END-TO-END LIVE STREAMING:

MARRYING PRODUCTION, PROCESSING, AND PLAYBACK

As streaming becomes increasingly integrated into business, the need for customized workflows is on the rise. How do you go from simple live video capture to professional-quality produced shots? How do you ensure your produced video reaches every device your audience may be using, and looks its best for each viewer? Whether you’re just dipping a toe into live streaming or you’re looking to smooth out some rough spots in your current approach, choosing proven, industry-leading providers that are tested and verified to work together in an end-to-end workflow can give you peace of mind.

Here we’ll walk through two ways to achieve a seamless end-to-end video workflow using the mixing in prerecorded video, audio, graphics, and slides. You can also following: generate transitions, lower thirds, playlists, and other video effects for added polish. Wirecast then encodes the resulting file and sends a • Telestream Wirecast® for production and encoding produced live stream to a server for distribution.

• The Wowza Streaming Cloud™ service or Wirecast offers integrated publishing options in the Wowza Wowza Streaming Engine™ software for Streaming Cloud or Wowza Streaming Engine interface to transcoding and distribution automatically configure the encoder to publish live streams to the Wowza technology of your choice. Easily set up presets for CDNs • An HTML5 or Flash player and other destinations, including Wowza products, to select your (such as JW Player) for playback encoding and streaming bitrates.

TRANSCODING AND DISTRIBUTION A MULTIPART WORKFLOW Once you’ve created a beautiful production in Wirecast, how do To start off, let’s look at the major pieces of a streaming architecture. you get it to the world? Products from Wowza Media Systems and its Works With Wowza™ partners, including Telestream, are PRODUCTION AND ENCODING tightly integrated, meaning you can easily stream your produced Everything starts with producing a live stream. How do you take live video and audio to the Wowza Streaming Cloud service or Wowza feeds from multiple cameras, put them together professionally on Streaming Engine software to reach any device, anywhere. your laptop, and encode the resulting production for streaming? Robust, customizable, affordable Wowza solutions eliminate the Wowza™ technology works with nearly any encoder or network (IP) need for additional hardware and software components for real-time camera, but a product such as Telestream Wirecast makes it easy to transcoding, packaging (transmuxing), and adaptive delivery of live switch between multiple live camera feeds while dynamically streams to today’s wide array of protocols, screens, and platforms.

© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved. PLAYBACK THE CLOUD-BASED APPROACH Finally, Wowza delivers the transcoded streams to your chosen The world is abuzz about the cloud, and for good reason: For live player—whether that’s a player hosted by Wowza, a YouTube streaming, it eliminates the need to maintain an on-premises channel, or a pro-quality player such as the flagship product infrastructure, yet you get infinite scalability. And if you’re from Works With Wowza partner JW Player. Simply configure streaming infrequently, it’s a cost-effective option because you’re the player and the web page that are hosting your live stream, making very little up-front investment. Because this is the fastest plug in the player embed code or direct-playback URL, sit back, way to get started with end-to-end live streaming, we’ll talk and enjoy the show. about it first.

A BASIC CHOICE: Wowza Streaming Cloud lets you easily stream live video to any IN THE CLOUD OR ON PREMISES? device, scaling automatically to accommodate audiences of any You have many choices for how to stream, but one of the size, anywhere. The service accepts video from nearly any H.264 biggest decisions is whether to use a cloud-based solution encoder or network camera (the latter requires no separate or an on-premises one. Wowza Media Systems has services encoder) and transcodes the video in the cloud to create and and software that cover both approaches, and each is fully deliver high-quality streams in multiple bitrates that can be integrated with Telestream Wirecast. We’ll delve into both played on virtually any device. You don’t have to purchase or workflows and look at a couple of implementation examples maintain hardware, or install or run software locally. You pay only so you can identify which one is best for you. for the resources you use, and broadcast to audiences large or small, anytime.

© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved. Let’s take a look at how the cloud-based workflow unfolds, ingest the live stream. The best practice is to choose the location then see how we used this end-to-end workflow for our that is closest to you geographically to reduce potential latency own live stream at a recent trade show. in your live stream.

