Here we’ll walk through two ways to achieve a seamless end-to-end video workflow using the following:
• Telestream Wirecast® for production and encoding
• The Wowza Streaming Cloud™ service or
Wowza Streaming Engine™ software for
transcoding and distribution
• An HTML5 or Flash player
(such as JW Player) for playback
A MULTIPART WORKFLOWTo start off, let’s look at the major pieces of a streaming architecture.
PRODUCTION AND ENCODING
Everything starts with producing a live stream. How do you take live
feeds from multiple cameras, put them together professionally on
your laptop, and encode the resulting production for streaming?
Wowza™ technology works with nearly any encoder or network (IP)
camera, but a product such as Telestream Wirecast makes it easy to
switch between multiple live camera feeds while dynamically
mixing in prerecorded video, audio, graphics, and slides. You can also
generate transitions, lower thirds, playlists, and other video effects
for added polish. Wirecast then encodes the resulting file and sends a
produced live stream to a server for distribution.
Wirecast offers integrated publishing options in the Wowza
Streaming Cloud or Wowza Streaming Engine interface to
automatically configure the encoder to publish live streams to the
Wowza technology of your choice. Easily set up presets for CDNs
and other destinations, including Wowza products, to select your
encoding and streaming bitrates.
TRANSCODING AND DISTRIBUTION
Once you’ve created a beautiful production in Wirecast, how do
you get it to the world? Products from Wowza Media Systems
and its Works With Wowza™ partners, including Telestream, are
tightly integrated, meaning you can easily stream your produced
video and audio to the Wowza Streaming Cloud service or Wowza
Streaming Engine software to reach any device, anywhere.
Robust, customizable, affordable Wowza solutions eliminate the
need for additional hardware and software components for real-time
transcoding, packaging (transmuxing), and adaptive delivery of live
streams to today’s wide array of protocols, screens, and platforms.
END-TO-END LIVE STREAMING:
MARRYING PRODUCTION, PROCESSING, AND PLAYBACK
As streaming becomes increasingly integrated into business, the need for customized workflows is on the rise. How do you go from simple live video capture to professional-quality produced shots? How do
you ensure your produced video reaches every device your audience may be using, and looks its best for each viewer? Whether you’re just dipping a toe into live streaming or you’re looking to smooth out some rough spots
in your current approach, choosing proven, industry-leading providers that are tested and verified to work together in an end-to-end workflow can give you peace of mind.
© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved.
PLAYBACK
Finally, Wowza delivers the transcoded streams to your chosen
player—whether that’s a player hosted by Wowza, a YouTube
channel, or a pro-quality player such as the flagship product
from Works With Wowza partner JW Player. Simply configure
the player and the web page that are hosting your live stream,
plug in the player embed code or direct-playback URL, sit back,
and enjoy the show.
A BASIC CHOICE: IN THE CLOUD OR ON PREMISES?You have many choices for how to stream, but one of the
biggest decisions is whether to use a cloud-based solution
or an on-premises one. Wowza Media Systems has services
and software that cover both approaches, and each is fully
integrated with Telestream Wirecast. We’ll delve into both
workflows and look at a couple of implementation examples
so you can identify which one is best for you.
THE CLOUD-BASED APPROACHThe world is abuzz about the cloud, and for good reason: For live
streaming, it eliminates the need to maintain an on-premises
infrastructure, yet you get infinite scalability. And if you’re
streaming infrequently, it’s a cost-effective option because you’re
making very little up-front investment. Because this is the fastest
way to get started with end-to-end live streaming, we’ll talk
about it first.
Wowza Streaming Cloud lets you easily stream live video to any
device, scaling automatically to accommodate audiences of any
size, anywhere. The service accepts video from nearly any H.264
encoder or network camera (the latter requires no separate
encoder) and transcodes the video in the cloud to create and
deliver high-quality streams in multiple bitrates that can be
played on virtually any device. You don’t have to purchase or
maintain hardware, or install or run software locally. You pay only
for the resources you use, and broadcast to audiences large or
small, anytime.
© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved.
Let’s take a look at how the cloud-based workflow unfolds,
then see how we used this end-to-end workflow for our
own live stream at a recent trade show.
