Overview
A Publishing point refers to the physical location of the streaming server that the live video feed is first delivered to (ingest) via an encoder and the playback URLs the VIDIZMO player uses to playback live stream (egress), effectively hosting the stream for all viewers. A publishing point allows you to fine tune and re-use your Playback URLs for frequent live events.
Publishing Point is a combination of Ingest Point(s) and a Playback URL, with the ingest point on one end of the Streaming Server which takes input from the encoder and on the other end, the streaming server provides a Playback URL for the player to playback the content. The quality of the playback content depends upon the streaming server's ability to transcode different renditions for the player.
VIDIZMO Streaming Servers are specially designed to simultaneously live transcode ingested streams in different qualities i.e. 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p etc. and combine them to create a single source file or manifest file for the player. Manifest files store stream metadata, which is used by the players to provide the best quality streams. The player, depending upon the available bandwidth, then takes relevant information from the manifest file and decides which quality to stream.
To learn more about the VIDIZMO Streaming Servers, see: VIDIZMO Streaming Server Options.
Follow the steps below to learn how to create a Publishing Point for live streaming in VIDIZMO:
Before you start
- Only Administrators and Managers can add a Publishing Point for live streaming.
- In order to set up a publishing point, you need to configure an ECDN node as General streaming server that you will be using to publish your live stream. VIDIZMO offers easy integration with 4 different streaming servers (along with the flexibility of adding more), but here we will be demonstrating how to set up General streaming server provider for live streaming. Follow the steps in How to Setup General Streaming Server Provider before you proceed to create a publishing point.
- In order to stream your content using any (general) third-party streaming services, you need to make sure to manually retrieve the Content Playback URL provided to you for live streaming by that streaming provider. You will be needing it in VIDIZMO application to play the live stream.
Add a Publishing Point
1. From the Portal's Homepage:
i. Click on the navigation menu on the top left of your screen.
ii. Expand the Admin tab.
iii Click on Control Panel.
2. From the Manage Portal navigation panel:
i. Select the Live Streaming tab to list options available under it.
ii. Click on the Publishing Point tab to open its screen on the right-hand side.
iii. To add a Publishing Point for your streaming server, use the Add Publishing Point button.
3. From the Add Publishing Point screen:
i. Enter the Title for your Publishing Point.
ii. Now, select a Server from the dropdown list. In the Server field, you can select from the list of names appearing in the drop-down. These values and are populated from the "Title" field when setting up the ECDN from Admin > Control Panel> ECDN > Add ECDN. Now, choose the Wowza Streaming Cloud Server Node that you configured using How to Configure General Streaming Server Provider.
iii. Give your stream a uniquely identifiable name.
iv. Enter details for your Primary Ingest Point which will be provided to you by your Streaming Service Provider.
v. Enter details for your Secondary Ingest Point, also known as the Backup URL which will be provided to you by your Streaming Service Provider. This URL serves as a backup Ingest URL in case the first one is down.
Note: Ingest Point URLs and credentials are taken for display purpose, only to ease the process of setting up an encoder using this publishing point.
vi. Here, you should add Playback Content URLs for the published stream which will again be provided to you by your Streaming Service Provider.
vii. Click Add to create your Publishing Point.
Setup Encoder
After configuration, go back to Publishing Point screen and hover over your configured point to edit it. From the Edit Publishing Point screen, obtain the following four values that will be used for configuring your encoder's output settings:
i. Ingest Point
ii. Stream Name
iii. Username
iv. Password
For a demonstration of how to set up Telestream Wirecast encoder to push your stream to your streaming server, see: Setting Up Wirecast Encoder for the Live Stream.
Preview Live Stream
The Publishing Point has been tested and verified to stream the right content. It can now be used to schedule a Live Webcast. Click here to learn more on How to Schedule a Live Webcast in VIDIZMO.