Blog Feed for Live Stream Host, Video On Demand CDN, VOD Hosting and Storage

Gocoder support

Tue, 4 Jun 2013 00:00:00 UTC

We are confirming ScaleEngine support for the Wowza Media Systems Gocoder app. Full article to follow, or see the wowza forum post.

The return of the Restreaming IP Camera page, featuring the Finnish train station. We have rtsp stream management coming in the new version of the control panel, which will be released today. Next up is a full wowza upgrade.

JW6 Embed Examples

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:00:00 UTC

We announce limited support for the jwplayer version 6. It's limited, because our actual embed generator works with the last jw5, and isn't broken. Also, jw6 still seems kind of beta-ish, although the bandwidth switching for keyframe aligned streams and vod is nice.

So you can follow the code on our jwplayer full examples page, replacing your stream names with the ones referenced. The flash smil files are available for download and inspection from our embed subdomain. The HLS smil examples are served from the video CDN, which is required, but are also available to download. Paths are in the code, obviously.

Note: The "Adaptive Stream Switching with Two Live streams" example uses our channel system to align live streams of differently encoded vod. The 432p stream is from vod encoded and scheduled in a playlist, and so is the 720p stream. This means the switching works fairly well, even though this is not keyframe aligned streaming.

Channel System New Features

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 UTC

We announce the rollout of new features for our CDN originated video playout system, in Europe and the United States. You can now use a playlist as your standby video loop, which will be used as a fallback. When you cut in with a scheduled live stream, or a different playlist, set it to "Fallback". Once the program finishes, the video will fallback to your default playlist loop. We hope this provides a feature that our TV broadcasters are accustomed to seeing in the playout world.

Additionally, we have added audio only to the channel system, enabling lists of mp3 files to be queued and managed for radio playout.

Channel API methods are now available to programmatically query the API for the currently playing asset, and to get lists of scheduled assets.

This upgrade also adds support for immediate live stream failover to the standby list. Stream end transitions to the next scheduled list as soon as the broadcasts ends or is interrupted. This functionality is available for Roku broadcasters in the United States of America, and for Flash broadcasters in Europe as well.

Secure Pay Per View

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:00:00 UTC

We are working on making SE-VU easier to deploy for customers. A complete pay per view system using SE-VU is currently in development. You will be able to create a "theatre" page on your website, with your own membership system (optional). Our control panel will allow you to set up ticketing, and charge and collect payment, as well as provide your embed. You will be able to restrict viewing time, and restrict by IP address to prevent forum dumps, rtmpdump, and other sharing. We expect to have a beta announcement by the end of March.

GET to POST database protection with varnish and nginx

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:00:00 UTC

I built a load test system for a customer, a number of amazon t1.micro windows instances would register, get a unique username, and, using powershell to script the login, and a mouse clicker to use their flash app, we could observe the failure mode of the application. Once we got some network equipment fail sorted out (cisco asa 5520 limitations, we swapped that out for pfsense), the obvious bottleneck was the four (4) database calls that each user was making every time they tried to use the app. Firebug showed me that these were all POSTs into the database; a quick look at the code showed that three of the four calls were idempotent, and the fourth, with user parameters, was also going to be cacheable. We got the app adjusted to use GETs, and then brought varnish into the equation to protect the database. Here's how.

Simply switching to GET doesn't protect anything. You need to cache the result of the GET for some period of time, so that each client gets its answer from varnish, and isn't hammering the database with concurrent calls for the same data. Keep in mind that this is an SSL site, so it has to all run through nginx. In the nginx config for the website, we copy the running config and expose the site on an internal address and a different port, so it runs the same site code. Then we proxy_pass the public site GET requests in question, (specified by path in this case) in the nginx config to varnish. In the varnish vcl, we set the new nginx virtual site *on the different port* to be the back end for those requests.

flash client 443
    |
nginx ssl port 443
    |
varnish port 6081
    |
nginx port 83
    |
php/fastcgi/mysql application

Running the same load test that crushed the application with 100 concurrent clients, with the database protected from constant requests for the same information, resulted in a completely usable user experience. Database load and client connection time were both greatly improved. Config examples:


# nginx ssl site
       location ^~ /gateway/amfphp {
                proxy_pass http://192.168.0.2:6081;
        }

# varnish back end is nginx on the different port
backend unprotected {
        .host = "192.168.0.1";
        .port = "83";
}

# vcl_recv
        if (req.url ~ "^/gateway") {
                        set req.backend = unprotected;
                        return(lookup);
                }
# vcl_fetch
        if (req.url ~ "^/gateway") {
                remove beresp.http.Cache-Control;
                remove beresp.http.Set-Cookie;
                set beresp.ttl = 4h;
                return(deliver);
        }

Roku Channel Hosting with ScaleEngine

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 00:00:00 UTC

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Roku Channel hosting through our ScaleEngine channel service. It should be obvious we've been working on OTT solutions with playlists for the past few months, but we wanted to make an announcement to confirm the production launch.