STEP 1: SET UP TELESTREAM WIRECAST
Telestream Wirecast is cross-platform, all-in-one live streaming
production software that can encode your video and audio
streams and deliver the live streams to Wowza Streaming Cloud.
Wirecast offers the production capabilities of more expensive
hardware solutions with the flexibility and affordability of
a software application. With Wirecast, you can bring in an
unlimited number of source inputs, ranging from USB and
FireWire cameras to iOS cameras, HD cameras, computer
desktops, and web feeds. Wirecast also supports popular
capture cards, as well as other capture devices.
You can add polish and professionalism to your broadcasts with
live switching, transitions, titles, and lower thirds. And the built-in
multiformat encoding capabilities (see “A note on configuring
your source encode”) allow you to easily stream to the Wowza
Streaming Cloud service and Wowza Streaming Engine
software.
STEP 2: SET UP THE WOWZA STREAMING CLOUD
LIVE STREAM
Once you have Wirecast set up, with your live feeds and content
coming into Wirecast, you sign in to Wowza Streaming Cloud
using the browser-based interface at cloud.wowza.com. Click
on the Live Streams tab, and then on Add Live Stream. On the
Live Stream Setup page, follow the five easy steps to set
up your live stream. Enter a live stream name and choose a
broadcast location—the location of the origin server that will
ingest the live stream. The best practice is to choose the location
that is closest to you geographically to reduce potential latency
in your live stream.
The Video Source Settings page is where you choose the
camera or encoder you’re using to capture and encode your
video. Wowza Streaming Cloud can also receive encoded
live video from a Wowza Streaming Engine server or from the
Wowza GoCoder™ mobile encoding app for iOS and Android
devices. You can connect any H.264 encoder that supports
RTMP or RTSP to Wowza Streaming Cloud by either a push
or a pull stream. Wowza Streaming Cloud can also connect
seamlessly to high-end, professional encoders or IP cameras
from our Works With Wowza partners, including Telestream.
For this end-to-end workflow walkthrough we’ll demonstrate
using Telestream Wirecast as your encoder. When you choose
Telestream as your video source, Wowza Streaming Cloud
generates a connection settings file that you can use to easily
connect the Wirecast encoder to Wowza Streaming Cloud.
Specify your playback preferences, then let Wowza Streaming
Cloud do the rest of the work, including transcoding and
adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming. The default transcoder setting
is to create five bitrate renditions of your video, but you can
customize this to suit your needs, whatever they may be. The
cloud service automatically re-encodes the renditions and
delivers them using ABR streaming, which works by detecting a
user’s bandwidth and hardware playback capabilities in real time
and adjusting the quality to provide the best-possible-quality
stream for each user.
At this point you download a configuration file from Wowza
Streaming Cloud and import it into Wirecast to easily stream
to the cloud service. (If you were to use a different encoder,
you would manually enter the server IP address, stream,
name, username, and password rather than use this shortcut
configuration file.)
© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved.
© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved.
Since you send only one source encode to Wowza
Streaming Cloud, make sure it’s a good one. As the adage
goes, garbage in, garbage out: Wowza Streaming Cloud
can’t generate any output renditions that are higher quality
than what it receives from the video source.
With the basic live-stream workflow, Wowza Streaming
Cloud creates output renditions automatically based on the
resolution of the source video. The higher the resolution
of the source video, the more output renditions Wowza
Streaming Cloud transcodes. You can add, edit, or remove
renditions in the advanced mode, but generally speaking,
preparing one very high-quality source encode allows
Wowza Streaming Cloud to automatically deliver a set of
suitable, high-quality streams across any kind of client
connection, to any device.
When preparing a source encode, use the following rules of
thumb to make sure the size of the encode doesn’t exceed
your available bandwidth.
• Determine the bandwidth for your source encode.
• If you’re sending a backup source encode,
factor in 100% more data.
• Allow 40% of your total bandwidth for overhead.
IN PRACTICEFor our live stream at a recent tradeshow, detailed in the
example implementation here, we had a dedicated 10 Mbps
wired Internet connection between our encoder at the
show and Wowza Streaming Cloud. We conducted several
speed tests (via speedtest.net) the day before and on the
morning of each live stream. Allowing 40% for overhead, we
determined that our primary and backup encodes should
not exceed 6 Mbps total, or 3 Mbps each. We encoded the
stream in HD at 720p at a bitrate of 2.5 Mbps for the H.264
video and 128 Kbps mono for the AAC audio. That way we
had plenty of overhead in case the bandwidth fluctuated.
