In today’s digital age, live video streaming has become an essential medium for communication, entertainment, and information dissemination. Whether it’s broadcasting live sports, conducting virtual conferences, or streaming a gaming session, the demand for seamless, high-quality live video has never been higher. However, ensuring a smooth streaming experience is no small feat. This is where the importance of observability comes into play. In this blog post, we’ll talk in more detail about two key pillars of system observability, monitoring and alerts; and we’ll also introduce our newest feature the Live Heartbeat.

Why Monitoring is Crucial

Monitoring in live video streaming involves continuously checking various parameters to ensure that everything is functioning correctly. This can include checking the video quality, stream latency, buffer health, and server performance. Effective monitoring can help in identifying issues before they impact the viewer’s experience.

1. Ensuring error-free delivery: Whatever the screen size, device, or location today viewers expect to view video and hear audio in the highest quality possible. Monitoring helps in maintaining the video quality by detecting issues such as bitrate fluctuations, frame drops, and resolution problems. By keeping an eye on these metrics, streamers can take corrective actions to ensure a consistently high-quality viewing experience.
2. Staying “On Air”: Whether this is a Live event or a Live linear 24/7 service, maintaining the output to ensure the content is available and the audience experience is uninterrupted has been a vital part of video delivery since the very beginning. Broadcasters would go to great lengths to ensure their systems had resilience in place, with backup systems and disaster recovery processes in place to maintain business continuity. All of those backup systems are only effective if monitoring is in place, to ensure that any issues with the current delivery path are identified with corrective action able to be taken automatically or via a human operator as soon as possible.
3. Buffer management: Buffering is one of the most common issues in live streaming. Effective monitoring can help in managing buffer health, ensuring that the stream is pre-loaded sufficiently to avoid interruptions. By tracking buffer levels, streamers can adjust the streaming settings or improve the content delivery network (CDN) performance.
4. Technical service performance: The technical performance of any streaming service is critical for delivering live video. Typically a live signal is processed by a host of interconnected products, forming the service. Monitoring each component to ensure proper behaviour within a business tolerance for error, is crucial to be able to effectively carry out root cause analysis and hold suppliers to account with data if they breach their SLAs. Selecting the correct quality and measurement tools for each component is vital. 

The Role of Alerts

While monitoring is essential, it’s impractical for human operators to watch these metrics 24/7. For large service providers monitoring 100s or 1000s of linear channels, monitoring is often restricted to one or two sections of a delivery chain displayed on large video walls or multiviewers, and sometimes only displayed in exception. Even when a single event is being monitored there can be so many components to monitor, relying on an “eyes on glass” approach might not be practical. 

This is where automated alerts come in. Alerts are notifications triggered by specific events or thresholds, enabling rapid response to potential issues.

1. Proactive issue resolution: Alerts enable proactive issue resolution by notifying operators of potential problems before they escalate. For example, if the stream bitrate drops below a certain threshold, an alert can notify the technical team to investigate and fix the issue before it affects the viewers.
2. Minimising downtime: Automated alerts can significantly reduce downtime by ensuring that issues are addressed promptly. For instance, if a product or entire service goes down or experiences high load, alerts can notify the support team to take immediate action, ensuring minimal disruption to the live stream, and reducing the meantime to repair.
3. Improving viewer experience: By addressing issues quickly through alerts, streamers can maintain a high-quality viewing experience. This leads to higher viewer satisfaction and engagement, which is crucial for retaining an audience and building a loyal following.
4. Resource optimization: Alerts can also help in optimising resources by providing insights into usage patterns and potential bottlenecks. For example, if alerts indicate that a particular server is consistently under high load, it may be time to scale up the infrastructure or redistribute the load more efficiently.

The Live Heartbeat

Over the past few months, the engineering team at Bitmovin has been looking at how to improve the observability our Live Encoder product offers, by improving our alert notifications. We wanted to make key improvements to our platform.

