Wirecast -4018 error when initiating broadcast - no error in FMLE

[rrlanham]

Being intermittent and without any corresponding messages in the Wowza logs, it seems to me to be a Wirecast issue.

Richard

[briand123]

See same problem here with Wirecast 4 and Wowza on EC2 devpay AMIs. When people say intermittent, I believe they mean "unreliable". For me, this happens 80% of the time Wirecast 4. This happens even when using UserAgent is set to FMLE/3.0. FMLE 3.2 works flawlessly 100% with identical server config and same authentication for live RTMP.

Like others above, this is for a professional application, so I'm hoping Telestream and Wowza start taking this seriously and get their heads together to figure this out and resolve this problem. It's highly repeatable. Appears to be a bug with authenticating the stream originator's connection to Wowza. Recommending we not use authentication is not an acceptable workaround. With the number of overseas hack attempts today, the probability of someone hijacking your wowza server to stream their own content is too high to leave it wide open. It has already happened to me once when I was initially testing on Wowza EC2. We really need wirecast to work right with Wowza because we require the AAC audio that FMLE doesn't have. Neither Wowza nor Wirecast is free nor cheap, so that fact this problem has gone unresolved for so long is rather surprising.

Thanks for your cooperation.
Brian

[telepaulh]

Are Wowza customers still experiencing this problem using the latest version of Wirecast 4.2.3 and Wowza 3.5? I am from Telestream QA and have been attempting to get to the bottom of this problem, so far to no avail. I have worked with one of the customers who contacted Telestream support so far, although he was running an older Wowza version, 3.0.4.

This issue has been reported to our support department in two forms. One where the user is sending one stream to Wowza from Wirecast and the other where two or more streams are being sent. Both cases are using the basic MediaSecurity authentication. I've made attempts to reproduce on my own Wowza server, as well as on customer servers. I've never received an authentication error unless I explicitly entered the credentials wrong.

I want to help you guys figure this out, so let's work together and try to get to the bottom of it.

[lisa_w]

I have turned your request into a Support ticket and you will be emailed the number. Please reply with as much details about the setup that failed including a zip of [install-dir]/conf and logs directories so we can review the configuration & server activity and identify the root cause.

-Lisa

[telepaulh]

Sure I can do that. I was able to reproduce the behavior that the people in this thread have described, although it only occurs with Wowza and not on Adobe Media Server. We reviewed Wirecast's RTMP authentication code and we are following the Adobe SDK correctly.

What seems to be happening is that during the authentication between Wirecast and Wowza, the multiple repeated connections that occur can cause the authentication to fail, particularly when Wirecast starts multiple authenticated streams simultaneously.

This isn't a case of entering credentials incorrectly, or setting up the MediaSecurity improperly. I followed the instructions for setting it up on Wowza 3.5 and it does work correctly most of the time. Only on certain attempts to start a stream from Wirecast will the authentication fail.

I will submit my configuration and logs for review by the Wowza team. I am also happy to work with one of you engineers on this problem.

[briand123]

I gave up on using Wirecast 4 with Wowza on EC2 last year because of this. I can never get it to work with RTMP authentication when publishing to Wowza (error -4018.) When I use FMLE, it authenticates flawlessly. Yes, I already know how to set the user agent and 'set credentials' stuff in Wirecast. I can see clearly in the Wowza logs the authentication dialog is missing compared to how it shows up when using FMLE to publish. I'm really amazed this issue is still a problem after all this time and hasn't been resolved. $495 for Wirecast and free FMLE still better! We really would like to be using Wirecast here (especially after paying so much for it) because I want the AAC audio that FMLE lacks. However, I must have authentication on the publishing side.

Brian