A note on configuringyour sourceencode
You can test that your stream works as expected by selecting
your live stream within Wowza Streaming Cloud, clicking Start
Stream at the top of the live stream detail page, and clicking
Start to initiate the stream. Wowza Streaming Cloud opens the
stream and connects with the Wirecast encoder. In Wirecast,
start your video source, then in the Wowza Streaming Cloud
web manager, confirm that the stream is working by looking at
the video snapshot in the Overview tab.
When you’re satisfied with your test, you’re ready to stream live.
STEP 3: STREAM LIVE!
Wowza Streaming Cloud lets you deliver live streams to viewers
using a Wowza-provided player and customizable hosted web
page, or you can output to just about any player you like. In
addition, advanced settings let you create custom transcoding
workflows, receive live streams into selected Wowza Streaming
Cloud content delivery network (CDN) sources, and deliver
streams to multiple RTMP target destinations, offering the
control and scalability required for large-scale, professional
deployments. Think of additional ways you can distribute your
live stream ahead of the event—whether it’s through your
Facebook page or partner websites—to reach your users where
they are.
A REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE:
STREAMING LIVE FROM A TRADESHOW
Since Wowza is in the business of live streaming, we used
this very end-to-end workflow at the National Association
of Broadcasters 2015 trade show to stream our partner and
customer presentations to a global audience.
We used a MacBook Pro to capture the raw video and audio
feed from our JVC GY-HM650 camera with the Blackmagic
Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt capture device. We incorporated
IP cameras mounted in our tradeshow booth as additional
camera sources, and used the Telestream Wirecast Desktop
Presenter software utility to capture the presenter’s computer
screen and pull it into Wirecast as a video source across the
local network. Wirecast allowed us to add effects such as
lower thirds, graphics, and music to produce a professional-
production-quality live stream.
The live streaming events ran back-to-back for more than two
hours and Wowza Streaming Cloud worked flawlessly. We were
able to live-stream to a white-label player on wowza.com and
share the event with our existing user base. We were also able to
easily push the stream to YouTube Live and other live streaming
services to reach a broader audience.
THE ON-PREMISES APPROACHSometimes a fully cloud-based solution just isn’t right for your
business. If you want or need full control over your end-to-end
workflow, you have the budget and expertise to administer
your own infrastructure, or you plan to stream frequently or
even 24x7, an on-premises workflow is your answer. We’ll walk
through how you can manage this yourself, and then take a look
at how one end-to-end service provider has used this workflow
to build an all-in-one turnkey solution for customers.
Let’s look at a proven on-premises, end-to-end streaming
solution. You’ll capture video and audio, send that to
Telestream Wirecast for producing and encoding into an RTMP
feed, then send that feed to Wowza Streaming Engine. Wowza
streaming server software takes in the high-quality RTMP
(H.264 and AAC) feed, and the built-in transcoding feature
transforms the live incoming stream and creates multiple
bitrate renditions that are used for ABR streaming. Wowza
Streaming Engine then packages each rendition into multiple
streaming formats, including popular HTTP adaptive streaming
formats such as Apple® HLS. Finally, Wowza Streaming Engine
delivers those streams to a player, such as JW Player, which
can be embedded on your website to play your content back
to viewers anywhere, on any device.
© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved.
STEP 1: SET UP TELESTREAM WIRECAST
As in Wowza Streaming Cloud, you’ll want to bring all your live
feeds, web streams, video clips, and graphics into Telestream
Wirecast software, and set up your Wirecast document.
Wirecast users benefit from integrated publishing options
in Wowza Streaming Engine to automatically configure the
Wirecast encoder to publish live streams to Wowza server
software.
To access this configuration, simply open the Wowza
Streaming Engine Manager in your browser. The browser-
based interface lets you administer features of Wowza
Streaming Engine server software. Click Applications and
select Live, and then prepare this application to stream
from Wirecast by choosing Telestream from the Incoming
Publishers list. This generates an XML file that lets you
stream directly from Wirecast into Wowza. Just load this
XML file from Output Settings in Wirecast to autopopulate
the encoding settings, IP address, stream name, stream
URL, and Wowza login credentials.
