Streaming to iOS doesn't work

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hello all,

I am trying to get our live stream to work on mobile devices such as an iPhone.

I have everything set up and our stream is visible to the internet. We have a test player set up on my website: http://www.dynamicfilms.net/wowza-test/

Now to test my stream on iOS I am using the iOS VLC app (I don’t have PRO JWplayer so I can’t stream iOS to the player)

So I use the playlist.m3u8 link

When I plug that link into the VLC app, it takes about 5 minutes for it to load, and when it does finally show picture and sound, the video, for lack of a better word, quits and i’m back at the Network Stream screen in the app.

When I code the m3u8 link into the JWplayer it says no stream could be found.

How do I get this to work on iOS??? This was the whole reason we purchased Wowza to begin with!

Update

Ok, so fooling around with different links, the only one that works in iOS VLC is the Adobe RTMP stream. DASH, HLS, HDS, MSSmooth, M3U8, and RTSP all fail on iOS.

Any suggestions?

2

Hi there.

Can you confirm that you have set the application HTTPStreamers property to:

<HTTPStreamers>cupertinostreaming,smoothstreaming,sanjosestreaming,mpegdashstreaming</HTTPStreamers>

As well as set the Streams/LiveStreamPacketizers property to:

<LiveStreamPacketizers>cupertinostreamingpacketizer, smoothstreamingpacketizer, sanjosestreamingpacketizer, mpegdashstreamingpacketizer</LiveStreamPacketizers>

Also, what is the source of the stream? RTMP encoder?

What is the video codec and bitrate? For iOS a profile of “baseline” is recommended.

Have you tested the stream with the Wowza iOS example player?

Thank you, and we look forward to your response with more detail about your set up.

Salvadore

3

This guide will show you how to configure the application:

How to set up live streaming using an RTSP/RTP-based encoder

This guide explains how to set up adaptive streaming:

How to do adaptive bitrate streaming

And for JW Player:

How to use JW Player with adaptive bitrate streaming from Wowza Streaming Engine

You may need to use the Wowza Transcoder to generate the adaptive bitrate renditions as key frame alignment is critical for ABR streaming to function:

How to set up and run Wowza Transcoder AddOn for live streaming

If your encoder allows for multiple quality output streams you may be able to use that feature instead of the Transcoder.

I hope this helps.

Salvadore

4

Yes, you do not need a player for iOS devices, they will play right in the web browser of the device. You just need to provide the URL to the stream.

Salvadore

5

I guess my main question is; is there any alternative to JW player that doesn’t cost $300 a year for 1 HLS stream?

If you want FREE, you can link to your HLS stream for iOS systems with Click here for iPad/iPhone Live Stream. Then use RTMP through JW Player for the desktop player. Wowza transmuxes the streams into several formats and you can have more than one on the page.

I don’t believe there is an “easy” solution to getting a free player that do both desktop flash and HLS.

6

Where would I edit the HTTPStreamers and LiveStreamPacketizers attributes? (I am using Debian Linux)

The source of the stream is coming from an Epiphan VGADVI encoder using RTSP announce.

It is encoding in H.265 it’s coming into Wowza at 5Mbps

I want to have a stream on our website with the best quality with the ability for mobile users to go to the same webpage and automatically have an adaptive quality stream playing on their device.

7

I guess my main question is; is there any alternative to JW player that doesn’t cost $300 a year for 1 HLS stream?

8

JW Player (FREE) does send HLS to iOS devices (and Android devices 4.1 and greater). It’s the HLS stream to desktop via Flash that only works in Premium or Enterprise editions of JWP. As per this article:

http://support.jwplayer.com/customer/portal/articles/1430189-about-hls-streaming

  • On the iPhone and iPad, HLS support is built into the iOS system. Therefore, every edition of JW Player 6 supports HLS for iPad and iPhone.

  • Additionally, the Premium and Enterprise editions support HLS playback for desktop browsers (using Flash). This is a unique feature of JW Player that allows publishers to deploy a single streaming format (HLS) across all devices.

  • HLS for Android devices can be enabled as of JW Player 6.9. This is disabled by default and must be configured with the androidhls setting. Please note that HLS is only supported on devices running Android 4.1(Jellybean) and higher.

cheers