Wowza Community

Start stream on request and stop when nobody is viewing

I am restreaming from IP cameras and to save bandwidth on data sent between the cameras and Wowza, I would like to start up the stream on Wowza when somebody requests to view the stream and then disconnect Wowza from the stream when the stream is no longer being viewed. What are my options for accomplishing this? I have only been able to find information on automatically starting streams on server start and nothing about having them only run when in use. I’m using Wowza 4. I need to support mobile devices so I can’t just use an rtp-live application to stream to RTMP clients; for example, I want to be able to use Apple HLS to stream to iOS/Android and RTSP for older Android devices.

A StreamType of “rtp-live” will do this, but it only works for RTMP playback clients.

Salvadore

The StreamType of "rtp-live’ will work for RTSP as well as RTMP clients, but for HTTP clients there is no practical or built-in way to do this, because Wowza needs some lead time to start packetizing for HTTP clients.

Salvadore

Thank you for the response. I should have said I need to be able to use other playback types and not just RTMP clients, eg. Apple HLS. What are my options if I don’t use rtp-live?

Okay, thanks for your input. We have an ‘impractical’ method that worked with Wowza 3 for HTTP clients but I was hoping there was a better way with the new version.