Which video player do you use for live streaming ?

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hi,

I’m testing Wowza with 2 cameras live streaming h264+AAC to my server and serving them for any device at different bitrates.

I’ve seen lots of tutorials, config styles, tips, tricks but this is never really clear, or always for a very specific use case.

I’d like to be able to view 1 of the streams from any device, with adaptative bitrate. I’ve looked for a video player, and found JW Player or Flowplayer, as ones that can stream live content from Wowza.

But I’n not sure of the configuration to use :

  • should I serve .f4m or .m3u8 file ?

  • should I serve through rtmp or http ?

  • is Flowplayer a player that you use ?

  • if not, what are you using ?

    I’m pretty surprised there is not a common and documentated way of serving a live streaming from wowza configuration to the player choice and configuration.

    At least, I’ll use Wowza With Amazon package.

    big thx in advance.

    n|co

2

There is not a one player for all devices solution at present. You can do adaptive bitrate with the HTTP stream types, and with RTMP using something like JW Player’s RTMP Dynamic Streaming with Wowza server-side smil to client-side smil method.

ABR over rtsp is not supported.

Richard

3

You can serve different players depending on user-agent. Take a look at Ian’s article on this

You can also look at user-agent in your application server (asp, php, etc) as you form a response, which is preferable because some users turn javascript off.

Richard

4

transrate.xml is the Transcoder template the defines what renditions are transcoded, which is what you need to reference in your smil. There is no conflict. There is a convenience method for generating a smil file from the Transcoder

You should be able to use the same Flowplayer technique of using smil for vod for a smil that references live streams.

Richard

5

I particularly use HLS for as many devices as possible. For web, I use JWPlayer fro HLS, version 6

6

not sure what you’d like me to share in terms of configuration. I’ve no problem sharing info … just let me know what specifically you’d like

1 Like
7

I do server side detection of the client. I have JWPlayer as main player for Flash supporting devices as well as HTML5 fallback … For new Android is the trickiest part. It supports HLS on browser, but it needs some tweaks. Best way is with an app

8

Thx for your answer Richard.

I’ve seen how JW player works with Wowza, but I want an open source solution (JW is not free for HLS).

And for the RTMP part of the problem : it’s not supported on iOS, so I can’t use this.

FlowPlayer seems to have a plugin in development for supporting streaming live via HLS :

https://github.com/flowplayer/flash/tree/master/plugins/httpstreaming-hls

I’ll try this for now, and see what happened with it.

But I’m still very curious about what other people/developper are using wowza + a player to serve live video to a maximum of users. Do you use own detection/flash player and serve HLS to iOS devices and RTMP to others ? What are your setups guys ?

thx in advance :slight_smile:

9

@rrianham : I know I could use device detection for serving them what they need, but I’m not a partisan of this kind of techniques, which are not really trustable. This is just my own point of view.

So I prefer to search for an easy and “standard-maybe-in-near-future” :slight_smile: HLS seems to be the solution for me.

@tavius : yep, thx for the reply, I saw that, but I prefer the way FlowPlayer is managing videos. As I said, there seems to be a nice plugin taking HLS into account.

By curiosity, and if you want, could you expose here the configuration you choose on Wowza and for your JW player ?

10

@tavius and @rrlanham, sorry for not responding since a few days, here is an explanation of what I’ve done.

On the Wowza side, I’ve a content/montage.stream file receiving stream from another computer with a live webcam.

I’ve set up the live configuration as explained in the tutorial https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-publish-and-play-a-live-stream-mpeg-ts-based-encoder

I also created a transcoder/templates/live.xml based on the transrate.xml file where only source, 360p and 160p are enabled.

I use Flowplayer Flash with the httpstreaming, f4m, ipad/iphone and bandwidth check plugins.

It works nicely and I can see the stream on desktop and iOS using this configuration :

https://gist.github.com/nderambure/6071678

On desktop, the streams switches between 360p and 160p when needed, and the ipad get the .m3u8 file url.

But, I’m lost in wowza configuration for using a bitrate selector plugin from Flowplayer. The only examples they give is about using a smil file with vod, not live.

But If I use smil file, what about the transrate.xml file ? how can I say in the smil file that there is many bitrates, and what will be the urls ?

Is the smil method also compatible with all devices ?

Also, @tavius, what is your wowza config for Live HLS streaming ? do you use the smil method ?

11

thx richard, I’ve seen that at the same time you post it :slight_smile:

I’ve been able to play live stream fine on desktop and iOS using smil file.

But I’m still stuck with modern Android (> 4.1) which does not support flash anymore… So I think, I must do server detection and serve a player for each type of device…too bad.

JW Player seems support many devices (as FlowPlayer do) but it costs 300$/year for HLS streaming, which is, in a non profit project, absolutely unacceptable.

@tavius : are you streaming live to all devices with the same player, or do you do server detection ?

12

Do you look for the software vedio player to play wowza streaming ? We produce iptv set top box which is able to play hls streaming from wowza by hardware decoding up to 1080P. It is android 4.2 System . I am not sure you are looking for this device. you can contact me jason@sunnytvtech.cn or visit www.sunnytvtech.com