Play splitted videos on demand

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hey Guys,

I am recording a livestream 24/7. It splits every 20 Seconds. I got very much .mp4 files in the content-folder.

I can play back single mp4-files easily. But now I want to start an mp4-file and the play smooth through all videos until the user stops.

I was told I could do this with .smil files and I looked at this tutorial:

https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-schedule-streaming-with-wowza-streaming-engine-streampublisher

I created an very simple .smil file just for testing the playback which is placed in the content folder and looks like this:

<smil>
    <head>
    </head>
    <body>
        <stream name="testvod"></stream>
        
        <playlist name="pl1" playOnStream="testvod" repeat="true" scheduled="2013-09-25 16:00:00">
            <video src="rtmp://....:1935/vod/mp4:sample.mp4" start="0" length="2000"/>
        </playlist>
    </body>
</smil>

So it should just play back the sample.mp4 video. The src-link is correct, I can put that as source in JWplayer and it works.

But when I put the smil file as source it wont work. Not in JWPlayer and also not in the “test players”-section where it connects but then just does nothing.

I also tried to use a source like this in jwplayer: “…/vod/smil:smil.smil/jwplayer.smil” but wowza just auto-generates me an empty .smil file which looks like this:

<smil>
<head>
<meta base="rtmp://.../testvod/_definst_"/>
</head>
<body>
<switch></switch>
</body>
</smil>

When I google about this problem I often get results like “adaptive bitrate streaming in Wowza” but that is just not what I want.

I just want to play a fluent video out of many small videos.

What did I do wrong? Can someone somehow help me?

Thanks!

2

I’m just not sure what I need for this. I tried to use JWPlayer playlists, but I want the next video to be buffered while the current is running. Every video is 20 Seconds. There has to be NO gap.

It cant be that hard to playback many mp4 files as if it was one video/stream. Maybe i’m not searching for the right things. Please give me a hint if you can. Thanks.

3

Hi,

The smil file used for the StreamPublisher module is purely for use by the module. Although it is a smil file it is of a special type for this purpose and is not something you reference at at the client side, like you would for ABR streams.

You should be able to create a list of MP4 files in the smil file (by default streamschedule.smil) and the module will play the entries consecutively. The example smil file in the article shows a playlist with a number of video sources that would be played in this way.

Paul