The YouTube service test allows you to configure a download test which periodically downloads a video stream from YouTube. The test downloads a small portion of the video at various resolutions to predict the highest sustainable video quality.
Enabling video download
Follow the steps below to enable the YouTube download test:
Navigate to Tests Dashboard > Settings > Testing
Enable the YouTube service test
Enable the video download test
Caution: The test tries to download the video as fast as possible to maximise the test execution time. This does cause high bandwidth usage when the test runs. Use the frequency configuration to control how often the download test executes.
Video download metrics
Two additional metrics are available after enabling the test:
Download bitrate (average)
Sustainable video quality (estimation)
The average download bitrate is calculated using the equation below
average_bitrate = total_bytes_downloaded / download_duration
The estimation of the sustainable video quality is predicted by comparing the average bitrate measurement to the theoretical bitrate required to watch a video stream without ever depleting the buffer.
theoretical_bitrate = stream_size / video_duration
average_bitrate >= theoretical_bitrate
These metrics are available in the YouTube service tab
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