Every view moves through one or more renditions — the specific resolution, bitrate, frame rate, and codec combination a player is actually receiving at a given moment, as network conditions and player logic shift the stream up or down an encoding ladder. Playing time by rendition tells you how much aggregate player wall clock time viewers actually spent in each rendition, across the full lifetime of the view sessions.

Use this to answer questions like:

• How much of my viewers' time is spent at 1080p vs. 720p vs. lower resolutions?
• Is a new 4K offering actually being watched, or rarely reached?
• Are there rungs on my bitrate ladder that are underutilized?
• For a specific title, country, or device, what rendition mix are viewers actually experiencing?
• Are there regional or device differences that jump out in a breakdown comparison?

This guide covers the Mux dashboard experience for playing time by rendition. Programmatic access via the Data API is coming soon — this guide will be updated once it ships.

View total playing time by rendition

In the dashboard

Go to the Metrics page in your environment and open Playing time by rendition under the Views section in the metrics explorer. The page opens with total playing time for the current filters and time range shown above the chart, with the default timeseries breakdown and ranked rendition table below it.

See a breakdown over time

By default, the page charts playing time per rendition across the selected time range, so you can see how your audience's rendition mix shifts over time — for example, after a new encoding profile ships.

In the dashboard

The timeseries chart is the default visualization. Each color represents a distinct rendition (grouped according to your current group by selection); select rows in the table below the chart to highlight specific renditions.

Select a rendition's checkbox in the table to highlight just that rendition in the chart above; deselect others to isolate a single one or a subset for comparison.

Rank renditions by playing time

Below the chart, a table lists every rendition (or rendition combination) ranked by playing time, with its share of the total.

In the dashboard

The table below the chart lists each rendition with its playing time and percentage of total, sorted highest to lowest. Use the pagination controls below the table to paginate through additional rows if your ladder has more renditions than fit on one page.

Customize which rendition attributes to group by

Renditions are made up of several attributes. By default, rows are grouped by the full combination of all of them, but you can narrow which attributes define a distinct row.

In the dashboard

Select Group by above the table to open the Choose rendition parameters dialog, and choose which attributes to group by: Height, Width, Fps, Bitrate, Video Codec, or Rendition Name. The chart and table update together when you save.

Compare renditions across a dimension

To see how rendition mix differs across up to four values of a dimension — for example, four specific titles, or four countries — use the Compare across: view. This replaces the timeseries chart with one pie chart per selected value, and pivots the table to show each value as its own column.

In the dashboard

Select Compare across: below the chart, choose a dimension (for example, Video Title or Country), and select up to four values to compare. The page shows one pie chart per selected value, each broken down by rendition, and the table below adds a column per value.

Filter your results

Playing time by rendition supports the same dimension filtering as the rest of Mux Data.

In the dashboard

Use Filters in the page header to filter by any supported dimension, including rendition attributes like resolution. See Filter your data for the general filtering pattern.

Limitations

• Views recorded on Mux Data SDKs below the minimum versions above won't contribute rendition-level playing time data.
• Comparing across a dimension is capped at 4 values per request.
• Historical (long-term) time ranges aren't supported yet — standard time ranges only at launch.

Next steps

• Understand metric definitions
• Filter your data
• Build a custom dashboard