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 using Wowza Cloud Streaming Server 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 Wowza Cloud 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 Wowza Cloud streaming server provider for live streaming. Follow the steps in How to Configure Wowza Streaming Cloud Server Provider before you proceed to create a publishing point.
- There are two ways you can connect to a live stream using Wowza Cloud Streaming Server. Use Push if you want your video source to push the stream to Wowza Streaming Cloud, or use Pull if you want Wowza Streaming Cloud to pull the stream from the video source. To learn more about the two delivery methods and how they work, see: Connect an RTMP encoder to Wowza Streaming Cloud.
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.
Pull-Mode Publishing Point
Whenever you need to stream content from a public source URL, or to re-stream a live stream to your targeted audience, a Pull-mode Publishing Point is created on the server to pull stream from the source, process it and play it back in the application.
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 are populated from the "Title" field when setting up the ECDN from Admin > Control Panel > ECDN > Add Server. Now, choose the Wowza Streaming Cloud Server Node that you configured using How to Configure Wowza Streaming Cloud Server Provider.
Note: Following is a list of options required to add a live stream in your Wowza Streaming Cloud account. To learn more about them, see: Add a Live Stream.
iii. Here, you may select the Width of the content that you wish to live stream. However, the setting will be applied without disrupting the aspect ratio of the original broadcast.
iv Here, you may select the Height of the content that you wish to live stream. However, the setting will be applied without disrupting the aspect ratio of the original broadcast.
v. Select the Billing Mode as per how you want to be billed for the streaming services on Wowza Cloud.
vi. Choose the location nearest to your Broadcast Location from the available regions. To know more about 4K and 24/7, see Wowza documentation above.
vii. Choose Other RTMP or Other RTSP (depending upon the source URL) as your Encoder to enable encoding and smooth playback of your stream in multiple renditions.
viii. For a Pull-Mode Publishing Point, choose your Delivery Method as Pull. This means that Wowza Streaming Cloud Server will pull your stream from the video source, which you will define next.
ix. Enter the Source URL that Wowza Streaming Cloud server will pull your stream from.
Note: The Source URL needs to have public access permissions for allowing Wowza Streaming Cloud Server to request and retrieve the content from it.
x. Choose Target Delivery Protocol, which is the protocol used to deliver the stream to viewers. You can either choose Apple HLS or Apple HLS and Adobe HDS. Wowza Streaming Cloud generates playback URLs for the protocol you choose.
xi. Check this box to enable Low Latency settings to optimize streaming experience.
Note: Low Latency mode allows VIDIZMO to maintain the quality of the stream by taking into account the network condition. Latency is reduced only if a smooth playback experience is still possible and viewers who have good connectivity see a lower latency compared to those who face network constraints.
xii. Click Add to create your publishing point.
Push-Mode Publishing Point
Whenever an IP Camera or any encoder is used to push stream to an ingest point of a streaming server, a Push-mode Publishing Point is created on the server to retrieve, process and play back the stream.
This an alternate set of options that you need to select and configure to set up a push-mode publishing point, after which you will also have to set up your transcoder to push stream to this Publishing Point.
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 Wowza Streaming Cloud Server Provider.
Note: Following is a list of options required to add a live stream in your Wowza Streaming Cloud account. To learn more about them, see: Add a Live Stream.
iiii. Here, you may select the Width of the content that you wish to live stream. However, the setting will be applied without disrupting the aspect ratio of the original broadcast.
iv Here, you may select the Height of the content that you wish to live stream. However, the setting will be applied without disrupting the aspect ratio of the original broadcast.
v. Select the Billing Mode as per how you want to be billed for the streaming services on Wowza Cloud.
vi. Choose the location nearest to your Broadcast Location from the available regions. To know more about 4K and 24/7, see Wowza documentation above.
vii. Choose any encoder of your choice (that allows you to push the stream) as your Encoder to enable encoding and smooth playback of your stream in multiple renditions. As for demonstration, we have chosen Telestream Wirecast.
viii. For a Push-Mode Publishing Point, choose your Delivery Method as Push. This means that your configured encoder will push the stream to Wowza Streaming Cloud.
ix. Choose Target Delivery Protocol, which is the protocol used to deliver the stream to viewers. You can either choose Apple HLS or Apple HLS and Adobe HDS. Wowza Streaming Cloud generates playback URLs for the protocol you choose.
x. Check this box to enable Low Latency settings to optimize streaming experience.
Note: Low Latency mode allows VIDIZMO to maintain the quality of the stream by taking into account the network condition. Latency is reduced only if a smooth playback experience is still possible and viewers who have good connectivity see a lower latency compared to those who face network constraints.
xi. Disable Authentication: Enabling Authentication will require you to provide login credentials when setting up your encoder. When this checkbox is disabled, User Name and Password fields are made available to enter your credentials.
xii. Click Add to create your publishing point.
Setup Encoder to Push Stream
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 the sake of demonstration, here is a tutorial of how to set up Telestream Wirecast encoder to push your stream to your streaming server: Setting Up Wirecast Encoder for the Live Stream.
Preview Live Stream
In order to test your configuration and see if you can smoothly stream via the configured publishing point:
1. Go back to Control Panel > Live Streaming > Publishing Point to display a list of configured publishing points.
2. Hover over your configured publishing point to see a set of controls appear against it. Click on Play icon to play back your test stream.
The Publishing Point has been tested and verified to stream the right content. It can now be used to schedule a Live Webcast.