What happens when all your channels are being used?

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

What happens when you attempt to publish a live stream to a server where all the transcoding channels are being used?

Does it just not let you publish? Does it let you publish, but it just doesn’t encode? Does it put the stream in a queue to be encoded later?

With my application, it’s crucial that every stream that comes in gets transcoded. It doesn’t matter when, but it needs to get transcoded eventually. I’d rather not buy a huge amount of channels to account for the POSSIBLE spikes in concurrent connections that will rarely be used.

Brainstorming:

  • I could use a 3rd party solution to asynchronously transcode things, like ffmpeg or ElasticTranscoder, at the cost of those tools as well as losing the convenience and speed of live transcoding.

  • I could enforce connection limits and refuse to allow users to connect until there is a transcoding channel available.

  • I could pay for a bunch of extra channels on the off-chance that they will be used.

Any other ideas or solutions that people are currently using?

2

Hi there.

What type of license are you running?

With a monthly license you will not need to pre purchase any Transcoder channels. There is no limit to channels with this license type. You will be billed on demand.

With a limited license type, you will still be allowed to publish but any streams over the limit will not be transcoded.

You might find this guide helpful:

How to control which streams get transcoded using server-side API

Kind regards,

Salvadore

3

You’re welcome, and thank you for considering Wowza for your streaming needs!

Salvadore

4

I’m only using the developer license now. Thanks for the information.