VAST 4.2: Empty (No Ad) Response
A valid VAST document containing no Ad element: the correct response when an ad server has nothing to serve. It arrives as HTTP 200 with a well-formed body, so it is not an error condition, and a player must resume content immediately rather than waiting for a timeout. Frequently mishandled: players stall on the break or log a spurious failure. The smallest meaningful VAST document there is.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<VAST version="4.2" xmlns="http://www.iab.com/VAST"/>
Specifications
- Standard
- VAST 4.2
- Ads
- 0
- Http Status
- 200 with an empty VAST element
- Expected Behaviour
- play content immediately, no error
- Alt Text
- A valid VAST document containing no Ad element: the correct response when an ad server has nothing to serve
- Alt Text Source
- description
Testing contract
Reference control- Scenario
- Request the ad, receive this response, and decide what to play.
- Expected result
- An empty VAST 4.2 response: HTTP 200 with a VAST element containing 0 ads. The correct behaviour is to play content immediately with no error and no delay - treating an empty fill as a failure produces a spinner where there should be video, which is the defect this fixture is for.
What is a .xml file?
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a verbose, self-describing markup language using nested tags, attributes, and namespaces to represent structured, hierarchical data. It supports schemas, entities, and validation and underlies many document and data formats. It remains common in enterprise, publishing, and interchange contexts.
How to use this file
Use an example XML file to test parsers, namespace and schema validation, XPath queries, and protection against entity-expansion and external-entity attacks.
How to use this file for testing
“VAST 4.2: Empty (No Ad) Response” is a deterministic Testaroo fixture for Ad insertion, Streaming manifests, Video QA. VAST ad responses and SCTE-35 splice descriptors covering linear break signalling, wrappers, and companion creatives, for testing ad-decision integration and manifest-manipulation logic without calling a real ad server.
Documented properties for this file: XML · 93 bytes. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such, expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
Media fixtures are short and synthetic by design. Prefer waveform or transcript ground truth in the same group when measuring ASR, trim, upscale, or sync tools; do not assume broadcast-quality masters.
Code examples
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse("vast-no-ad.xml")
root = tree.getroot()
print(root.tag, [c.tag for c in root][:5])Generated by generation/video_timedtext.py. Free for any use, no attribution required, license.
Related files
- m4sDASH VOD: Init Segment (init-stream0.m4s)A DASH initialisation segment carrying codec configuration for one representation. Named by the manifest's $RepresentationID$ template, so this file also exercises whether a client resolves template variables correctly rather than pattern-matching filenames.
- m4sDASH VOD: Init Segment (init-stream1.m4s)A DASH initialisation segment carrying codec configuration for one representation. Named by the manifest's $RepresentationID$ template, so this file also exercises whether a client resolves template variables correctly rather than pattern-matching filenames.
- m4sDASH VOD: Init Segment (init-stream2.m4s)A DASH initialisation segment carrying codec configuration for one representation. Named by the manifest's $RepresentationID$ template, so this file also exercises whether a client resolves template variables correctly rather than pattern-matching filenames.
- mpdDASH VOD: Manifest (Playable Package)A complete, playable MPEG-DASH manifest for the same 320x180 at 300 kbps, 480x270 at 700 kbps, 640x360 at 1400 kbps ladder as the HLS package, produced from the same encoder run, so the two can be compared directly as packaging rather than as content. Every segment it references exists in this group. Served inline as application/dash+xml with permissive CORS, so dash.js can load it cross-origin.
- m4sDASH VOD: Media Segment (chunk-stream0-00001.m4s)A one-second DASH media segment, addressed by the manifest's $Number$ template. The same underlying CMAF structure as the HLS segments in the sibling package, which is the whole point of CMAF, and something a fixture set should let you verify rather than take on trust.
- m4sDASH VOD: Media Segment (chunk-stream0-00002.m4s)A one-second DASH media segment, addressed by the manifest's $Number$ template. The same underlying CMAF structure as the HLS segments in the sibling package, which is the whole point of CMAF, and something a fixture set should let you verify rather than take on trust.