1. Frequency: Often customers need to be aware of issues in a service as soon as they arrive, and typically issues will arrive during a change in state. For Live Encoding, this can happen at packet level on the input, and this would affect the segments written in the output. By offering lower intervals between alerts, we aim to allow customers to get updates at the frequency at which segments are written. 
2. Scalability: As our customer base increases in both size and account usage, the number of concurrent live encodings reporting alerts and notifications also increases. Because we offer a SaaS platform, where the infrastructure and platform is managed by Bitmovin we initially aggregated our alerts as well. For some alerts, this will still remain true, but for the Live Heartbeat, it will come directly from the Live Encoder improving the confidence users can have in the service, and removing any bottlenecks for scaling. 
3. Reliability: As mentioned earlier, it only takes one false positive to undermine the trust in any mission-critical system and for alerts that are particularly true. By making the Live Encoder responsible for the Live Heartbeat, it becomes the single source of truth for the health of the product and the section of the live transmission path that Bitmovin provides. 
4. Flexibility: There are a raft of data points we can report on in a notification from the Live Encoder, and making sure the payload structure is flexible and easy to add to is also essential. If a customer needs to know something about a function the software is performing and we can report it, adding it to the payload should be swift. 

This is an example payload of the first version of the Live Heartbeat, reporting the status of input video and audio streams.

Who should operate the observability?

By now, hopefully, the benefits of a good observability system in place are clear. Monitoring component health, response times, and error rates can help in maintaining optimal system performance. There is a monetary benefit as well of course, by identifying and addressing system issues promptly, companies can prevent potential downtime and ensure uninterrupted streaming. 

Just before looking at how to implement, it’s also important to ask – who will this observability system be for? Typically in Broadcast stations producing a few core services, the multiple products responsible for maintaining the station output would be monitored by a Master Control Room (MCR) or Transmission control room (TX), they would be supported by a dedicated team of engineers. Service providers or Telcos might have an enormous number of services to monitor, and only be responsible for a certain section of the transmission path, such a large organisation already will have a dedicated team of staff monitoring multiple services in large Network Operation Centers (NOC). These large rooms resemble air traffic control centres, with video walls surrounding the staff, showing feeds at different points in their signal paths, along with diagnostic information.

Some companies staff these control rooms themselves, and simply need the tools in place to perform the job and other companies might be looking for someone to provide this for them. Sometimes they assume that Bitmovin provides this, but we’re a product company not a managed service provider. We do have some partners that offer this however and are always willing to introduce customers to those partners. 

Implementing Effective Monitoring and Alerts

When implementing monitoring and alerts solutions, it’s sometimes useful to start on paper and if you have users gather their requirements and define their user stories. In most cases if something should be monitored and trigger an alert, a solution can be engineered to do this. Consider which links in the chain are critical and can offer tools to aid fault finding, and by alerting give an early warning to aid preventative maintenance. 

Once you have an idea about what needs to be monitored you can consider more of the details such as:

1. Define key metrics: Identify and define key metrics that are critical for your streaming service. This can include video quality indicators, audio quality indicators, metadata integrity, latency, and server performance metrics.
2. Set thresholds: Establish appropriate thresholds for these metrics. Thresholds should be set in a way that they trigger alerts for potential issues without causing unnecessary alarms for minor fluctuations. Typically every company will have a level of fault tolerance it is willing to accept, and the lower the tolerance the higher the cost to achieve that Service Level Agreement (SLA).
3. Use the right tools: Utilise reliable monitoring and alerting tools that can integrate with your streaming infrastructure. There are various tools available that offer real-time monitoring, analytics, and alerting capabilities tailored for live video streaming.
4. Regularly review and adjust: Regularly review the performance data and adjust thresholds and monitoring strategies as needed. Continuous improvement is key to maintaining an effective monitoring and alert system.

Example Use Cases for Monitoring and Alerts

To better understand the significance of monitoring and alerts in live video streaming, let’s explore some example use cases:

1. Live sports broadcasting:

• Scenario: During a live sports event, maintaining high availability and error-free delivery is crucial for an engaging viewer experience.
• Monitoring: Continuously track the health of main and backup transmission paths, typically demarcation points from key equipment suppliers that are the responsibility of the team monitoring the equipment. Often an “off-air” confidence monitor, showing what the “viewer at home” is seeing. 
• Alerts: Set up alerts for core supplier demarcation points, increased error rates, or system downgrades to immediately address any issues. Measure system enhancements such as graphics systems separately so they can be bypassed if required.

2. Virtual conferences and webinars:

• Scenario: Hosting a virtual conference with multiple speakers and interactive sessions requires smooth transitions and minimal disruptions.
• Monitoring: Typically far fewer equipment suppliers and components will be involved, so aggregation can be leveraged to streamline the number of monitoring points. Monitor stream health, website load, and participant connectivity.
• Alerts: Trigger alerts for server overloads, participant dropouts, or stream interruptions to quickly deploy backup resources or troubleshoot connectivity problems.

3. Gaming streams:

• Scenario: Streaming a live gaming session where real-time interaction with viewers is key to maintaining engagement.
• Monitoring: Keep an eye on frame rates, latency, and viewer engagement metrics. Larger events have also become similar to live sporting events, and will have similar requirements to those listed above. 
• Alerts: Set alerts for frame rate drops, increased latency, or significant drops in viewer engagement, allowing for immediate corrective actions.

4. News broadcasting:

• Scenario: Broadcasting live news where timeliness and reliability are critical.
• Monitoring: Continuously track the health of main and backup transmission paths, typically demarcation points from key equipment suppliers that are the responsibility of the team monitoring the equipment. Often an “off-air” confidence monitor, showing what the “viewer at home” is seeing. Check latency and your rivals – if you’re not first you’re last. 
• Alerts: Generate alters similar to live sports events, with additional attention paid to the multiple platforms being delivered to and confidence monitors, typically news needs to be on as many screens as possible.

5. 24/7 Live Linear Channels

• Scenario: Broadcasting 24/7 linear channel services that are always serving content to users. 
• Monitoring: Multiple outputs from key infrastructure components in the chain, typically demarcation points from key equipment suppliers that are the responsibility of the team monitoring the equipment. Often an “off-air” confidence monitor, showing what the “viewer at home” is seeing. 
• Alerts: Set up alerts for core supplier demarcation points, increased error rates, or system downgrades to immediately address any issues. Every service should have the main (most popular/most viewed) off-air platform monitored for each service. If there is an issue there, you’ll want to be able to resolve and direct engineering support teams as efficiently as possible.

Recommended Monitoring and Alerting Tools

At an extremely simplified and high level, here are some of the demarcation points in a signal chain and segments of similar equipment in a transmission path. For each category we provide a list of products that can be used to implement a robust monitoring and alerting workflow for live video streaming, they are by no means exhaustive or an endorsement of any particular solution:

A. Aggregated Mass Notification Systems
These solutions would typically be used as endpoints for pub/sub or push notifications from multiple systems, aggregating alerts from multiple manufacturers to display the health of a single service, or providing a holistic view of a technology platform. Here we have split the tools into two categories, Data and Media, because you would want to aggregate alarms and health monitoring into a single interface, and separately you would also want to see and hear media into a single large display. 

Data

1. New Relic
   • Features: Offers real-time performance monitoring, error tracking, and alerting for server and application performance.
   • Use Case: Ideal for monitoring server load, response times, and application health during live streaming.
2. Datadog
   • Features: Provides end-to-end monitoring with detailed analytics, real-time alerts, and integrations with various streaming platforms.
   • Use Case: Suitable for comprehensive monitoring of video quality, latency, and server performance.
3. DataMiner by Skyline Communications
   • Features: Offers end-to-end monitoring, fault management, and performance analytics specifically designed for media and broadcasting industries.
   • Use Case: Best for comprehensive monitoring of entire broadcast chains, optimising resource management, and ensuring high-quality content delivery.
4. Prometheus and Grafana
   • Features: Prometheus offers powerful time-series monitoring, and Grafana provides flexible and interactive visualisations.
   • Use Case: Effective for creating customised dashboards to monitor various metrics such as server performance, video bitrate, and latency.
5. Databricks
   • Features: Offers a data aggregation platform to collect metrics from multiple data sources, across a software stack. Uses AI models to provide insights and elevated reporting. 
   • Use Case: Offering a great overview of entire plant operations, supporting troubleshooting by technical teams, observability for operations and data insights in terms of performance for executive stakeholders. 
6. Nagios
   • Features: An open-source platform that can be used to build live dashboards monitoring systems with multiple components taking alerts via API calls, SNMP or pub/sub webhooks. Also has a great log collector function for root cause analysis. 
   • Use Case: For anyone looking to invest significant time to build a comprehensive solution, this is a great tool that can be customised and useful for operations and engineering teams. 

Media

7. Grass Valley
   • Features: Grass Valley Kaleido Multiviewers are configurable multi input software that comes available with a range of input interfaces and models. They can display multiple video, audio and data sources in a single video wall and issue alerts. 
   • Use Case: Suitable for a modular based approach, where future scalability is key. Could monitor signals in each step of the chain.  
8. Imagine Communications
   • Features: Selenio and Platinum products are ideal for production environments where high bitrate video input sources need to be monitored.  
   • Use Case: Live production studios and control rooms, or playout centres distribution content up to Transmission. 
9. TAG Video
   • Features: TAG Video is dedicated to building monitoring solutions for multiviewers, monitoring and data analysis products. The platform supports a wide range of input interfaces and models. They can display multiple video, audio and data sources in a single video wall and issue alerts. 
   • Use Case: Suitable for monitoring a holistic overview of each step of the chain.  

B. Acquisition
Products and components at this part of the chain are responsible for capturing the video, audio and data sources. Monitoring tools here for a production workflow would normally be test and measurement devices to ensure the equipment is properly calibrated and that the output from the devices meets certain specifications. Typically this is the most critical part of the chain, where it’s much harder to have back-up devices ready to take over.

1. Leader
   • Features: Waveform monitors and rasterizers display a range of scopes for measuring uncompressed video signals over SDI or IP. A great range of products from high to mid-end. 
   • Use Case: Measuring signal health, and error rates and also line-up ensuring correct calibration.
2. Telestream
   • Features: The company’s waveform monitors and rasterizers display a range of scopes for measuring uncompressed video signals over SDI or IP. 
   • Use Case: Measuring signal health, and error rates and also line-up ensuring correct calibration. Useful in the camera control rooms, post production facilities and Quality Control. 
3. TSL Systems
   • Features: Provides audio metering products to measure level, loudness, signal presence and phasing. 
   • Use Case: Audio monitoring for signal levels and integrity in any customer acquisition environment. 
4. Leader/PHABRIX
   • Features: Also from Leader, but the popular portable handheld devices are well known as a standalone brand to any engineer working with baseband video. The devices can generate signals and analyse them using a multitude of scopes, in robust cases with a long battery life and high quality screen and simple controls. 
   • Use Case: An essential tool for analysing a host of different components in a chain during installation, routine maintenance or during fault finding. 

C. Processing & Routing

1. Bridge Technologies
   • Features: Specialists in monitoring probes of signals at different stages of the production train, able to measure uncompressed signals, compressed contribution (Transmission), compressed domain (Distribution) and off-air platforms. 
   • Use Case: Provides signal quality and health in a holistic manner, measuring the muxed video, audio and data streams in a consolidated signal. 
2. Interra Systems
   • Features: Provide quality control software for measuring the signal quality, in terms of artefacts and content quality (perceptual visual and audio quality). 
   • Use Case: Can be used to measure content according to a set of business rules and allow teams to manage bulk content and alert operators on request. 

D. Transmission

1. Bridge Technologies
   • Features: Specialists in monitoring probes of signals at different stages of the production train, able to measure uncompressed signals, compressed contribution (Transmission), compressed domain (Distribution) and off-air platforms. 
   • Use Case: Provides signal quality and health in a holistic manner, measuring the muxed video, audio and data streams in a consolidated signal. 
2. IMAX
   • Features: Using StreamSmart and StreamAware, deploy monitoring solutions such as quality probing software measuring quality from multiple points along a transmission path using SSIM quality metrics. 
   • Use Case: To ensure that a benchmark of audio and video quality is met and maintained throughout the transmission path. 
3. Interra Systems
   • Features: Provide quality control software for measuring the signal quality, in terms of artefacts and content quality (perceptual visual and audio quality). 
   • Use Case: Can be used to measure content according to a set of business rules and allow teams to manage bulk content and alert operators on request. 

E. Distribution

1. Hydrolix
   • Features: Offering a data lake platform that can capture vast quantities of logging information across a distribution platform and make that queryable via an indexed search. 
   • Use Case: A perfect tool for teams responsible for monitoring multiple content delivery networks and security platforms.  
2. PROMAX ELECTRONICS
   • Features: A range of tooling for monitoring MPEG encoders and POPs for distribution of content over DTTV, Satellite and Cable Optical Delivery Networks. 
   • Use Case: Companies managing multiple distribution traditional broadcast network. 
3. Touchstream
   • Features: Observability tools for monitoring media distribution over CDNs, monitoring performance and health of network distribution. Additionally providing a virtual NOC for monitoring the health of key components in the OTT transmission path from Encoder to OTT devices. 
   • Use Case: Tools are crafted for teams looking for greater observability over OTT distribution paths. 

F. Off-Air Platforms

1. Bridge Technologies
   • Features: Specialists in monitoring probes of signals at different stages of the production train, able to measure uncompressed signals, compressed contribution (Transmission), compressed domain (Distribution) and off-air platforms. 
   • Use Case: Provides signal quality and health in a holistic manner, measuring the muxed video, audio and data streams in a consolidated signal. 
2. IMAX
   • Features: Using StreamSmart and StreamAware, deploy monitoring solutions such as quality probing software measuring quality from multiple points along a transmission path using SSIM quality metrics. 
   • Use Case: To ensure that a benchmark of audio and video quality is met and maintained throughout the transmission path. 
3. Interra Systems
   • Features: Provide quality control software for measuring the signal quality, in terms of artefacts and content quality (perceptual visual and audio quality). 
   • Use Case: Can be used to measure content according to a set of business rules and allow teams to manage bulk content and alert operators on request. 
4. Bitmovin Analytics
   • Features: Focuses specifically on video streaming with detailed insights into video performance, viewer engagement, and quality of experience.
   • Use Case: Excellent for monitoring video quality metrics, buffer health, and viewer engagement in real time.

G. Managed Service Providers

1. Stream AMG
   • Features: Leading sports OTT platform provider that allows clubs, leagues, rights holders and more to build online video services to monetize their content.
   • Use Case: Integrate with their “Headless OTT” or use their full end-to-end solution for live video delivery, monetization, engagement, analytics and content protection.
2. M2A Media
   • Features: Automation and orchestration of AWS Media Services for premier live events. 
   • Use Case: Operations teams can use M2A interfaces to build, monitor and capture live streaming video content running on AWS, without any cloud or dev skills necessary. 
3. LTN Global
   • Features: High-quality video transport and distribution services. Ultra-low latency video delivery, cloud-based media workflows, live productions tools and comprehensive monitoring. 
   • Use Case: Real-time news coverage and remote guest contributions. Live sports events and cloud-based, remote media production. 
4. Telstra Broadcast Services
   • Features: Comprehensive media and broadcast solutions provider with global low-latency media network. Specialists in live events and media workflow solutions.
   • Use Case: Live sports broadcasting and remote production; Festival, concert and event streaming. 
5. Irdeto
   • Features: Managed broadcast and online content distribution infrastructure; Design, build and optimise new video platforms. 
   • Use Case: Video compression and delivery network management, high-profile event management.

Conclusion

In the dynamic world of live video streaming, maintaining a seamless and high-quality viewer experience is paramount. Monitoring and alerts play a crucial role in achieving this by ensuring that potential issues are identified and addressed promptly. By implementing robust monitoring and alerting systems, streamers can enhance their service reliability, optimise resources, and ultimately deliver an outstanding experience to their audience.

The post The Importance of Observability in Live Video Streaming appeared first on Bitmovin.

Q:  Paul, thanks for joining us, can you provide an overview of this partnership and integration?

A:  This has been in the works since the latter part of 2022 and was born out of the opportunity to bring Vimond’s enterprise CMS solution alongside our Encoding solutions (Live and VOD). When it comes to offerings and solutions in the market, you could argue that there is a slight limitation in routes for you to take, with many vendors only offering an end-to-end OTT management platform. It was clear from the start that a partnership and integration with Vimond and our Live Encoder solution is a value driver considering the best in class products working easily with each other.

By using the Vimond VIA OTT CMS Platform, you’ll be able to select the Bitmovin workflow/pipeline which provides efficient and advanced transcoding packaging for VOD and Live content. The Vimond CMS Platform offers a comprehensive solution for storing, file management, content organization and the ability to promote, distribute news, sports and entertainment content.

Q:  What does this solution look like today?

A:  As of right now, the proof of concept built by Vimond is up and running and ready, having used our Bitmovin APIs. You are able to start and stop your Live Encoding and manage the necessary metadata attached to the asset, include DRM and utilize our Live-to-VOD workflows. 

Q:  Who is this solution ideal for?

A:  A starting point is the need for a leading-edge CMS solution for your growing video content (Live and On Demand Content). Well established companies who are seeking best in class CMS alongside top-performing encoding and the same goes with growing platforms and  businesses that are looking to provide users an advanced and highest quality user experience rather than going down the rabbit hole of trying to build your own CMS platform. There are many factors to consider and we believe that this partnership is anchored to the following themes:  ease of use, scalability and high value seamless integrations. 

Q:  Can you go into more detail about this partnership being linked to the statement above of “high value seamless integration”?

A:  What we’ve built allows for more flexibility and more options rather than being tied down to an end to end solution. The quality of the Vimond solution speaks for itself, being able to partner and integrate their offering with the Bitmovin solutions makes absolute sense and provides buyers/users with more options that are of the highest standards. 

Q:  What’s the best way to find out more information?

A:  I recommend speaking with our Partnerships Team who can provide plenty of information and also guide you through the process regardless of what your current situation is. The best way to reach them is through our contact form and check out the Vimond website too for more details.

The post Bitmovin Partners with Vimond for Advanced Encoding Workflows and State of the Art Content Management appeared first on Bitmovin.

We spend a great deal of time talking to our customers to better understand their needs, pain points and how our products can help them. There’s no one-size-fits all when it comes to products. Not every feature or update is suitable for every customer, but it’s a real joy when you find something that can benefit as many people as possible. 

With this in mind, we think now is a good time to present our contribution to the Open Broadcaster Software project (OBS). OBS is very much a rockstar in the world of software! It comes from humble beginnings but has become a renowned and much-used tool within the video streaming industry. 

Our contribution addresses the need to quickly and easily generate RTMP streams and we have made that possible with our easy-to-use product Streams, which now includes a Live feature. We know it’s not always easy to set up live streams, and typing out URLs is not anyone’s idea of a good time, so we hope this first iteration will make life a little easier for our customers using OBS and Bitmovin today. 

Who uses OBS and Why?

First of all, OBS is not the only option for contribution encoding. With most of our customers, they will have deployed hardware that is dedicated for this purpose on-premise: providing a box that your equipment can be plugged into, producing the signal that can be sent to another platform. However, OBS has a major advantage, one that is of interest to any of our customers: OBS is free and runs on Linux, Mac and Windows, i.e. most laptop or desktop computers. 

OBS has a huge list of users: from entrepreneurs looking for a tool to let them stream live events and generate another revenue stream alongside ticket sales; developers that need a way to send a signal to a new digital platform looking to disrupt an established market; and single-user content creators vlogging to their followers, and yes, even video experts at large media companies that just need to run some quick tests. OBS is easier to monitor and use than FFMPEG, and it has a wealth of features continually being added to by the project community. It’s a well-known application amongst almost anyone that works with video.  

From humble beginnings 

OBS started eight years ago, back in 2013. Developer Hugh “Jim” Bailey wanted to stream his StarCraft games over the internet. He began building out the product because he had an interest in technology, a desire to build his own tools, a need to stream and the skills to code. He explains, in this wonderful podcast, the beginnings of OBS, some fundamentals around the architecture, the importance of managing latency and the drive to keep it open source.

The development from a passion project into the product that is used by so many worldwide is a bit of a software phenomenon. It is software with a rock and roll story. OBS is the equivalent of a musician writing a song in a bedroom that goes on to become a global anthem. Companies invest millions of dollars to try and develop successful products but, just like in music, people value authenticity. Sometimes, it’s the product (or song!) that was overlooked by executives that become the most popular. 

Part of the reason for its meteoric rise is that it solved a common problem when more and more people were looking for a similar solution on a low-to-no budget. It allowed anyone with the software to record their screen and stream the output over the internet. Its inception in 2013 has coincided with the rise of YouTube, Playstation live, XBox live and services such as Twitch fueled the demand. 

Being an open-source project, like-minded developers found they could add to the application to incorporate graphics, other video sources or video files and produce a simulated TV production using their laptop. It’s not only live streamers that benefited from OBS. Content creators for platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, also see the value because it allows them to stand out in a very crowded online space with still screens and jump cuts.

Where are we now?

Historically we used OBS internally at Bitmovin, the same way most of our larger customers used the software: to quickly generate RTMP streams as a source to test our Live Encoder. The workflow would be:

1. Login to the Bitmovin Dashboard or use our API
2. Create a new Live Encoding
3. Select RTMP Push as an input
4. While it starts, open OBS and open preferences
5. Go to Stream – then select Custom
6. Retrieve the RTMP push endpoint (the IP address, port and stream key)
7. Enter into OBS
8. Save and start streaming 

Initially, this was used for testing features and functionality in the Bitmovin encoder, quickly changing resolution, adding and removing audio streams and so forth. Very quick to do in OBS if you don’t have some pre-written scripts for FFMPEG, which most customers would not have to hand. 

In recent years though, from engaging with customers from broader backgrounds than media and entertainment, it’s become clear that OBS is used as the production tool for their live events. In some instances, we hear of customers having multiple staff members at numerous sites, all using OBS to broadcast to Bitmovin, which then delivers the high-quality HLS and DASH outputs to their digital platforms. 

Using the existing workflow, we recognise it’s awkward to have to type in your RTMP details or just copy and paste from Bitmovin to OBS. We know this because we do it ourselves and think, “it would be so much easier if there were a Bitmovin plugin in the dropdown list instead of having to use Custom”. 

The new workflow – connecting to Streams Live

For users of Streams, they want to get going with the least amount of fuss, not just in Bitmovin but also in OBS, and we have contributed our own plugin to the OBS Studio project. Using the new Bitmovin plugin, users can now create as many live encodings as they need to in Bitmovin Streams. Simply follow these steps:

Pre-requisites:

Download version 29.0.0 or later of OBS from the official website

If you don’t already have a Bitmovin account, sign up for a free trial on our website.

Connect

1: We suggest getting OBS ready first, so open up the application and open the Settings, either by navigating via the top menu

Or pressing settings on the main control UI.

2: This opens up the Settings window, then navigate to Stream:
(Hint: the default view here is the Custom settings – use these to connect to the RTMP endpoint with our customisable Live Encoder – great if you want to connect with SRT or RTMP)

3: Click on Service From the Dropdown window select “Bitmovin”

4: Now open you Bitmovin Dashboard – https://bitmovin.com/dashboard/streams/home
Navigate to Streams and Create new Live

5: This takes you to the Streams Live creation flow – just press Start Stream to get started.

6: Once it has started you’ll just need to copy the Streamkey

Or if the Stream was already running, copy it from the Stream status page

7: Then paste this key into OBS Settings and press OK:

8: Press Start Streaming in OBS

That’s it! You’re now streaming live.

Not only does this reduce the number of steps that need to be taken, but it also reduces the likelihood of typos. The user only needs to know the API key, which generally remains static, and the name of the stream they want to connect to. 

For customers with multiple live events running simultaneously, being streamed by users at multiple locations will allow them to connect to streams with names that match their event, for example. 

We have been using this version internally for testing, which is a much more efficient way to use the power of OBS and Bitmovin. Because we use it ourselves, you can bet we’ll be improving it further in the future! 

To try it out, download the latest version of OBS from the official website

If you don’t already have a Bitmovin account, sign up for a free trial on our website.

Then start streaming, and let us know what you think or find answers for any questions in our Community.

If you use OBS for profit, consider contributing to their Patreon account and give something back to the great folks that keep this project running. 

The post OBS & Bitmovin: Creating a Rockstar Streaming Experience appeared first on Bitmovin.

The growth of live streaming has seen a major uptick in content and viewer numbers, and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. The rise clearly extends to the types of live streaming experiences that viewers can access, which led us to ask ourselves three key questions:

• What do live streaming operators need?
• What can make live streaming for the operator easier or better?
• How can we improve costs, workflows and reliability?

These questions are why we partnered with Videon; our combined expertise in video streaming and hybrid:cloud workflows, utilizing edge computing at the point-of-production,has fuelled an ambition to deliver live streaming experiences that offer a new standard of reliability, quality, ease of use and cost-effectiveness to operators. The result? An easy-to-use hybrid:cloud solution, deploying a Videon Compute Platform on premises that can be quickly configured to send content to the Bitmovin Live Event Encoder for distribution to digital platforms using HLS and DASH.

We’re excited, and you should be too! Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about what we’ve built with Videon. You can also watch a webinar recording hosted by Videon that features our very own Paul Macklin, Senior Product Manager for our Live Encoding Solution.

The challenges that live streaming operators face right now

When it comes to live streaming, the immediate challenges include:   

• Limited reliability due to running live streams on a single laptop and using open-source tools 
• Using a basic encoder for an advanced use case, requiring a complicated chain of equipment, which increases the risk of downtime through multiple single points of failure (branding, content protection, video and audio filters, etc.)
• Having a physical setup which is a challenge to fire up quickly and pack down efficiently.

Operators are facing the challenge of questionable levels of reliability, complex workflows, processes that do not scale and lack of flexibility not only with the workflow but with the actual physical setup.

How to make live streaming (and your life) easier

To put it simply, our partnership with Videon makes things easier for you. Our collaboration makes it possible for an end-to-end solution that supports single input or highly resilient dual input and 1+1 architectures for live streaming video operators of almost all levels of experience.  You will find our partnership useful if:

• You are running OBS on a laptop with complex workflows that cannot easily scale and you have felt the need to upgrade to using a single-purpose device that is pre-configured and ready to use out of the box
• You are currently unable to get your signal to the cloud and need an on-premise solution that is built for purpose
• You want an end-to-end solution that gets your signal into the cloud and provides additional tools for stream Playback and performance tracking (The Bitmovin Player and Analytics solutions)

It is abundantly clear to us that there are a variety of use cases and types of companies that can benefit from our joint solution with Videon.  For example, suppose you’re working for a large-scale broadcaster/media outlet and companies with 24/7 live distribution of video content, you will see the need for a bank of on-premise devices that bring redundancy options and allow for dual inputs. Using our joint solution with Videon can provide all of that in a cost-effective way. The additional use case is anchored to the type of business that needs a simple, trustworthy, small form factor solution that can be set up and packed down quickly, in addition to being cost-effective. 

Why our joint solution is perfect for you

So if you’ve made it this far, the chances are that our joint solution is the right one for you, but just in case you need any further convincing, let me reiterate how you will benefit:

1. You can easily deliver live content at the highest quality with an easy-to-use pre-configured solution
2. We will ensure your streams are underpinned by reliable technology
3. It’s a complete end-to-end solution! You get an on-prem solution with our cloud-based Live Event Encoder, plus our industry-leading video Player and Analytics! 

How to get started

If you would like to connect with a live video expert and learn more about the end-to-end solution, email sales@bitmovin.com. To read more about the partnership, check out the announcement and to find more about Videon, go here. 

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