Overview


If you are configuring local storage Wowza Streaming Endpoints as your content storage and streaming provider coupled with transcoding services using VIDIZMO On Premise Encoder, VIDIZMO provides an ease to its customers by automating the configuration process via VIDIZMO Setup Wizard. 


Setup Wizard allows you to initially set up your Portal's Storage Provider and Transcoder for a seamless user experience through out the application usage. It takes you through a series of easily configurable steps to help set up the system.

There are various other storage and encoding providers that you may configure using Setup Wizard. To learn more about it, see: Understanding Setup Wizard.


Here is how you can start with your Wowza configuration:


Before you start 

  • You need to be an Administrator or Manager to configure your portal's content provider and encoding provider. 

  • Your previous content will remain intact and will be served from your pre-configured storage provider, unless data has been migrated. In case of data migration, old content is purged based on the policy set in the portal.

  • The number of servers you use for local storage depends upon your data redundancy and storage requirements.

  • You will require a Wowza Streaming Engine account to configure Wowza CDN as Streaming Endpoint. 

  • You need to manually configure and deploy the On Premise Encoder on a dedicated machine. Content Processing and Encoding are hardware resource-consuming processes. A dedicated machine for this purpose improves the performance of the application more efficiently as compared to the processes that are running on the same server where the application is deployed.

  • You need to have IIS (Internet Information Services) installed on your Server which will be used to store and serve content and will act as your content storage. If not, install IIS by following the steps mentioned in Installing IIS 8 on Windows Server.
  • Make sure to enable Encoding Profile "SMIL_OnPremise_Transcoder - Video" and "SMIL_OnPremise_Transcoder_Audio - Audio" for processing of media files using Wowza CDNs and disable "IPhone Streaming_OnPremise_Transcoder - Video" to not confuse the system with multiple SMIL files. To learn more about how to enable/disable encoding profiles, see: How to Manage Encoding Profiles in VIDIZMO.


Set up a Network Share


In order to allow VIDIZMO Application to access content from the physical storage path, you need to share your folder over a network. You will also need this Network Share when configuring Media Cache in the Wowza Streaming Engine. With Media Cache in Wowza, the Origin is a Web Server or a Network Share, since Wowza Streaming Engine does not use its own storage. 


In our example, we will be using Network Share, which will be used by Wowza to serve the content. Follow the steps below to configure the network share:


1. Create a folder for content storage on the Server and follow the steps here to share the folder over a network.

2. After sharing, you need to configure custom permissions for the share by giving Read permissions to Everyone so that Wowza can access and stream the content, and Full Control permissions to a specific domain user, whose credentials will be later used to configure IIS in the VIDIZMO Application Server.

3. Now, you need to get the UNC path for your shared folder which will be used for binding content storage site in IIS. 


Wowza Configuration

You need to perform the following while configuring Wowza streaming endpoints:


Set up a Media Cache Source

Wowza VOD Edge Application needs to be configured to use the Network Share created in the previous step. Before you do that, it is necessary to configure a Media Cache Source for our application to use.


The Media Cache feature in Wowza Streaming Engine is a read-through caching mechanism for VOD streaming. Regular Cache only caches content upon complete download, which proves inefficient for very large VOD files. Wowza Media Cache only caches the content which was actually requested. If a user views a short portion of a video, only that portion is initially cached. When another user views the same content, they'll initially get the cached content and then, after they get to the end of the cached content, Media Cache automatically starts caching the new content. To learn more about it, see: Scale with Wowza Streaming Engine Media Cache.


1. Login to the Wowza streaming engine server. By default, Wowza Streaming Engine Manager can be accessed by using the following URL: https://[wowza-ip-address]:8088/enginemanager. VOD Edge application uses media cache to serve the content. We will configure the media cache with the help of the network share that we configured in the first part. Here is how you can do it:

i. Select the Server tab on the top bar to bring up the Server Setup screen. 

ii. Click on Media Cache.




2. On the Media Cache screen:

i. Select the Sources tab.

ii. Click on the +Add Media Cache Source to add a new Cache Source. 


There are two types of Media Caches, Store and Source. A Media Cache Store defines the path that is used by Wowza to cache the files, while the Media Cache Source defines the path which is used by Wowza to serve the files from.  Since Wowza will be used for serving the content, we will be using Media Cache Source.



3. There are 5 different types of Sources that can be used. HTTP, File, Amazon S3, Azure and Google Cloud Storage. Since we are using a physical network path, therefore we will use the source type as File. To learn more about these types and what they mean, see: Media Cache Sources.