STEP 1: SET UP TELESTREAM WIRECAST Telestream Wirecast is cross-platform, all-in-one live streaming production software that can encode your video and audio streams and deliver the live streams to Wowza Streaming Cloud.

Wirecast offers the production capabilities of more expensive hardware solutions with the flexibility and affordability of a software application. With Wirecast, you can bring in an The Video Source Settings page is where you choose the unlimited number of source inputs, ranging from USB and camera or encoder you’re using to capture and encode your FireWire cameras to iOS cameras, HD cameras, computer video. Wowza Streaming Cloud can also receive encoded desktops, and web feeds. Wirecast also supports popular live video from a Wowza Streaming Engine server or from the capture cards, as well as other capture devices. Wowza GoCoder™ mobile encoding app for iOS and Android devices. You can connect any H.264 encoder that supports You can add polish and professionalism to your broadcasts with RTMP or RTSP to Wowza Streaming Cloud by either a push live switching, transitions, titles, and lower thirds. And the built-in or a pull stream. Wowza Streaming Cloud can also connect multiformat encoding capabilities (see “A note on configuring seamlessly to high-end, professional encoders or IP cameras your source encode”) allow you to easily stream to the Wowza from our Works With Wowza partners, including Telestream. Streaming Cloud service and Wowza Streaming Engine software. For this end-to-end workflow walkthrough we’ll demonstrate using Telestream Wirecast as your encoder. When you choose Telestream as your video source, Wowza Streaming Cloud generates a connection settings file that you can use to easily connect the Wirecast encoder to Wowza Streaming Cloud.

Specify your playback preferences, then let Wowza Streaming Cloud do the rest of the work, including transcoding and adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming. The default transcoder setting is to create five bitrate renditions of your video, but you can customize this to suit your needs, whatever they may be. The cloud service automatically re-encodes the renditions and delivers them using ABR streaming, which works by detecting a user’s bandwidth and hardware playback capabilities in real time STEP 2: SET UP THE WOWZA STREAMING CLOUD and adjusting the quality to provide the best-possible-quality LIVE STREAM stream for each user. Once you have Wirecast set up, with your live feeds and content coming into Wirecast, you sign in to Wowza Streaming Cloud At this point you download a configuration file from Wowza using the browser-based interface at cloud.wowza.com. Click Streaming Cloud and import it into Wirecast to easily stream on the Live Streams tab, and then on Add Live Stream. On the to the cloud service. (If you were to use a different encoder, Live Stream Setup page, follow the five easy steps to set you would manually enter the server IP address, stream, up your live stream. Enter a live stream name and choose a name, username, and password rather than use this shortcut broadcast location—the location of the origin server that will configuration file.)

© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved. A note on

configuring

your source encode

Since you send only one source encode to Wowza Streaming Cloud, make sure it’s a good one. As the adage goes, garbage in, garbage out: Wowza Streaming Cloud can’t generate any output renditions that are higher quality than what it receives from the video source.

With the basic live-stream workflow, Wowza Streaming Cloud creates output renditions automatically based on the resolution of the source video. The higher the resolution of the source video, the more output renditions Wowza Streaming Cloud transcodes. You can add, edit, or remove renditions in the advanced mode, but generally speaking, preparing one very high-quality source encode allows Wowza Streaming Cloud to automatically deliver a set of IN PRACTICE suitable, high-quality streams across any kind of client For our live stream at a recent tradeshow, detailed in the connection, to any device. example implementation here, we had a dedicated 10 Mbps wired Internet connection between our encoder at the When preparing a source encode, use the following rules of show and Wowza Streaming Cloud. We conducted several thumb to make sure the size of the encode doesn’t exceed speed tests (via speedtest.net) the day before and on the your available bandwidth. morning of each live stream. Allowing 40% for overhead, we determined that our primary and backup encodes should • Determine the bandwidth for your source encode. not exceed 6 Mbps total, or 3 Mbps each. We encoded the • If you’re sending a backup source encode, stream in HD at 720p at a bitrate of 2.5 Mbps for the H.264 factor in 100% more data. video and 128 Kbps mono for the AAC audio. That way we • Allow 40% of your total bandwidth for overhead. had plenty of overhead in case the bandwidth fluctuated.

© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved. You can test that your stream works as expected by selecting We used a MacBook Pro to capture the raw video and audio your live stream within Wowza Streaming Cloud, clicking Start feed from our JVC GY-HM650 camera with the Blackmagic Stream at the top of the live stream detail page, and clicking Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt capture device. We incorporated Start to initiate the stream. Wowza Streaming Cloud opens the IP cameras mounted in our tradeshow booth as additional stream and connects with the Wirecast encoder. In Wirecast, camera sources, and used the Telestream Wirecast Desktop start your video source, then in the Wowza Streaming Cloud Presenter software utility to capture the presenter’s computer web manager, confirm that the stream is working by looking at screen and pull it into Wirecast as a video source across the the video snapshot in the Overview tab. local network. Wirecast allowed us to add effects such as lower thirds, graphics, and music to produce a professional- When you’re satisfied with your test, you’re ready to stream live. production-quality live stream.

The live streaming events ran back-to-back for more than two hours and Wowza Streaming Cloud worked flawlessly. We were able to live-stream to a white-label player on wowza.com and share the event with our existing user base. We were also able to easily push the stream to YouTube Live and other live streaming services to reach a broader audience.

THE ON-PREMISES APPROACH Sometimes a fully cloud-based solution just isn’t right for your business. If you want or need full control over your end-to-end workflow, you have the budget and expertise to administer STEP 3: STREAM LIVE! your own infrastructure, or you plan to stream frequently or Wowza Streaming Cloud lets you deliver live streams to viewers even 24x7, an on-premises workflow is your answer. We’ll walk using a Wowza-provided player and customizable hosted web through how you can manage this yourself, and then take a look page, or you can output to just about any player you like. In at how one end-to-end service provider has used this workflow addition, advanced settings let you create custom transcoding to build an all-in-one turnkey solution for customers. workflows, receive live streams into selected Wowza Streaming Cloud content delivery network (CDN) sources, and deliver Let’s look at a proven on-premises, end-to-end streaming streams to multiple RTMP target destinations, offering the solution. You’ll capture video and audio, send that to control and scalability required for large-scale, professional Telestream Wirecast for producing and encoding into an RTMP deployments. Think of additional ways you can distribute your feed, then send that feed to Wowza Streaming Engine. Wowza live stream ahead of the event—whether it’s through your streaming server software takes in the high-quality RTMP Facebook page or partner websites—to reach your users where (H.264 and AAC) feed, and the built-in transcoding feature they are. transforms the live incoming stream and creates multiple bitrate renditions that are used for ABR streaming. Wowza A REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE: Streaming Engine then packages each rendition into multiple STREAMING LIVE FROM A TRADESHOW streaming formats, including popular HTTP adaptive streaming Since Wowza is in the business of live streaming, we used formats such as Apple® HLS. Finally, Wowza Streaming Engine this very end-to-end workflow at the National Association delivers those streams to a player, such as JW Player, which of Broadcasters 2015 trade show to stream our partner and can be embedded on your website to play your content back customer presentations to a global audience. to viewers anywhere, on any device.

© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved. STEP 1: SET UP TELESTREAM WIRECAST STEP 2: SET UP THE WOWZA STREAMING ENGINE As in Wowza Streaming Cloud, you’ll want to bring all your live LIVE STREAM feeds, web streams, video clips, and graphics into Telestream Using this workflow we are pushing only one live stream Wirecast software, and set up your Wirecast document. from Wirecast via RTMP to Wowza Streaming Engine. Wowza takes care of the rest, transcoding the one incoming stream from Wirecast to various renditions with different bitrates and resolutions and converting those to all of the protocols you’ve selected in the Live application (e.g., MPEG-DASH, Apple HLS, Adobe® RTMP, Adobe HDS, Microsoft® Smooth Streaming).

