Wowza Community

How to let client player keep connected to streaming engine?

Hello, I am trying to stream a real time processing video to a client player. I would like to keep the connection between client and streaming engine so that once the engine finished processing, it could start displaying on the client side.

Thinking of using loopuntillive module, but there will be delay between switching and playing or frame lost?

Is there any way to do this? Thanks.

If the mp4 content is at the start and you are using the loop until live, the live stream gets created and connects, BUT, it will have to wait until the end of the mp4 content before it switches.

So you can control how long the mp4 content is on your end, but it will not stop suddenly. It will finish the mp4 and then switch seamlessly to the live @Andrew Opq. But, it will join where the live stream is currently at. Let me research if there is an alternative for you.

I don’t have any other way of keeping the connection open until the live stream starts per the engineers. With IP cameras like for 24/7 nature cams, the stream will begin when a player tries to connect and will disconnect when the last viewer disconnects, but not sure that applies to your scenario.

Hello @Rose Power-Wowza Community Manager thanks for the answer!

Still with the loopuntillive module, I am not able to stream the content video on client side. In wowza test player, on the streaming engine manager side, the ‘buffer’ video and ‘content’ video were able to switch properly, but not on the client side player ( which in my case are KMPlayer and VLC).

Also, I tried to stream few 1-sec content videos using ffmpeg in a loop, but not able to display them either in the wowza test player or in VLC or KMPlayer.

P.S. - I am streaming videos in RTMP (flv format).

Thanks for that update @Andrew Opq. You will not be able to stream RTMP or flv in the Wowza Player as it only supports our proprietary protocol WOWZ or HLS as a fallback protocol. The Wowza Test player you were using on our site does use Adobe RTMP, but the Wowza Player does not.

As far as playing it on VLC, I see some troubleshooting articles online I can share as it appears some others have had similar issues. Not familiat with KMPlayer.

  1. https://wiki.videolan.org/VSG:Format:FLV/

  2. https://videoconverter.wondershare.com/vlc/flv-not-displaying-video-vlc-media-player.html

Just curious…with the streaming industry shifting away from Flash for playback, have you considered converting your RTMP(flv)to an mp4?

Thanks Rose,

I tried to convert few 1 sec videos (25 fps) in mp4 format and stream them in a loop using something like “ffmpeg -re -i test.mp4 -codec copy -f rtsp rtsp://{server address}:1935/live/myStream.sdp”, yet there were still no output on wowza test player.

Also can you share the command to re-stream the videos in WOWZ or HLS protocol using FFMPEG. Also, I had referred this link - https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-restream-using-ffmpeg-with-wowza-streaming-engine

Hey Andrew, tech support would like to see your files to make sure you are setting this up correctly. I think once you send the stream to Engine, you would then follow the normal steps in Engine to enable HLS.

This tutorial will help you with that part and it’s the same except in your case, you would select “VOD” from the application dropdown rather than “live”.

Your workflow is a bit complicated so the engineers would like to see more and suggest the correct route.

You can submit a support ticket here:

https://www.wowza.com/support/open-ticket

Hi @Rose Power-Wowza Community Manager,

Thanks for the help, we greatly appreciate!

Just submitted the ticket. To supplement, our goal is to stream videos that are generating in real-time, in which i believe wowza vod may not be able to satisfy our want.

Yes, open a support ticket. it is possible to do what you want with an mp4 as the filler and then have the live stream connect when it starts and get it all formatted for HLS playback. You can even configure the HLS settings to have the stream catch up for anyone that joins a little late. The engineers will walk you through it.

Let me know how it turns out!