Do i need to use Streaming Cloud alongside Streaming Engine for recording a Livestream?

Hi everyone, so to put you in context, i’m developing an application in PHP & Javascript that will broadcast 1 hour livestreams about 2-3 times a month, and these streams are broadcast by a video production company, they might use their HD cameras or webcams sometimes, it depends. Meaning we’re not the ones recording the livestreams ourselves.

So our application requires a backoffice where they configure stuff like the Livestream title and description and things like that, as per my understanding i think i can use the Streaming Cloud REST api to create a livestream and return to them some details like an RTMP IP address and credentials.

My problem is that i don’t quite understand how they can broadcast their streams from their cameras to this IP address, do i NEED the Streaming Engine on EC2 alongside the Streaming Cloud to transcode their original input into different bitrates generate an HLS stream? Is it possible to do all of this only by using Streaming Cloud?

Would it be possible for me to perhaps use a webcam and have them broadcast from our application’s backoffice and pass that video stream to Streaming Cloud somehow? And would this require Streaming Engine?
I’m a little out of my depth when it comes to how livestreaming works so i’m sorry if the question seems silly to some of you but i’m just looking to gain a little more understanding about my options using Wowza.

Hi,
Thanks for the detail in your workflow but I’m still finding it unclear and would like further clarification. Are you wanting to record the stream from the IP camera or webcam, edit this recording and then publish it as a live stream to the Wowza Streaming Cloud service?

You can publish directly from an IP camera to the Wowza Streaming Cloud service and the live stream can also be recorded on the Wowza Streaming Cloud side for archiving.
https://www.wowza.com/docs/getting-started-with-wowza-streaming-cloud

If you are wanting to publish a live stream to the Wowza Streaming Cloud service using on-demand content (a recording that was created earlier) you can do this but would need to use an encoder which supports the publishing of on-demand content or use the Wowza Streaming Engine software to create the live stream from your on-demand content and push this to the Wowza Streaming Cloud service using a Stream Target.

I hope this answers your questions but if not please clarify the exact use case.

Regards,
Jason Hilton
Wowza Media Systems Support Team