Live streaming simply means that users can remotely watch a class as it is happening. For live-streamed classes, the input that is being captured by the capture appliance is webcast in real-time to those users viewing the EchoVideo classroom.

For live streaming to work properly, there are a few fairly straightforward configuration requirements.

Live streaming is possible via captures generated by any capture appliance, including an EchoVideo Pro, EchoVideo Pod, Universal Capture Installation, or legacy SCHD.

You can control the live stream in the same way you can control any scheduled capture, including stopping, pausing, or extending the capture. See Controlling Captures Through Device Login and Controlling Universal Capture Recordings for further information and links.

Live streaming is only available for section captures

When you schedule a capture for a section or initiate an ad hoc Live Capture (via Universal Capture) the Options available include a Live stream toggle. If you toggle to stream a capture without selecting a section, you cannot save your settings or initiate a capture.

Why

Well, it has to do with the fact that users (students) can only access media that exists in a class. The view it by clicking the class and entering the classroom. So if you want people to view LIVE streams, it has to go into a class, in a section.

Remember also that to get into a section, you have to be assigned to the section. Meaning a user who is not assigned to the section cannot see the classes for the section, so they cannot enter the classroom to view the media.

What you CAN do, however, is configure a dedicated course and section for holding special events or other happenings that you want to stream live to a larger institutional audience. Then assign yourself or another user as an Instructor and generate an Access Link to the section. You can configure this link to be for Registered Users only - so that only EchoVideo users at your institution can view the Live Streams posted to this section.

Check and configure outbound port communications

Live streaming is provided through hosted streaming (Wowza) servers. These servers receive the separate input streams from the appliance via RTP (real-time transfer protocol), then deliver the consolidated media stream back to users.

To make this work, the capture appliance needs to be able to communicate with the streaming servers through the appropriate ports, and those ports need to be configured, via wildcard DNS entries, to point to the cloud-based Wowza servers.

For details on this, see Port Configuration for LIVE Streaming.

Known Issue with NTSC and PAL sources for Live

The live player provides video using the captured aspect ratio rather than the display aspect ratio.

NTSC and PAL analog video signals have square pixel display aspect ratios, however, because EchoVideo appliances capture analog video using non-square pixels, there may be some noticeable differences for analog video sources as the captured aspect ratio is not a match for the display aspect ratio.

This has no impact on digital sources.

This does not affect VOD playback of analog video as the EchoVideo media processor converts those sources to the corresponding 4:3 square pixel display aspect ratio.