At this point, you can customize the encoding settings by
configuring the resolution, video and audio bitrate settings,
and other preferences, and then save your configuration. Click
the Stream button, and Wirecast will send the live view as a
stream to Wowza Streaming Engine.
STEP 2: SET UP THE WOWZA STREAMING ENGINE
LIVE STREAM
Using this workflow we are pushing only one live stream
from Wirecast via RTMP to Wowza Streaming Engine. Wowza
takes care of the rest, transcoding the one incoming stream
from Wirecast to various renditions with different bitrates and
resolutions and converting those to all of the protocols you’ve
selected in the Live application (e.g., MPEG-DASH, Apple HLS,
Adobe® RTMP, Adobe HDS, Microsoft® Smooth Streaming).
Within Wowza Streaming Engine Manager, click on Incoming
Streams to see the incoming Wirecast stream and its IP
address. Wowza Streaming Engine Manager features several
test players that let you verify that Wowza Streaming Engine
is set up correctly and is packaging the live stream into all
the selected protocols. If you return to Wirecast and make
changes to your production, you can push those changes to
the live view, switch back to Test Players in Wowza Streaming
Engine, and see those updates in real time, with almost no
latency via the RTMP protocol.
Once you’re satisfied with what you see in the test players,
you’re ready to play back the stream within your player.
STEP 3: STREAM LIVE!
When developing an end-to-end solution, you can limit possible
failures by having a solid, reliable player. Using a third-party
player saves you from having to develop your own and keeps
you on top of emerging protocols and features. You have a wide
array of options for video players when delivering via Wowza
Streaming Engine: you can stream to just about any player
© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved.
that supports Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), Adobe HTTP
Dynamic Streaming (HDS), Microsoft Smooth Streaming,
or MPEG-DASH. You can also send streams to target
destinations, including media servers, external CDNs, and
streaming services, using the Adobe HDS, Apple HLS, MPEG-TS,
RTMP, and RTP protocols.
Choosing a feature-rich player such as JW Player enables you
to deploy both Flash and HTML5 playback functionality as well
as get full, intuitive integration with Wowza Streaming Engine,
making your end-to-end solution that much smoother.
As a Works With Wowza partner, JW Player has worked hand-
in-hand with Wowza for years to create a tight integration
between the technologies. Wowza Streaming Engine delivers a
list of the transcoded ABR streams in a manifest file for JW Player
to access. JW Player is able to detect a user’s bandwidth and
CPU capacity in real time and adjust the quality of the video
stream accordingly. JW Player’s Adaptive Engine transitions
between quality levels seamlessly so viewers won’t experience
buffering that makes for a bad streaming experience.
Additionally, the network digital video recorder (nDVR)
functionality in Wowza Streaming Engine is integrated with
JW Player so viewers can pause and rewind your live streams.
This is available for all stream-quality levels, so viewers get
this functionality no matter what their hardware and local
bandwidth conditions.
A TURNKEY SOLUTION FOR END-TO-END STREAMING:
CHURCHSTREAMING.TV
For organizations such as houses of worship who are
streaming as little as once a week and are staffed largely by
volunteers, setting up a full streaming workflow themselves
may not be cost-effective or realistic. That’s where end-to-
end service providers come in. The cooperation between
Wowza and our technology partners lets companies like
Churchstreaming.tv develop turnkey live-streaming solutions
that are robust and reliable for their own streaming customers.
Churchstreaming.tv provides an affordable end-to-end live
streaming solution to churches of all sizes—built from scratch
on the Wowza and JW Player APIs, and with Telestream
Wirecast as a preferred encoder for incoming streams. When
building an encoding workflow, choosing proven, industry-
leading tools was paramount to Churchstreaming.tv so it could
be confident in its own offering.
Here’s how it works: In Wirecast, customers select
Churchstreaming.tv as a provider, then enter their username
and click Authenticate in the Churchstreaming.tv interface.
