Wowza Community

Teradek Vidiu and Wowza Live Streaming Connection Issues

Hello,

I apologize in advance if this is in the wrong section. We currently are using Wowza S.E. 4 on a Linux VPS. I have not upgrade to 4.5 yet but, will be in the next couple of days. I am new to Wowza so I want to check with those with more experience to see if this is maybe a settings issue on our end. For the past 3-4 months those who are using Teradek Vidiu cannot stream past a medium bitrate quality and I have been struggling with trying to resolve this issue. If you go to high or higher it drops the stream constantly with multiple errors. One of the errors we get often is “Failed streamkey” with streamkey being the streamkey of the stream. Then the other is “Failed: Already publishing” and “interrupted reconnecting”. All these errors are on the Teradek, those with Magewell or software encoders have no issues at all. I have contacted Teradek and was treated very rudely and they had no answers to the errors nor could they even tell me what they meant or have ever heard of them before when they are errors on their own device. They just said it was an issue on my end. Which now brings me here. I feel this is a Teradek issue since I have done extensive testing even using another streaming platform. Now even on medium ever so often we will get “Failed streamkey” but not has often which is almost every 10 mins if not more sometimes on high or above. We did use these on a previous streaming service that used Wowza and had no issues. They closed down which is why we started our own streaming service so that our clients weren’t without the live streams. So we know it works with Wowza which even though I think it is a Teradek issue, there may be a setting I need to set within the Wowza server to make this work.

We mainly use these on hot spots but we have cell boosters but, even without them we get at least a 20/20 connection. Most of the time it is 40/40+. I have even tested this on a DMZ port on a 1GB symmetrical wired connection because for the longest I thought maybe it was a network connection issue. The errors still happen and I am not sure why. When Teradek said it was a network issue I mentioned the above and they still back peddled and said it was an issue with my network that it wasn’t getting to the server. Even though I can connect and it plays then after awhile it will drop and reconnect but you have to manually refresh the player to start the stream again. We are using JW Player.

To keep this short. Is there something on our end like a setting we need to check that will allow the Teradek Vidiu to stream at a higher bitrate than 700 Kbps without it throwing errors and even streaming at 700 Kbps it throws errors sometimes? For more information we are streaming to a RTMP URL and not through the Teradek shortcut to Wowza.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I have been pulling my hair our for the past 3-4 months.

-Thanks

I guess no one else has ever encountered this issue before or have a suggestion?

Hi Texan78,

It’s difficult to way precisely what your issues were without seeing your full environment. Certainly Wowza and/or Teradek updates may have played a part. If it happens again then I’d suggest opening a support ticket so that we can analyse it in more detail.

Regards,

Paul

Dear Texan78,

we also have a Teradek Vidiu for Live-Streaming, but we do not have such problems. The firmwire is 2.4.3, but we are streaming with the the Wowza-presets (about 700 kbit and also 1500 kbit) and not via manual RTMP-URL. What happens if you use streaming via Wowza-preset?

best regards, Anton

Thanks AntonT, tried your suggestion and after very extensive testing. Have found that if we go through the Wowza app on the Vidiu as you suggested the problems do not exist and we can stream without errors and at a higher bitrate as our connection will allow. So it appears that is the solution to that problem.

It is strange as we were able to connect via direct RTMP URL in the past without issues. Maybe firmware changes with the Teradek or different version of Wowza has prevented this. In the meantime will continue to use the suggested solution but, if anyone from the Wowza team may have some explanation as why it works fine through the Wowza preset on the Vidiu and not with the direct RTMP URL without errors I would be interested in knowing the cause for future reference.

-Thanks again!

Nick, I know it’s been several years…but I’d love to get your feedback on your experience using a Vidiu with wowza? We have a Vidiu Go and just started with Wowza last month. A few issues thus far, so I’d love to hear your experience. No further posts about Teradek suggest that things are going/went well? - Thanks!

In addition adding the “?DVR” portion to a URL implies that you have already activated DVR. If DVR is not enabled that URL will never work. So be sure to check that as well if your url will include dvr.

Feel free to send us a support ticket if you need any help streaming with your Vidiu encoder.

Rose - Thanks for your response. However, we use Wowza Streaming Cloud (not Engine). Not sure if that matters. We’ve had some success with streams, and a few issues. Could be on the encoder’s end (Vidiu Go, not pro) or it could be in my setup on Wowza. But “most” streams seem to go well. It’s just those that haven’t that scare me. Wowza support has been great once you get a personal response. I’m more concerned/curious about a Teradek user’s long term success since it sounded like Nick had gone through issues then resolved them. That’s all.

Hi @Jamie Hobert, if you do not get a response from Nick, please know that Wowza partners with Teradek. While we do not have detailed instructions on how to connect your Teradek Vidiu Pro to Wowza Streaming Engine, we do have an article on how to connect a Teradek Cube to Wowza Streaming Engine.
https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-connect-the-teradek-cube-to-wowza-streaming-engine

We have customers that follow this process for their Vidiu Pro no problem, but. a couple things to always check are the following:

You should see the following in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager when you go to add your Teradek encoder.

About Teradek Cube

Teradek Cube hardware encoders provide a wireless solution for generating and publishing live video feeds to Wowza Streaming Engine servers. Use this page to create connection settings in a shortened configuration URL, and then enter the URL in the Cube Dashboard Stream Settings page to configure the Cube hardware encoder to publish a live stream to this application. For detailed instructions, see How to connect the Teradek Cube to Wowza Streaming Engine.

Note: Teradek is a Works with Wowza™ partner.

Authenticating Live Sources

By default, live applications in a Wowza Streaming Engine instance require that RTMP-based and RTSP-based sources provide a user name and password before they can connect. You can create user names and passwords for live sources on the Source Authentication page.

In your source connection settings, specify the source login information to use by selecting a source in the Source User Name list. This list displays the names of all sources that are configured for the Wowza Streaming Engine instance. The login information (user name and password) for the selected source is included in the application connection settings.

To turn off the authentication requirement for RTMP-based and RTSP-based sources, click Source Security in the contents panel and configure the options to manage incoming connections.

Gotcha…Slightly different steps in Cloud here, but same concept. I hope Nick or another member of the community reaches out to you regarding long-term use. You may also want to post in our livestreaming slack where there are 3000 developers in there from around the globe discussing all things streaming with different encoders through Wowza. A few of our engineers are in there as well.

You can join here:

https://www.wowza.com/slack