Quality Alerting

Scout can automatically send alerts when a stream’s quality drops below a configurable VMAF threshold. This feature requires an Enterprise license.

Configuration

<Property>
  <Name>cmsdMqa.alerting.enabled</Name>
  <Value>true</Value>
  <Type>Boolean</Type>
</Property>
<Property>
  <Name>cmsdMqa.alerting.webhookUrl</Name>
  <Value>https://your-endpoint/alerts</Value>
  <Type>String</Type>
</Property>
<Property>
  <Name>cmsdMqa.alerting.vmafThreshold</Name>
  <Value>70</Value>
  <Type>Integer</Type>
</Property>

Alert evaluation runs every 15 seconds across all active stream/rendition combinations.

Webhook payload

When a stream’s effective VMAF falls below cmsdMqa.alerting.vmafThreshold, Scout sends an HTTP POST to cmsdMqa.alerting.webhookUrl with Content-Type: application/json:

{
  "stream": "myStream",
  "rendition": "720p",
  "metric": "vmaf",
  "value": 65.20,
  "threshold": 70.00,
  "timestamp_ms": 1716812345678
}

The alert fires every evaluation cycle for as long as the stream’s VMAF remains below the threshold — there is no separate “clear” notification.

Score sources

Alert evaluation uses the per-stream metrics store. VMAF scores enter the store from two sources:

• SEI ingest — scores extracted from the H.264 bitstream (see Media Quality Assessment (MQA)).

• REST ingest — scores pushed via POST /mqa/{streamName} (see Media Quality Assessment (MQA)).

If no VMAF score is available for a stream/rendition combination in the current evaluation cycle, that combination is skipped.

Only VMAF is evaluated for alerting in the current release. PSNR and SSIM are recorded in the metrics store and exposed via telemetry but do not trigger alerts.