Currently, when I try and view a live stream from the Wowza Streaming Engine, it always plays from the beginning of the stream rather than what is current. How do I tell the player to always starting playing from what is the most current part of the stream?
Is this a true live stream @Ed Buringrud or are you streaming a VOD as “live”? You could implement logic with the VOD as live to jump to the current live point. If it is truly live, then if you are using the Wowza Player with ULL, you can configure it to catch up. Not so easy to do with HLS chunks.
So what player are you using, is it truly live and what protocol are you streaming for playback? HLS?
Yes it is truly live. The source is directly from an iPhone camera -> Wowza Streaming Engine via RTMP. The player is the Wowza player using HLS.
Are you talking about nDVR? Because I know that if you use nDVR, it may depend on the player. Different player technologies handle the DVR playlists differently. Maybe test with a few players and see if they behave different.
No, I’m talking about streaming from an RTMP source (phone) and viewing it in the Wowza player. When I start streaming from the phone, and let it sit for a couple of minutes before I start viewing the stream from the Wowza Engine, it always starts from the beginning of the stream, rather than the most current position.
Hi @Ed Buringrud, thanks for the info. The first step is to check your Cupertino settings in Engine then. HLS playback requires three chunks for playback. The default chunk duration per chunk in Engine is 10 seconds, so with three of those chunks at that setting, you are looking at 30 to 40 seconds right off the bat. The stream may not be starting right at the beginning, but it may appear that way.
It can also depend on the number of chunks you have set as the minimum delivered in the playlist and how many required to store.
When you introduce CDNs for greater scalability, you inject another 15-30 seconds of latency so the servers can cache the content in-flight.
Wowza suggests you change the chunk duration to 2 seconds instead of 10 and also modify the minimum number of chunks required for payback.
These docs will help explain the how and why regarding Cupertino settings:
A. https://www.wowza.com/blog/changing-default-segment-size-decrease-streaming-latency
B. https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-improve-playback-of-lower-latency-apple-hls-streams
Once you adjust these settings, wait a couple of minutes after the stream starts and test again for results. Let us know please.