Right now, we have nodes in the US and Europe running live Roku channels. The live streams are built from ordered lists of VOD assets, stored on our redundant arrays. Update your streams and they transition to the new list within 5 minutes! We're happy to have this unique system running Roku channels now, and are looking forward to running many HLS channels for Roku programming for years to come.

Stickam Shutdown

Fri, 1 Feb 2013 00:00:00 UTC

Today we hear of the shutdown of another free streaming "service", Stickam. Regardless of the reasons for the shutdown, and we are hearing various rationales, from underage activity, drugs, and copyright to basically running out of money, it comes down to the fact that Nobody can give away streaming and hope to sustain a business. Importantly, it once again proves what we have been saying for years: you cannot base your business on an unsustainable startup, or on an unsustainable offer. If your supplier cannot stay in business, your business is at risk.

Roku HLS stream stability

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 00:00:00 UTC

HLS segment settings are now 8 segments of 8 seconds. Roku channel users can now update and transition seamlessly and smoothly to new playlists without resetting the stream. Also of note, new graphs and control panel will be pushed out to all customers this week.

Roku HLS streaming settings

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 00:00:00 UTC

We've settled on 10 segments of 18 seconds, so a full three minutes of buffering for Roku channels for best stability. We're the only CDN providing Roku live channel support. Roku has specific HLS streaming requirements that add to memory consumption, and increase delay for HLS live channel streamers, but the device is specifically requesting more HLS segments, to increase the stream stability, and we're deploying this for all Roku channel customers.

Asia Origin POP

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:00:00 UTC

We are pleased to announce availability of Asian origin and edge service for VSN customers, and Asian CDN POP for CDN and ESC customers.

FAQs and updates, Jan 8, 2013

Tue, 8 Jan 2013 00:00:00 UTC

We are announcing immediate Origin and Edge VSN service in the Asia Pacific region, as well as CDN and ESC service. Note that this is available on request at $100 monthly per service.

Channel stream scheduling is now available; your playlists can be set to begin at a future date and time, and our system will start it on time for you. As mentioned, live stream mixing in to a channel is available. This feature lets you stream to your -channel/live application and drop in live segments on your vod channel, just like live TV, from our web interface.

Just noticed we were mentioned on Port Forward Podcast, and wanted to say thanks for the kind words. Also, an update on the channels, your existing VOD on sestore1 through sestore4 is available to include in this system. We've added a Live Stream FAQ which allows us to get some things off our chest as well as provide some useful information.

Channel service pre-announcement

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:00:00 UTC

We are finishing testing of our VOD playlist channel service. Expect an availability announcement shortly. Features include draggable re-ordering of video clips, and stream creation with updating every 5 minutes, and seamless transition to new stream versions. The TechSnap channel on our site is currently running on this software, and as the maintainer of that channel for us, I am liking the flexibility, seamless updating, and general ease of use.

ScaleEngine Channels FAQ is up now. We are dog-fooding this on the site, and any customers with an API key should see Manage Channels as an option in the control panel.

API update, playlist management coming

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:00:00 UTC

We will be announcing a new version of the API, using a new, separated subdomain. We've documented sevu methods to relax the default restrictions on IP address, stream and allowed time window for viewers.

We are also actively testing self-managed playlist based channels, our most requested feature. Expect an announcement before the end of the year.

Video Stream Quality and User Behaviour

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:00:00 UTC

There was a good slashdot discussion about this Akamai funded study about video viewing. Some interesting points in the study:

We show that viewers start to abandon a video if it takes more than 2 seconds to start up, with each incremental delay of 1 second resulting in a 5.8% increase in the abandonment rate.

The ﬁrst major challenge for content providers is providing a high-quality streaming experience for their viewers, where videos are available without failure, they startup quickly, and stream without interruptions.

It's interesting to note that all of these fail statistics were taken from Akamai's network. It's a decent sized sample.

23 million video playbacks from 6.7 million unique viewers who watched an aggregate of 216 million minutes of 102 thousand videos over 10 days

The study notes that the better the home connection, the more impatient and demanding viewers became. Mobile viewers are more tolerant of lag and freezing. For longer content, there is patience for startup buffering, but for short content, there is less patience.

The JW Player modifications ScaleEngine made follows this observation. We pull in just enough video to start playing content, and then increase the buffer as bandwidth is available, to a full 3 minute buffer, once the video is playing, so it is transparent to the user. In this way, small home network issues do not affect the user experience.