Wirecast provides easy encoding presets and advanced
settings for configuring the encoder to your liking, and
Churchstreaming.tv has created specific encoding profiles that
it has identified as well suited to each of its customers based
on their upload bandwidth. This takes the guesswork out of
encoding profiles for Churchstreaming.tv customers.
Then in real time, Churchstreaming.tv queries Wowza
Streaming Engine to get the desired encoding presets. Finally,
when JW Player loads, it contacts the Churchstreaming.tv
server, which builds out the proper manifest to describe the
ABR streams that can be pulled from Wowza Streaming Engine.
Customers easily schedule events in the Churchstreaming.tv
interface. Behind the scenes the database is updated and
the system is prepared so that when a stream goes live from
Wirecast, it starts streaming live through Wowza Streaming
Engine and JW Player, and automatically begins recording.
ABR streaming is a huge factor. Audiences may be watching
streamed videos on Roku devices over a high-speed
connection, or they may be on vacation watching a live stream
over 3G on a cell phone. The Churchstreaming.tv ecosystem
runs a speed test on each house of worship’s connection to
see what upload bandwidth is possible, and accordingly creates
a range of appropriate bitrate renditions via Wowza Streaming
Engine. The end result is that the most appropriate bitrate
rendition is delivered to each viewer and adjusts dynamically
with changing network conditions—all transparently to viewers.
© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved.
The ability to use Wowza for packaging also is critical
because it means Churchstreaming.tv can say goodbye
to concerns over protocol compatibility and be assured
that viewers can access a stream on any device.
Building the solution on Wowza technology also allows
Churchstreaming.tv to pull RTSP streams directly from
customers who are using network cameras, and stream that
video live while also recording it. Because network cameras
are extraordinarily easy to operate and require no separate
hardware or software encoder, they are invaluable for
streaming customers such as houses of worship, which may
involve few or no camera operators or technical specialists.
THE TAKEAWAYYou may have been unsure of exactly what’s involved in going
from your camera to your audience’s screens; wonder no
more. Now you know what’s possible, whether you choose
a cloud-based deployment or an on-premises one. When
pursuing an end-to-end solution, choosing best-in-class
live streaming providers at every step in the process—from
production and encoding to transcoding, packaging, and
distribution, and then to playback—puts professional-quality
live streaming at everyone’s fingertips.
ABOUT WOWZA MEDIA SYSTEMS, LLCWowza Media Systems is the leading software and cloud-based services provider that continuously simplifies the complexities of high-quality video and audio streaming for organizations worldwide. Wowza delivers an award-winning, extensible solution set that provides unparalleled customization, configuration, and control for an unlimited number of streaming use cases. The company’s integrated, hybrid model empowers direct end customers, service providers, and an extensive worldwide partner network. Proven, patented Wowza technology enables organizations to expand their reach, more deeply engage with key audiences, and increase their monetization opportunities. Wowza has rapidly built a fan base of more than 19,000 customers, in 170+ countries, across all industries. The company was founded in 2005, is privately held, and is based in Colorado. For more information, please visit www.wowza.com.
ABOUT TELESTREAMTelestream provides world-class live and on-demand digital video tools and workflow solutions that allow consumers and businesses to transform video on the desktop and across the enterprise. Many of the world’s most demanding media and entertainment companies as well as a growing number of users in a broad range of business environments, rely on Telestream products to streamline operations, reach broader audiences and generate more revenue from their media. Telestream products span the entire digital media lifecycle, including video capture and ingest; live and on-demand encoding and transcoding; captioning; playback and inspection, delivery, and live streaming; as well as automation and orchestration of the entire workflow. Telestream corporate headquarters are located in Nevada City, California. The company is privately held. For more information, visit www.telestream.net.
To learn more about Wowza products, visit wowza.com/products.
To learn more about Wirecast, visit telestream.net.
For more on how Wowza and Telestream work together, visit wowza.com/telestream.
To learn more about how others are using Wowza streaming technology, visit wowza.com or contact [email protected].
© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved. “Wowza” and other identified trademarks are either registered or claimed trademarks of Wowza Media Systems, LLC; visit wowza.com/legal/trademarks for more information. Third-party trademarks are property of their respective owners; their use does not imply endorsement of Wowza products or services by the trademark owner. rev.0116