Within Wowza Streaming Engine Manager, click on Incoming Streams to see the incoming Wirecast stream and its IP address. Wowza Streaming Engine Manager features several test players that let you verify that Wowza Streaming Engine is set up correctly and is packaging the live stream into all the selected protocols. If you return to Wirecast and make changes to your production, you can push those changes to the live view, switch back to Test Players in Wowza Streaming Wirecast users benefit from integrated publishing options Engine, and see those updates in real time, with almost no in Wowza Streaming Engine to automatically configure the latency via the RTMP protocol. Wirecast encoder to publish live streams to Wowza server software. Once you’re satisfied with what you see in the test players, you’re ready to play back the stream within your player. To access this configuration, simply open the Wowza Streaming Engine Manager in your browser. The browser- based interface lets you administer features of Wowza Streaming Engine server software. Click Applications and select Live, and then prepare this application to stream from Wirecast by choosing Telestream from the Incoming Publishers list. This generates an XML file that lets you stream directly from Wirecast into Wowza. Just load this XML file from Output Settings in Wirecast to autopopulate the encoding settings, IP address, stream name, stream URL, and Wowza login credentials.

At this point, you can customize the encoding settings by configuring the resolution, video and audio bitrate settings, STEP 3: STREAM LIVE! and other preferences, and then save your configuration. Click When developing an end-to-end solution, you can limit possible the Stream button, and Wirecast will send the live view as a failures by having a solid, reliable player. Using a third-party stream to Wowza Streaming Engine. player saves you from having to develop your own and keeps you on top of emerging protocols and features. You have a wide array of options for video players when delivering via Wowza Streaming Engine: you can stream to just about any player

© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved. that supports Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), Adobe HTTP Churchstreaming.tv provides an affordable end-to-end live Dynamic Streaming (HDS), Microsoft Smooth Streaming, streaming solution to churches of all sizes—built from scratch or MPEG-DASH. You can also send streams to target on the Wowza and JW Player APIs, and with Telestream destinations, including media servers, external CDNs, and Wirecast as a preferred encoder for incoming streams. When streaming services, using the Adobe HDS, Apple HLS, MPEG-TS, building an encoding workflow, choosing proven, industry- RTMP, and RTP protocols. leading tools was paramount to Churchstreaming.tv so it could be confident in its own offering. Choosing a feature-rich player such as JW Player enables you to deploy both Flash and HTML5 playback functionality as well Here’s how it works: In Wirecast, customers select as get full, intuitive integration with Wowza Streaming Engine, Churchstreaming.tv as a provider, then enter their username making your end-to-end solution that much smoother. and click Authenticate in the Churchstreaming.tv interface. Wirecast provides easy encoding presets and advanced As a Works With Wowza partner, JW Player has worked hand- settings for configuring the encoder to your liking, and in-hand with Wowza for years to create a tight integration Churchstreaming.tv has created specific encoding profiles that between the technologies. Wowza Streaming Engine delivers a it has identified as well suited to each of its customers based list of the transcoded ABR streams in a manifest file for JW Player on their upload bandwidth. This takes the guesswork out of to access. JW Player is able to detect a user’s bandwidth and encoding profiles for Churchstreaming.tv customers. CPU capacity in real time and adjust the quality of the video Then in real time, Churchstreaming.tv queries Wowza stream accordingly. JW Player’s Adaptive Engine transitions Streaming Engine to get the desired encoding presets. Finally, between quality levels seamlessly so viewers won’t experience when JW Player loads, it contacts the Churchstreaming.tv buffering that makes for a bad streaming experience. server, which builds out the proper manifest to describe the ABR streams that can be pulled from Wowza Streaming Engine. Additionally, the network digital video recorder (nDVR) Customers easily schedule events in the Churchstreaming.tv functionality in Wowza Streaming Engine is integrated with interface. Behind the scenes the database is updated and JW Player so viewers can pause and rewind your live streams. the system is prepared so that when a stream goes live from This is available for all stream-quality levels, so viewers get Wirecast, it starts streaming live through Wowza Streaming this functionality no matter what their hardware and local Engine and JW Player, and automatically begins recording. bandwidth conditions. ABR streaming is a huge factor. Audiences may be watching A TURNKEY SOLUTION FOR END-TO-END STREAMING: streamed videos on Roku devices over a high-speed CHURCHSTREAMING.TV connection, or they may be on vacation watching a live stream For organizations such as houses of worship who are over 3G on a cell phone. The Churchstreaming.tv ecosystem streaming as little as once a week and are staffed largely by runs a speed test on each house of worship’s connection to volunteers, setting up a full streaming workflow themselves see what upload bandwidth is possible, and accordingly creates may not be cost-effective or realistic. That’s where end-to- a range of appropriate bitrate renditions via Wowza Streaming end service providers come in. The cooperation between Engine. The end result is that the most appropriate bitrate Wowza and our technology partners lets companies like rendition is delivered to each viewer and adjusts dynamically Churchstreaming.tv develop turnkey live-streaming solutions with changing network conditions—all transparently to viewers. that are robust and reliable for their own streaming customers.

© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved. The ability to use Wowza for packaging also is critical ABOUT WOWZA MEDIA SYSTEMS, LLC because it means Churchstreaming.tv can say goodbye Wowza Media Systems is the leading software and cloud-based to concerns over protocol compatibility and be assured services provider that continuously simplifies the complexities of that viewers can access a stream on any device. high-quality video and audio streaming for organizations worldwide. Building the solution on Wowza technology also allows Wowza delivers an award-winning, extensible solution set that provides unparalleled customization, configuration, and control for an Churchstreaming.tv to pull RTSP streams directly from unlimited number of streaming use cases. The company’s integrated, customers who are using network cameras, and stream that hybrid model empowers direct end customers, service providers, video live while also recording it. Because network cameras and an extensive worldwide partner network. Proven, patented are extraordinarily easy to operate and require no separate Wowza technology enables organizations to expand their reach, more hardware or software encoder, they are invaluable for deeply engage with key audiences, and increase their monetization opportunities. Wowza has rapidly built a fan base of more than 19,000 streaming customers such as houses of worship, which may customers, in 170+ countries, across all industries. The company was involve few or no camera operators or technical specialists. founded in 2005, is privately held, and is based in Colorado. For more information, please visit www.wowza.com. THE TAKEAWAY You may have been unsure of exactly what’s involved in going ABOUT TELESTREAM from your camera to your audience’s screens; wonder no Telestream provides world-class live and on-demand digital video tools more. Now you know what’s possible, whether you choose and workflow solutions that allow consumers and businesses to transform a cloud-based deployment or an on-premises one. When video on the desktop and across the enterprise. Many of the world’s most pursuing an end-to-end solution, choosing best-in-class demanding media and entertainment companies as well as a growing live streaming providers at every step in the process—from number of users in a broad range of business environments, rely on production and encoding to transcoding, packaging, and Telestream products to streamline operations, reach broader audiences and generate more revenue from their media. Telestream products span distribution, and then to playback—puts professional-quality the entire digital media lifecycle, including video capture and ingest; live streaming at everyone’s fingertips. live and on-demand encoding and transcoding; captioning; playback and inspection, delivery, and live streaming; as well as automation and orchestration of the entire workflow. Telestream corporate headquarters are located in Nevada City, California. The company is privately held. For more information, visit www.telestream.net.

To learn more about Wowza products, visit wowza.com/products.

To learn more about Wirecast, visit telestream.net.

For more on how Wowza and Telestream work together, visit wowza.com/telestream.

To learn more about how others are using Wowza streaming technology, visit wowza.com or contact [email protected].

© 2016 Wowza Media Systems™, LLC. All rights reserved. “Wowza” and other identified trademarks are either registered or claimed trademarks of Wowza Media Systems, LLC; visit wowza.com/legal/trademarks for more information. Third-party trademarks are property of their respective owners; their use does not imply endorsement of Wowza products or services by the trademark owner. rev.0116