I’m evaluating Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.0 for use in an on-premise re-streaming solution using several RTSP encoders / IP cameras. Some of the video sources are on low-bandwidth network connections and we can’t have the H.264 video streams sent to Wowza constantly. Instead, the video should only be pulled from the source to Wowza when one or more users request the video from Wowza.
In reading the Wowza documentation, the MediaCaster seemed to support this functionality out of the box when it states “The MediaCaster system works on-demand. When the first request is received from a player for the stream file, the source stream referenced in the file is made available to the player. When the last player stops viewing the stream, the MediaCaster system waits for a timeout period. If no other players request the file, the stream is stopped and isn’t available for streaming until another request is made.”. But I’m simply not seeing that to be the case. When I manually add a stream file and then “connect” the stream, per the Wowza monitoring page the inbound bandwidth usage goes up equal to 1 stream from the source. If I check using “iftop” (CentOS 8) I see an inbound stream.
Other forum entries suggested using the “rtp-live” MediaCaster type but I simply don’t see that option. I see “rtp / rtp-record / shoutcast / shoutcast-record / liverepeater / applehls / mpegtstcp / srt” when I connect the stream.
It’s also my understanding that when using MPEG-DASH for playback, this on-demand functionality may not work due to the fact that MPEG-DASH (or HLS) require caching several seconds of video. But is that the same for WebRTC? Ultimately we’d like to leverage WebRTC for playback in a browser.
Thanks,
Dave