothing installed. A browser plays the protected video through its own media player, and offers neither downloads nor app-store purchases.