[HLS] Access video files on remote path

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hi, all

My goal is to enable HLS streaming on Wowza where the video files are located at remote path (i. e. not located at the same machine where Wowza is installed).

Test browser: Wowza test player on MAC OS Safari

Environment: Install WowzaStreamingEngine in Linux

When I copy the remote video files and create a mystream.smil into the WowzaStreamingEngine/content folder and then use Safari browser to test the HLS streaming, everything is fine. However, when I want to let Wowza to access remote video files instead of copying video files to WowzaStreamingEngine/content, I tried 2 approaches as below.

modify in conf/vod/Application.xml to the root of remote path such as /mnt/xxfs (it’s a network file system)

a. Change mystream.smil to point to the relative remote file path and use Safari to play http://wowza_ip:1935/vod/smil:mystream.smil/playlist.m3u8

We see wowza trying to find /mnt/xxfs/mystream.smil on the remote machine. It looks like wowza assuming the .smil should be located at the same path of remote video files. Is it possible to have .smil and video files located at different paths? Because we don’t want to put .smil to the servers which store the video files.

b. Without .smil file: use Safari to play http://wowza_ip:1935/vod/mp4:test.mp4/playlist.m3u8

where the remote video file is located at /mnt/xxfs/test.mp4. The result also fails, we cannot see any video streaming. But we can see the remote file system is transmitting data to wowza.

Please help to give some comments, thanks a lot.

2

Hello.

You will need to use Media Cache to access files stored remotely:

How to scale video on demand streaming with Media Cache

Regards,

Salvadore

3

Hi, Salvadore

Thanks for the suggestion. Media Cache helps to access the remote video files. It works fine. Here are other questions I have, would anyone help to comment it?

  1. How to access remote file by using .smil file (for HLS application usage) under Media Cache?

  2. What kind of data are stored in Media Cache? I search the whole folder of my Media Cache, there’s no any file stored there.

Thanks a lot.

4

Hi,

I found an article (Mediacache and SMIL) discussing how to use .smil under Media Cache. However, it requires .smil file is located at the same path of video files. Is it possible to have .smil file and video files on different machines?

Thanks a lot.