In Wowza, the ability to define different paths allows different applications to be configured on the Wowza streaming server with those applications using their own separate paths or sources to serve content. This is how you can set up a media cache source:

i.  Provide a Source Name.

ii. Choose File as the Source Type.

iii. Provide a suitable Prefix, which could be an alphanumeric combination without spaces. Here, you will be adding the tenant ID of your VIDIZMO Portal. For example, "5974/ ". VIDIZMO Application creates a unique folder for every tenant in their storage location where content is stored and served from. You can obtain the tenant ID in your portal via Top-right Navigation Menu > Control Panel > Storage Provider where CDN Folder/Container Name is essentially your tenant ID.

iv. Provide the Base Path which can be obtained from the UNC path of the Network Share as mentioned in step 3 of Setting Up Network Share, after replacing all "\" to "/". At the end of the UNC path, append the tenant ID obtained above. This is done to account for the fact that the content is stored and served from a folder names against your tenant ID. For example, if your UNC path is "\\MyComputer\Content" and your Tenant ID is 5974, the Base Path where your content is stored should be "//MyComputer/Content/5974/".

v. Let Minimum Time to Live be set to its default configuration.

vi. Let Maximum Time to Live be set to its default configuration.

vii. Use to "+Add"  button to save the Media Cache Source.




Configure VOD Edge Application


1. Now, we need to create a VOD Edge Application on Wowza Server to use the Cache Source created above.

i.  Click on the Applications tab on the top bar.

ii. Under Video On Demand type, select VOD Edge.



iii. Enter a name for your application.

iv. Go to your application's Setup tab and check that the Media Cache you configured for your content is selected against your application. If not, select it by clicking on Edit.




2. You can test the player to verify the connectivity between Wowza and the Network Share path. Place a sample file in the Network Share folder. This will be used by the Test Player to verify the network path connectivity with Wowza Server. 

i.  Click on the Test Players button.

ii.  Test Player loads with the Media details. Click on the Start button to play the file.

iii. If the Media playback is successful, Share Path connectivity is verified.




Get Provider URL

Now, you need to get the Provider URL which will be used in VIDIZMO Portal to integrate with Wowza application for smooth video streaming.

To get the Provider URL, go to your VOD Edge application:

i. Click on Wowza Player.

ii. Under Playback URL, provide any value in the File Path such as "Content".

iii. Copy the Result until the instance name as shown below. This will be used later in VIDIZMO portal while running Setup Wizard.




IIS Configuration in VIDIZMO Application Server

VIDIZMO Application needs to be able to use the Network Share path created in Section 1 in order to serve media through Wowza Streaming Engine. To achieve this, IIS Server that has the VIDIZMO Application installed needs to be configured to use the Network Share path.


Configure Content Storage Site in IIS


1. First, an existing “Vidizmo-Configuration” folder needs to be copied from the Application in the IIS Manager and paste it in the Network Share folder:

i. Expand Sites under your Server's name to view all sites.

ii. Expand VIDIZMO application site to view the site's contents.

ii. Locate CDN application within VIDIZMO site, and right-click on it to open context menu.

iii. Click Explore to open its contents in File Explorer. Copy the folder "vidizmo-configuration", and paste it in the Network Share folder.


Note: Make sure you copy the folder, not cut (move) it from the original location.




2. Use this tutorial to create a new Website in IIS.

3. The binding information defines the information that is used to access the site. For example, the binding protocol of a Web site can be either HTTP or HTTPS, and the binding information is the combination of IP address, port, and optional host header. Now, on the Add Website screen, make sure you map the newly created web site onto the content storage folder by setting up your site’s binding information as following:

i. Enter a Site name for your website. 

ii. By default, an Application pool by your site’s name will be created and your site will be associated with it. 

iii. As Physical path, copy and enter the UNC Path of the shared folder configured while creating a network share.

iv. Here, configure Pass-through authentication for your shared path by adding Path credentials of the specific domain that you gave Full Control rights to, while configuring network share. This will enable the site to have the access rights and permissions to read/write files in the folder. 





4. Coming back to the Add Website screen, after entering Path Credentials:

i. Choose the Type as http/https for your site depending upon your site’s SSL configuration. If you do not have an SSL certificate installed, choose http.
ii. Under IP Address, check Unassigned(All) to allow site to use any available pre-configured IP Address.
iii. Enter the Port that the site will use to communicate, which is 80 by default for all http websites and 443 for all https websites hosted over the internet.
iv. Enter the Host name, to specify the DNS against which to resolve your IP Address.
v. Select Ok to create website with configured settings. Copy and save the Host name you enter here, to be used later while running Setup Wizard.





