Monitor live Wowza ClearCaster broadcasts

With Wowza ClearCaster™ appliances, you can broadcast to a wide variety of RTMP-based destinations. Although some high-level broadcast health information is available on the Broadcast page, the Monitor page is designed to provide a more complete view of health data for live and archived broadcasts. You can use the Live Broadcasts tab to monitor the health and performance of broadcasts while they're live.

Monitor a live broadcast


Note: You can only monitor one live broadcast at a time.
  1. Sign in to Wowza ClearCaster Manager at clearcaster.wowza.com with your Wowza account, and click Monitor in the menu bar.
  2. On the Live Broadcasts tab, use the drop-down to select the live Broadcast you'd like to monitor.

    This returns the following near real-time data about the selected live stream.

Input

The Input table displays the following information:

  • The ClearCaster being used to publish the broadcast
  • The type and quality of the HDMI or SDI input connected to the ClearCaster that is being broadcasted
  • The number of audio channels and the audio sampling rate of the connected input

Output

The Output table displays the following information:

  • The encoding template you selected for the broadcast
  • The actual resolution and frame rate in the resulting output
  • The video and audio codecs being published for the broadcast

Health

ClearCaster live monitoring Health table with health indicators

The Health table displays an overall health assessment of the broadcast and individual indicators for components of the broadcast.

For the overall broadcast:

  • A green circle with check mark indicates that the stream is healthy and broadcasting as expected. 
  • A yellow triangle with exclamation mark indicates that the stream is live but may have some problems with muted audio, network conditions, connection to destinations, or CPU temperature and load.
  • A red circle with exclamation mark indicates that the stream is having one or more issues with the video or audio source, network connection, destination connection, dropping frames, or CPU temperature and load.

For components of the broadcast, this table shows what each status indicator means. 

Broadcast component   
VideoReceiving a video sourceNot receiving a video source
AudioReceiving an audio sourceReceiving an audio source, but the volume is mutedNot receiving an audio source
NetworkConnected to the network;
bandwidth realization above 60%
Bandwidth realization below 60%Offline
DestinationsDestinations are connected with healthy round trip timeOne or more destinations have a round trip time over 100 millisecondsOne or more destinations are not connected
EncodingNo frames droppedFrames are being dropped
ApplianceCPU temperature and load are healthyCPU temperature and load are elevatedCPU temperature and load are extremely high


Adaptive Network Encoding

ClearCaster live monitoring Adaptive Network Encoding graph

The Adaptive Network Encoding graph displays available, target, and actual video bitrate for each output rendition, in Mbps, over a ten minute period. The Destinations table provides a key to what each line represents. For example, a dotted line tracks the target bitrate. You can hover over a line on the graph to see data at a certain point in time.

Destinations

ClearCaster live monitoring Destinations table

The Destinations table displays a list of output renditions and destinations, including the bitrate data for each as well as cumulative total bandwidth. It also includes the bandwidth realization value, which reflects how well the network is able to support your configured streaming workflow.

Appliance

The Appliance graph displays the temperature and load of the CPU in the ClearCaster appliance being used for the broadcast. For ClearCaster Micro appliances, the graph also displays the temperature of the capture card.

Encoder

ClearCaster live monitoring Encoder table


The Encoder table displays the current frame rate, in frames per second, as well as a count of dropped frames in the last 10 minutes.

Round Trip Time

ClearCaster live monitoring Round Trip Time graph

The Round Trip Time graph displays the elapsed time, in milliseconds, for the ClearCaster appliance to send data via a TCP connection to an ingestion point for each target and receive a round trip response via the network path. This metric can be used to track target connectivity and to help determine network connection health. You can hover over a line on the graph to see data at a certain point in time.

Connection Attempts

ClearCaster live monitoring Connection Attempts graph

The Connection Attempts chart displays the number of times that the ClearCaster has attempted to connect to the target.