Wowza multicast with Telestream Wirecast 5 as live source - possible?

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hello all,

I am part of a project team developing an internal video broadcast solution for periodic internal communications at my workplace (~3000 employees). A contractor provided our organization with this service on a one-time basis in January this year, now there is a desire to have it available internally on a full-time basis. Our main delivery target is Windows 7 desktop and laptop PCs (although BB10 + iPhone devices are a future possibility); we have both Flash and Silverlight plugins installed everywhere.

Based on what the contractor left behind on the servers we provided, it looks like they were doing the following (and other than terribly low audio levels, it worked great):

  • encoding audio / video to an MPEG2TS stream on an unknown external device (we are looking to replace that piece with a laptop / capture card / software encoder)

  • distributing to the majority of our LAN via multicast with Wowza 3.6 + Push Publishing add-on (playback via Wowza’s sample Silverlight player)

  • providing a fallback to Unicast delivery for the few non-multicast enabled areas of our network (playback via Flash / JWPlayer)

  • both players are embedded in a web page (with full-screen support enabled) - and we would like to keep it this way if possible - i.e. no external QuickTime or Windows Media player window.

    Unfortunately I wasn’t involved with “low level” implementation back in January, and it appears that either the Wowza license expired and/or the contractor removed the application configuration, so I can’t examine or document the actual configuration properly (the admin webpage doesn’t load, even though I’m pointing at a port that matches the config files).

    We are looking towards Telestream Wirecast 5 as an encoding solution (it is particularly attractive for us due to its ability to capture a screen - i.e. Powerpoint slides - from another PC) - but after reading [https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-push-streams-to-cdns-and-other-services-push-publishing] I am unable to determine if that encoder can output a format that Wowza can then distribute as unicast + multicast as described above.

    My questions are:

    1. Can Wirecast output the format necessary for what I am trying to accomplish with Wowza? Ideally, to economize on server horsepower, we only want Wowza to act as a delivery mechanism, not a transcoder (i.e. accept a single stream in the correct format, and shoot it out to the two types of targets).

    2. If Wirecast is capable of meeting our needs, what output format would have to be selected in Wirecast (I need to setup a functional demo prior to purchase, and note that it does not offer MP2-TS)?

    3. If Wirecast won’t do what I need it to - can you point to an alternative reliable software encoder that can?

    Thanks for any assistance… KN.

2

Hi Kevin, yes Wirecast with Wowza is capable of meeting your needs.

Using H.264 video and AAC or MP3 audio from Wirecast you will not need to use the Transcoder.

You can use the Push Publish feature of Wowza to deliver the streams across your LAN:

["]How to push streams to CDNs and other services](https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-push-streams-to-cdns-and-other-services-push-publishing)

And here is a tutorial for using Wirecast with Wowza:

How to use Telestream Wirecast live encoder with Wowza Streaming Engine

Salvadore

3

Hi Richard, is there any updates on this ? I need to do exactly as described by OP and I am kinda stuck with the multicast player solution. Silverlight is no longer an option, VLC is… VLC…, and Quicktime, anything else? OSMF is getting old and now unsupported.

The need for a web based multicast player is there, many big companies cannot do unicast for their internal communications. Any other ideas?

Thanks

4

The VLC browser plugin is an option that I’ve tested and which worked for me. The client system has to have VLC installed to have the plugin for this to work. I have tested on Windows only, and it should work in IE, Chrome and NN browsers:

<html>
<head><title>Wowza multicast /w VLC Plugin</title></head>
<body>
<OBJECT classid="clsid:9BE31822-FDAD-461B-AD51-BE1D1C159921"
     codebase="http://downloads.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/latest/win32/axvlc.cab"
     width="640" height="480" id="vlc" events="True">
   <param name="Src" value="udp://@239.1.1.1:10000" />
   <param name="ShowDisplay" value="True" />
   <param name="AutoLoop" value="False" />
   <param name="AutoPlay" value="False" />
   <embed id="vlcEmb"  type="application/x-google-vlc-plugin" version="VideoLAN.VLCPlugin.2" autoplay="yes" loop="no" width="640" height="480"
     target="udp://@239.1.1.1:10000" ></embed>
</OBJECT>
</body>
</html>

Richard

5

I didn’t work in my test, but as Quicktime player works for Wowza multicast it is possible the Quicktime plugin will work, and it might provide a better user experience with regard to plugin installation. However, it didn’t work in my test and I would be concerned about the differing Quicktime player support on Windows and Mac.

Richard

6

Kaltura’s Silverlight player seems to support multicast but I’m still trying to figure out its implementation. Does anyone have a copy of the old Wowza Silverlight player for review?

https://github.com/kaltura/chromeless-silverlight/

7

Hi,

We no longer provide the SilverLight Multicast player and we never provide the source code for it.

Although Kaltura may provide source code there may be additional patent fees associated with using it, as open source is not the same as patent free so if you are looking to use it please do take some legal advice.

Andrew.

8

Hi Kevin, are you using the Silverlight Multicast player?

How to get Silverlight Multicast Player AddOn

Salvadore

9

That’s great news Kevin. Let us know if there is anything else we can help you with.

Salvadore

10

Thanks for the links Salvadore - the setup is so deceptively simple it’s hard to believe there isn’t something missing. :slight_smile: In my case, there does seem to be though.

My pushpublishmap.txt entry is as follows:

myStream2={profile:“mpegts”, streamName:“myStreamMPEGTS”, host:“239.192.0.100”, port:10000, rtpWrap:false, debugLog:true}

The Wowza server is on my local network on 192.168.0.113, the Wirecast encoder is on 192.168.0.118.

I can see Wowza receiving the RTMP stream I’m generating with Wirecast, and Wowza appears to be sending out a multicast stream (I can play it on a test workstation in VLC using the URL udp://@239.192.0.100:10000).

To verify that my network can carry multicast traffic, I successfully originated a multicast stream on the Wowza server (using VLC as the source) and on the Wirecast computer (using its Quicktime Multicast output profile, and VLC as a player via an SDP file that I generated with Wirecast).

My remaining problem is that when I try to point the Wowza-supplied Silverlight player at the Wowza multicast, it produces the error:

ERROR: Error connecting to multicast stream: 239.192.0.100:10000

The relevant part of the HTML I modified is as follows:

I have disabled the Windows firewall on all systems for testing, it has made no difference.

Any idea where I need to look / what I need to do next?

11

Hi Kevin, are you using the Silverlight Multicast player?

How to get Silverlight Multicast Player AddOn

Salvadore

Yes I am, but I overlooked the need to add entries to the Server.XML file (i.e. I did not read the instructions that came with the player :o). I will give that a try later.

12

It’s amazing what following instructions will do. I now have a working multicast Silverlight player, and also managed to get an RTMP OSMF player working.

I do notice that motion is a bit “stuttery” in the Silverlight player, but I can live with it for demo purposes.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

13

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread, but it is now production implementation time in my environment. However - I notice that Wowza no longer distributes the Silverlight multicast player. Are there other browser-based options for playing the same type of multicast stream originated from a Wowza server?

14

Thanks for the code Richard - but pushing VLC Player to ~6500 workstations is not an option for me. Any other suggestions out there (other than using the Silverlight plugin that I archived locally)?

On a somewhat related note - what happened to OSMF.ORG? I’m being directed to a “spa” website when I try to go there to get the OSMF player (compiled SWF). Is this component available elsewhere, or has it been replaced with a more modern alternative?