Load Testing Adobe HDS made easy with UbikLoadPack Video Streaming Plugin for JMeter released

We’re happy to announce the release of the new version 6.2.0 of our UbikLoadPack Video Streaming plugin for Apache JMeter with some bug fixes and the following new features.

Our plugin already allows seamless, ultra-realistic and easy load testing of Live and VOD streams for HLS, MPEG-DASH and HSS formats.

It is used by major actors of the market.

In this version, we introduce the support of Adobe HDS format.

Adobe HDS format support

Besides all non trivial problems raised when load testing Video Streaming servers, HDS streaming adds particular complexity as:

the segments and fragment description are encoded in binary F4V format in <bootstrapInfo> element
the Bootstrap Information can be available inline through Base64 in <bootstrapInfo> element or at a particular URL referenced by “url” attribute for example
There are many combinations or elements in HDS manifest that make scripting a complex matter

Hopefully, thanks to UbikLoadPack plugin, load testing HDS is now a matter of few minutes.

1/ Add Thread Group

JMeter: Add Thread Group

2/ Configure it so that for example it runs 500 Virtual Users for 1 hour (3600 seconds) ramping up from 0 to 500 in 1 minute

JMeter : Thread Group Configuration

3/ Add ULP Video Sampler

Add Video Streaming Sampler

4/ You then just need to enter your manifest URL and specify the HDS type and you’re done:

UbikLoadPack Video Sampler

5/ Setup your injector as described here

6/ Now run your test in NON Gui Mode:

jmeter -n -t <path to your JMX file> -l <path to CSV output file> -e -o <Path to output report folder>

And you’ll get:

Realistic download of fragments as a real player would do it
Out of the box support for Live and VOD without any scripting
Scalable load testing as with one machine similar to m5.2xLarge, you’ll be able to load test 500 to 1000 Virtual Users playing video streams
Custom metrics to analyze your user experience and servers behaviour