How to Stream an mp4 in Live Broadcast with Streaming Cloud

Wowza Video (Formerly Streaming Cloud)
1

Wowza Streaming Cloud allows you to stream .mp3 and H.264-encoded .mp4 and .flv files in a live stream broadcast. Files being used for this workflow must be hosted on a web server, Google Storage, or Amazon S3 bucket. They cannot be hosted within the Streaming Cloud UI at this time.

Wowza Streaming Cloud downloads the file from the specified URL, and then starts the stream.

By default, files play once and then stop. To play a file on a continuous loop, see Play the file on a loop.

Another exciting feature of this workflow is you can use the mp4 as the source and then push that to FB as live.

In addition, you can schedule a file to automatically start streaming at a specific date and time. Then, prior to the scheduled start time, start the live stream or transcoder manually or use a schedule to automatically start it.

Learn how to set it up here:

https://www.wowza.com/docs/stream-a-file-in-wowza-streaming-cloud

2

For best results, it is a best practice to optimize how you encode MP4 source video. For example, encode your 1080p video at 6-8 Mbps or 720p at 2-4 Mbps. Use a 24 or 30-second frame rate and send a fixed keyframe every 2 seconds. This will enable you to send a stable pass-through stream while transcoding and packaging for ABR with optimal stability for delivery.

When testing, run the transcoder, using an MP4 source, and make sure the keyframe interval is steady by monitoring the Stream Health tab (located in the Wowza Streaming Cloud live stream portal).