5. After adding the website, you also need to set Path credentials for the Application pool that the site resides in.  You can do that using the left navigation pane in IIS: 

i. Click on Application Pools.

ii. Navigate to the application pool named after your site and right-click it to open context menu.

iii. Select Advanced Settings… 




6. From the Advanced settings screen:

i. Click on the value against Physical Path Credentials.
ii. From the resulting pop-up screen, select Custom account.
iii. Set Path Credentials of the domain user that you gave rights to, while configuring network share. This will enable the Application pool to have the access rights and permissions to read/write files in the folder. Enter the Username and Password and click Ok.
v. Click Ok to save Path Credentials.
vi. Click Ok to save Application Pool’s Advanced Settings.




Authenticate VIDIZMO Application to Access Network Share

Now in order to make sure VIDIZMO Application has the access permissions to read as well as write files on the shared folder for successful content upload, storage and retrieval, we will have to configure authentication for the shared path in VIDIZMO application site as well as its VIDIZMO Application pool.


1. From the left navigation pane in IIS:

i. Right-click on the VIDIZMO application site to open context menu.

ii. Select Manage Website.

iii. Select Advanced Settings…




2. From the Advanced Settings screen:

i. Click on the value against Physical Path Credentials.

ii. From the resulting pop-up screen, select Specific user. Set Path Credentials of the domain user that you gave rights to. Enter the Username and Password and click Ok.

iii. Click Ok to save Path Credentials.

iv. Click Ok to save Site’s Advanced Settings.




3. Now, authenticate the VIDIZMO Application Pool by setting its Identity. From the left navigation pane in IIS:

i. Click on Application Pools.
ii. Navigate to the application pool named after your site and right-click it to open context menu.
iii. Select Advanced Settings…





4. From the Advanced settings screen:

i. Click on the value against Identity.
ii. From the resulting Application Pool Identity screen, select Custom account.
iii. Set Path Credentials of the domain user that you gave rights to. Enter the Username and Password for your Administrator account and click Ok.
iv. Click Ok to save Path Credentials.
v. Click Ok to save Application Pool’s Advanced Settings.





VIDIZMO Configuration

After configuring Wowza Media Cache Source and VOD Edge Application, you need to integrate it with VIDIZMO Application for seamless video streaming. This can be achieved through a series of easy steps in VIDIZMO portal. Log in to your portal and follow the steps below to run Setup Wizard:


1. From the Portal's Homepage

i. Click on the navigation menu on the top left of your screen.

ii. Expand Admin tab.

iii Click on Control Panel.




2. From the Manage Portal navigation pane in Control Panel:

i. Select Setup Wizard.

ii. Click on Run Wizard Again.


Note: VIDIZMO provides a set of default configuration for your Storage and Transcoding Provider which can be overridden via Setup Wizard due to evolving business requirements. Furthermore, apart from the possible configurations, VIDIZMO also offers the flexibility of choosing any other Storage Providers or Transcoders that the organization may want to configure their application with. 





3.  From the Configuration tab:

i. Select Wowza to configure it as your VIDIZMO Storage for your system, from a list of available options in the drop-down.

ii. Select VIDIZMO On Premise Encoder to configure it as your Encoder for your system, from a list of available options in the drop-down.

iii. Click Next to proceed to the next tab.




Configuring Wowza Storage


4. From the Storage tab: 

i. Provide the Provider URL which is the content storage site's host name configured here.

ii. Provide the Streaming Provider URL which corresponds to the path URL where media will be cached and streamed from. This is the URL you obtained here.

iii. Enter Storage Path which is the physical location path of the folder where you will store and stream content from. This is the UNC Path obtained while setting up network share above.

iv. Click Next to proceed.




5. From the Transcoder tab:

i. Uncheck Migrate Content. It is used to migrate data from one Storage Provider to another.

vi. Click Done.


A notification will appear briefly stating: Setup Wizard Started Successfully.




Note: You can track the progress of the Setup Wizard with respect to Storage and Transcoder configuration via Workflows. To learn more about it, see: How to View Workflows.


Troubleshooting

To troubleshoot setting up Wowza Storage with VIDIZMO On Premise Encoder using Setup Wizard in VIDIZMO portal, see the following:

Read Next

Read more about other various combinations of storage and encoding providers that VIDIZMO offers: