An Administrator can create Media Services from the Media Control Panel from various locations:
- There is a button on the Administrators Dashboard labelled “Add Service”;
- There is a “Create a new server” button on the Media Services listing page;
- There is a “Create Service” button on the Customer Overview page
The creation interface is different from the normal media service configuration screen and presents a “Quick Wizard” guide with the critical base options for a new service.
Select Customer
The first step is to select the customer that you wish to create the service for. The list is presented in an ascending (a-z) alphabetical order and identifies whether a Customer is a Customer, Reseller or Administrator.
If you have difficulty finding the Customer, then we recommend adding a Service from the Customers Overview instead. You can find the Customer from the Customers Listing, then click on the “Add Service” button from the Customers Overview.
Media Service Type
The MediaCP supports a variaty of different streaming engines for both Audio and Video streaming services. You can view a full comparison on our Streaming Servers page.
The “Use selected media as default in the future.” check box allows you to save the selection to ensure it is selected by default when you create the next Media Service.
Audio Service Configurations
General Configuration
- Publish Name – Specify the name for this service. The name is used primarily for display purposes. A URL friendly slug is created automatically from the Publish Name and is used publicaly and internally on various components such as the Station Page, HTML Player and Widgets. The URL friendly slug will convert the name to lowercase and replace spaces and special characters with a dash.
- Portbase – Shoutcast and Icecast services utilise 2 ports to operate, the port base specifies the first port to use and the second will simply be an increment from the first port. For example a port base of 8000 would utilise both 8000 and 8001.
- Icecast 2 services (not including KH) will utilise 3 ports of {portbase}, {portbase+10000}, and {portbase+10001} because it is not yet capable of using a single port for both SSL and non-SSL connections. This allows the default portbase to operate as SSL and the subsequent ports to run insecurely for broadcasters without SSL capability.
- Icecast 2 and KH have the Shoutcast Compatible option, which if disabled will remove the incremental port. So, if you are using port 8000, only port 8000 will be in use and port 8001 will be available for other services.
- Admin Password – Defines the password to access administative functions of the Icecast or Shoutcast service. Additionally, a Stream Password will be automatically generated after the service creation that can be used specifically for broadcaster connection.
- # Mountpoints – Often used to broadcast in different formats/qualities, can be configured as a fallback or even broadcasting different streams/channels on the same service.
- # AutoDJ Sources – AutoDJ by default operates on the Default Mountpoint and can be configured on additional Mountpoints to provide different qualities and formats. Each AutoDJ Source consumes additional CPU and MEMORY resources therefore a limit is recommended.
- Bitrate – Higher bitrates consume bandwidth faster. When using AutoDJ, higher bitrates may consume only slightly greater amount of CPU resources with Audio Services.
- Max Connections – Specifies the number of connections the service is allowed to consume.
- The slider reaches up to 999 at the most, however it is possible to type in a custom number in the field.
- Storage – Specifies the total amount of disk storage the Media Service is allowed to consume.
- The slider reaches up to 50GB at the most, however it is possible to type in a custom number in the field.
- Storage is shared between other Audio Services under the same Customer account therefore if the Customer has 2 x Media Services with 10 GB storage, then each service will show a total limit of 20 GB (combined)
- Data Transfer (MB) – The total amount of Bandwidth or Data Transfer that the Media Service can consume each month.
- The slider reaches up to 500 GB at the most, however it is possible to type in a custom number in the field.
- A new month starts on the 1st day of each month.
- AutoDJ Service – By default each Audio Service is provisioned with an AutoDJ service using Liquidsoap.
- AutoDJ is a service designed to broadcast uploaded media automatically in user defined Playlists and Schedules.
- AutoDJ enhances the Audio Service with features such as individual DJ Logins, Track History,
- AutoDJ services consume additional CPU resources and you should consult the System Requirements page for usage/load examples.
Relay & IP Binding
Audio Services can be configured to rebroadcast another service. Icecast services can relay from both Shoutcast or Icecast while Shoutcast services can only relay other Shoutcast services.
Icecast Relay
- Relay Type – Master-Slave relay allows the relay of an entire Icecast 2 or Icecast 2 KH service including all mount points. Single Broadcast relay allows relaying from a Shoutcast or Icecast mount point to a local mount point on this icecast service.
- Relay URL – Specify the full address to the server or mount that will be relayed. SSL Support is limited with relaying Icecast 2 services so you should specify an insecure/non-ssl port in the URL. Examples:
- Master-Slave – Specify the base URL with no mount point such as http://audio-streaming.com:8000/
- Single Broadcast – Specify the full URL to the stream such as http://audio-streaming.com:8000/stream
- Username – (Single Broadcast Only)
- Password
- Icecast / Icecast KH – Provide the Relay Password found under the Service Configuration of the origin service.
- Shoutcast – Provide the Admin Password of the origin stream.
- Local Mount (Single Broadcast Only)
- Specify the local mount point to deliver the broadcast too, by default this would be /stream however you may wish to configure muiltiple mount points and deliver locally to a mount point url of /relay that can be used as a fallback when there is no live broadcast to the /stream mount.
- Master-Slave relay copies all mount points from origin to this service and this field is not displayed.
Shoutcast Relay
- Relay from Shoutcast 2 server –This service can relay from another Shoutcast 2 service only. Enter the full stream path of another Shoutcast 2 service. For example: http://10.1.1.1:8000/stream
- Relay from Port – Deprecated – do not use this field, it will be removed in future versions.
- Allow Relay to other services – Defines whether this Shoutcast server can be used to relay from. This must be enabled if you wish to relay from this server to another.
- Bind IP Address – Allows an administrator to bind this server to a specific IP address. Default of ANY will bind to all IP addresses on the server. It is recommended to leave default.
Video Service Configurations
General Configuration
- Publish Name – Specify the name for this service. The name is used primarily for display purposes. A URL friendly slug is created automatically from the Publish Name and is used publicaly and internally on various components such as the Station Page, HTML Player and Widgets. The URL friendly slug will convert the name to lowercase and replace spaces and special characters with a dash.
- Service Type
- Live Streaming – Available to all Streaming Engines
- Ondemand Streaming (Flussonic & Wowza Only)
- TV Station – Broadcasts videos in a linear live 24×7 broadcast with switch between live encoder.
- Relay
- Live Streaming Low Latency (Wowza only) – This option is now deprecated and the Low Latency option is now available in the service configuration instead.
- Shoutcast/Icecast Relay
- Relay URL – Relay from an existing live broadcast.
- RTSP Broadcast – Supported by any Streaming Engine.
- RTMP Broadcast – Supported by Flussonic & NginxRtmp Only. Wowza Streaming Engine can only rebroadcast from other Wowza RTMP URLs.
- HLS Broadcast (m3u8) – All Streaming Engines
- Shoutcast & Icecast – All Streaming Engines
- Live Streaming & FTP Password – Defines the password to broadcast to the service and/or connection password for FTP services.
- Bitrate – Higher bitrates consume bandwidth faster.
- Viewers – Specifies the number of viewers that can access the stream simultaniously.
- The slider reaches up to 10,00 at the most, however it is possible to type in a custom number in the field.
- Storage – Specifies the total amount of disk storage the Media Service is allowed to consume.
- The slider reaches up to 50GB at the most, however it is possible to type in a custom number in the field.
- Storage is NOT shared between other Video Services under the same Customer account.
- Data Transfer (MB) – The total amount of Bandwidth or Data Transfer that the Media Service can consume each month.
- The slider reaches up to 500 GB at the most, however it is possible to type in a custom number in the field.
- A new month starts on the 1st day of each month.
Features
- Playback Types (Wowza) – Enable streaming to specific endpoints by selecting one or more of the following Playback Types. Apple HLS is required by the Video Player at the minimum. Adobe HDS and Microsoft Streaming are now deprecated.
- Transcoder Profiles – Automatically transcodes the broadcast into different format outputs most commonly used to provide an Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) broadcast. Transcoding consumes a lot of CPU resources and you should review the Transcoder Benchmarks.
- Source / Passthru – Adds the original broadcast to the HLS output for ABR. Used to reduce CPU when providing multiple formats in a configuration such as (example) 240p, 480p and Passthru where Passthru is the orginal broadcast at 720p. Passthru output is not transcoded and will not display logo overlays on the stream.
- Audio Only (Wowza) – Provides a HLS output of the audio only stream.
- Stream Targets – Stream Targets allow customers to send the broadcast to multiple destinations such as Facebook and Youtube. Check the boxes to allow the Customer to configure each as a target.
- GeoIP Country Locking – Allows the Customer to enable Country Locking if desired
- DVR / nDVR / Rewind Feature – (Flussonic & Wowza) – Allows the customer to enable nDVR or rewind features. Viewers can rewind a live broadcast with DVR enabled streams. This does use additional disk space that is not counted towards the Storage allocation.
- HLS Low Latency (Wowza) – Adjusts HLS Playlist Chunk and durations to reduce latency between the video played by the encoder and what the viewer sees. Lower latency can cause problems in the stream if it is not stable enough, so switching between the profiles is recommended.
- Recording (Wowza)
- Service – Specify another service to save the recordings.
- Autostart – Should live recording be started automatically when the broadcast begins or manually started by the Customer.
- Authentication
- Live Authentication – Require a password to publish. If disabled, then a password will not be required to broadcast.
- Lock Incoming Stream – Limit broadcast to a list of Ip addresses. Often used when Live Authentication is disabled.
- HTTP origin Mode (CDN) (Wowza Only) – Deploys the application to Wowa Streaming Engine in HTTP Origin mode, ready for connectivity with a CDN.
