How to tell the video player when to stop streaming? And not to stop as soon as the livestream ends

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

We’re using JW player and Wowza and we’re doing live streaming,

The issue is when the person who’s doing live streaming stops the stream, no one can watch anything.
But the users might still be watching something 2 minutes before, or 30 seconds before. Because there’s some lag between the start of a stream and when the user starts watching.

So if the live streaming stops, the user won’t be able to watch the last few minutes or seconds of the stream.

How to address this issue, is this something to be addressed via Wowza or JW player, or how would such a thing be addressed?

I’m thinking to stream an image saying that the live stream has ended for a few minutes, but not sure what’s the best way to do that.

2

Hi.
Good practice - start a few minutes ahead of time. And -more important- end the broadcast, for example, 5minutes after the end of the event. If possible.
You can turn off the video and audio at the venue, but do not stop the broadcast itself.
Let me clarify… the stream spreads over the internet… in one it is the last minute in another 2 minutes earlier… and it all depends on several factors. E.g. how far away it is from the server distributing the stream. What kind of connection the stream recipient is working on / fixed connection, mobile …/ etc.

1 Like
3

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion, well noted.

Is there any way to automate this? So that whoever is doing the live stream won’t have to remember to start early and end after some delay? is there a way to stream an image saying the stream will start soon and stream another image saying the video will end soon?

4

You can use a playlist.

  1. mp4 file - information that Live is about to start
  2. live stream
  3. mp4 file - information that the broadcast has ended
    For example, something like this:
    https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-loop-a-pre-roll-until-a-live-stream-starts-loopuntillive
5

awesome thank you, will give it a try

6

Thanks @Dorota_Szafer-Kwasik for helping. Loop until live is 100% the solution for this and we encourage customers to never end the broadcast as soon as the “event” is over as you said. We recommend letting it continue for 2 to 4 min so all the chunks can catch up.

This is especially important to do if you are recording the stream or you may end up missing the last 30 seconds or so of the video in the .mp4.

Hope it helps!

Here’s a tutorial for you if it’s helpful. Loop until live will automatically switch from an encoder to the filler .mp4 at the beginning or end - whenever the encoder disconnects.

7

Thank you! I’ll check it out