It's also interesting to note that there are challenges for content distributors both in proximity terms and in network quality terms. Poor internet in many parts of North America and South Asia keeps these areas from consuming much video. Mexico, Canada, and the US are plagued by telecom near-monopolies that invest very little in the national infrastructure, holding back many areas of internet commerce, in favour of "diversification" into sports and television. Internet infrastructure is nationally mandated in many countries, like water and electricity. Poor service in many parts of the world holds back business reach, impedes education, overall literacy and computer skill acquisition.

ScaleEngine Embed Code Generator for JW Player

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 00:00:00 UTC

Device agnostic JWPlayer code generator from ScaleEngine. Gets you an iframe, or js embed. Now in production for VSN customers. Input your VOD path to file, or live stream name, and get a usable js embed, iframe embed, and a running example.

Ustream, Investors, Business Models: What a Rip-Off

Sat, 15 Sep 2012 00:00:00 UTC

Ustream, like a lot of video startups (justin.tv, youtube) is out of money. They are polluting streams with advertising. Youtube pollutes VOD with advertising for other youtube content. You lose viewers, because they go to youtube, not your site.

These "businesses" actually had no business model. They thought they'd control "the market" if they built out infrastructure and built nice interfaces, and had employees and offices and marketing people. Well, guess what. Investors, VC, angel, whatever, want their money back, and the party is over. Seems that "free" doesn't actually work. Problem is, we've got all these executives, marketing people, employees, and fancy interfaces to keep going. That means lots of advertising. It also means really expensive "Pro" versions, that are basically just ad-free streaming, but that are horribly expensive.

I'm just amazed that people are paying a thousand bucks a month for something that is a hundred from us. We get people every week coming to us from Amazon because it is so expensive, but either no one is using Ustream Pro, or no one knows that there are better alternatives that aren't a complete (and I mean complete and total) overcharge. I'm sorry, but charging (and getting) $999 for 1TB of plain streaming is just insane. We deliver 10TB of streaming for that much money! Not only that, but we make money and will be here next month!

Playlist looping channel

Tue, 4 Sep 2012 00:00:00 UTC

We are rolling out VOD playlist OTT TV Channels in the US and Europe. This allows content owners to stream a continuous looped channel of content to the world.

Google analytics and device switching

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 00:00:00 UTC

Those of you who are paying attention will note that I have switched the player we use to stream the techsnap channel to flowplayer. There are a couple of reasons for this. Flowplayer has a working GA plugin for live streaming, that clients have been asking for, and so this page has working example code. Flowplayer also automatically shows iOS users the HLS stream if coded properly, and this is an example you can use as well.

Announcement: Business Video Conferencing Pre-Beta

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 00:00:00 UTC

We have pre-beta testing running for our business video conferencing product. This will allow many hours of good quality hosted conferencing that is dead simple to use, and that works out of the box in your browser.

Livu iPhone App Support

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 UTC

We've just tested the lovely Livu iPhone streaming video app, and we can confirm that it works out of the box with Scale Engine streaming and recording. You can record all your Livu streams hour by hour, day by day, as well as viewing them live. This app is the ultimate for live mobile streaming - real time streams can get sent from anywhere, and the recording we do on the server archives everything.

Global Capacity and Load Balancer

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 UTC

Our video streaming capacity is now at 25 Gigabits. 10 Gigabit continuous is now available to high bandwidth customers.

We are also pleased to announce our Global Server Load Balancing Service for enterprise class, closest node geo-location, with automated pool management and spare capacity failover. Our technical talk for EuroBSDCon 2012 is coming along nicely. We'll post an abstract here next week.

Scale Engine Media Availability and Global Load Balancer Announcement

Sat, 5 May 2012 00:00:00 UTC

We will be at BSDCAN in Ottawa next week.

Remember, TechSNAP is Live every Thursday at 4pm EDT (20:00 GMT) and published every Monday.

Please contact us directly for media requests.

Secure Stream creation on the fly for users

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 UTC

We are excited to announce that users will be able to create their own stream names on the fly in the control panel. Beta testing is happening now. Additionally, all new streams will be secured with username and password as you create them, and you can manage and revoke access in the cp. If you would like to beta test this feature, which we have developed for several of our church stream users, please let us know.

smooth streaming from Scale Engine Video CDN to iOS devices

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:00 UTC

Added a page on iOS stream settings so you can tune your FMLE, Wirecast or Tricaster. The Tricaster page also has specific instructions to help you create a new profile with correct profile for iOS devices when you are streaming to ScaleEngine and getting jerky or choppy video, or seeing a blocky green screen overlay on your iphone or ipad.

Live Streaming and VOD Video Tutorials

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 UTC

I've started making and posting some video tutorials to demonstrate how to use your ScaleEngine account for FMLE live streaming and VOD uploading and streaming. I've been using Wirecast a fair bit lately too, and the settings are similar, so go ahead and check tutorial 1 for the live setup walk through.

VOD uploading and xml playlists are covered in the second tutorial. I'll be doing the third one tomorrow, and adding it to the xml playlist of course.