Published on May 25, 2021 (almost 3 years ago)

Augmenting video experiences with audio

Bonnie Pecevich
By Bonnie Pecevich2 min readProduct

Please note that as of June 2022, we have deprecated the add_audio_only query parameter on https://stream.mux.com.  The add_audio_only parameter added an audio-only variant to the HLS manifest. However, this audio-only variant is no longer required as Apple’s HLS authoring spec no longer mandates this. In addition, many video players across web and mobile do not support this audio-only variant. For these reasons, Mux has chosen to deprecate this feature.

When people think about building an awesome video experience, their first thought is probably around the visual aspect of it, e.g. how it looks on different devices, whether to have captions, or what player controls to expose. But equally as important is the audio experience and providing flexibility and options around how it interacts with your video.

We’re always thinking about how to improve the video experience and that includes audio. We’re happy to unveil a new feature that can augment your video: audio delivery for video playback.

LinkAudio delivery for video playback

This feature extracts the audio from a video and gives you the option to deliver just the audio for playback. There’s a couple different ways you can use this:

  • You can give users the option of a “listen-only” mode for videos. This lets users listen to audio in the background while active on other apps or while their devices are locked.
  • If you have a radio channel or show, you can now host it on your own property.

Benefit

Typically to get this functionality, you would have to upload video and audio separately then switch between the two on player-side. With this new feature, you don’t have to do that and the workflow is simplified. Plus, now you don’t have to pay for both ingests. 🎉

Availability

This is an opt-in feature available for both on-demand and live streaming videos. To learn more, check out this guide.

We’re excited to add this to our collection of audio features. We previously released audio-only input for VOD and audio normalization, which are both available to all Mux Video customers. As always, we welcome feedback on existing features and future ones you'd like to see!

Written By

Bonnie Pecevich

Bonnie Pecevich – Sr. Product Marketing Manager

Focused on go-to-market strategy and developer marketing. Former Brownie Girl Scout and now just brownie eater.

Leave your wallet where it is

No credit card required to get started.