Wowza Community

Resume SMIL playlist location after reboot

Hi Everyone!

Thanks for the past assistance. I have situation where there is along SMIL file with 900+ videos (running VOD as live) in a single playlist. This is a set daily schedule to start at, say, 10:00 am and continues till 12 midnight. There are 500 small files and due to calculation issues, all videos are added in the same playlist (900

Hypothetically, if the server has to reboot, the stream will start from the first video. I have not tested this myself but am told by the client that this is happening.

Given the situation, what needs to be done to make the video resume from current location? They want that in case the server needs to be rebooted, the stream should start playing from the current video (and time).

Example, if the server has to be rebooted at 12:15 noon when video9 was playing, the stream should resume playing from video9 12:22 (or whenever it comes alive). I have scratched my head but can’t seem to think of anything (other than adding each video as a separate playlist, but that needs each videos duration to be known).

Any directions are welcome…

Sincerely,

Inderjeet

Hi,

It depends on how you’ve crafted your schedule smil file, but if for example using the streamschedule.smil example as found here then one simple option is to rebuild the smil file outside of Wowza by trimming entries that have a “scheduled=” value that is earlier than the current time. This needs to be done prior to Wowza restarting. Each playlist item would need a specific “scheduled” parameter for this to work. If approaching this from a Wowza module perspective, the ModuleStreamControl module is a good starting point.

Paul

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the reply. The current setup is via Streamschedule.smil and yes, I’m aware of that fact that each video should be added within an independent playlist with correct “scheduled=” time set. However, in this current situation the client wishes to insert ads but they don’t know the duration of those video files. The total number of files comes to more than 500 so this isn’t practically feasible.

The other approach seems like a feasibility but appears to be a lot of work, even outside of Wowza. I’ll think about it but maybe as another completely different recipe not a cocktail.

Thank you for the insight and confirmation.

Best wishes

Inderjeet

Hi,

Depending on your player technology, you could reload a playlist using client side code, though again you would need to track which items in the playlist were active prior, so if Wowza is restarted or the server is rebooted then you would rebuild the smil file from the last playlist entry and call the method as in the example. You wouldn’t need a “scheduled” parameter as the scheduler will play the items in the playlist from start to finish. So you won’t necessarily need to set a scheduled start time for each playlist item, but the tracking would need to be monitored externally so as to know at which playlist item to start from when repopulating the smil file. If using Flash then then Module Stream Publisher client client code is a useful basis for building and managing playlists via a web based interface. This doesn’t really act as a scheduler due to lack of start time, so timed ads etc wouldn’t be possible, but it would be scheduled within the playlist based on simple ordering, and will recover from server or application restarts.

Paul