Here we’ll walk through two ways to achieve a seamless end-to-end video workflow using the following:

• Telestream Wirecast® for production and encoding

• The Wowza Streaming Cloud™ service or

Wowza Streaming Engine™ software for

transcoding and distribution

• An HTML5 or Flash player

(such as JW Player) for playback

A MULTIPART WORKFLOWTo start off, let’s look at the major pieces of a streaming architecture.

PRODUCTION AND ENCODING

Everything starts with producing a live stream. How do you take live

feeds from multiple cameras, put them together professionally on

your laptop, and encode the resulting production for streaming?

Wowza™ technology works with nearly any encoder or network (IP)

camera, but a product such as Telestream Wirecast makes it easy to

switch between multiple live camera feeds while dynamically

mixing in prerecorded video, audio, graphics, and slides. You can also

generate transitions, lower thirds, playlists, and other video effects

for added polish. Wirecast then encodes the resulting file and sends a

produced live stream to a server for distribution.

Wirecast offers integrated publishing options in the Wowza

Streaming Cloud or Wowza Streaming Engine interface to

automatically configure the encoder to publish live streams to the

Wowza technology of your choice. Easily set up presets for CDNs

and other destinations, including Wowza products, to select your

encoding and streaming bitrates.

TRANSCODING AND DISTRIBUTION

Once you’ve created a beautiful production in Wirecast, how do

you get it to the world? Products from Wowza Media Systems

and its Works With Wowza™ partners, including Telestream, are

tightly integrated, meaning you can easily stream your produced

video and audio to the Wowza Streaming Cloud service or Wowza

Streaming Engine software to reach any device, anywhere.

Robust, customizable, affordable Wowza solutions eliminate the

need for additional hardware and software components for real-time

transcoding, packaging (transmuxing), and adaptive delivery of live

streams to today’s wide array of protocols, screens, and platforms.

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.

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

PLAYBACK

Finally, Wowza delivers the transcoded streams to your chosen

player—whether that’s a player hosted by Wowza, a YouTube

channel, or a pro-quality player such as the flagship product

from Works With Wowza partner JW Player. Simply configure

the player and the web page that are hosting your live stream,

plug in the player embed code or direct-playback URL, sit back,

and enjoy the show.

A BASIC CHOICE: IN THE CLOUD OR ON PREMISES?You have many choices for how to stream, but one of the

biggest decisions is whether to use a cloud-based solution

or an on-premises one. Wowza Media Systems has services

and software that cover both approaches, and each is fully

integrated with Telestream Wirecast. We’ll delve into both

workflows and look at a couple of implementation examples

so you can identify which one is best for you.

THE CLOUD-BASED APPROACHThe world is abuzz about the cloud, and for good reason: For live

streaming, it eliminates the need to maintain an on-premises

infrastructure, yet you get infinite scalability. And if you’re

streaming infrequently, it’s a cost-effective option because you’re

making very little up-front investment. Because this is the fastest

way to get started with end-to-end live streaming, we’ll talk

about it first.

Wowza Streaming Cloud lets you easily stream live video to any

device, scaling automatically to accommodate audiences of any

size, anywhere. The service accepts video from nearly any H.264

encoder or network camera (the latter requires no separate

encoder) and transcodes the video in the cloud to create and

deliver high-quality streams in multiple bitrates that can be

played on virtually any device. You don’t have to purchase or

maintain hardware, or install or run software locally. You pay only

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,

then see how we used this end-to-end workflow for our

own live stream at a recent trade show.

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

unlimited number of source inputs, ranging from USB and

FireWire cameras to iOS cameras, HD cameras, computer

desktops, and web feeds. Wirecast also supports popular

capture cards, as well as other capture devices.

You can add polish and professionalism to your broadcasts with

live switching, transitions, titles, and lower thirds. And the built-in

multiformat encoding capabilities (see “A note on configuring

your source encode”) allow you to easily stream to the Wowza

Streaming Cloud service and Wowza Streaming Engine

software.

STEP 2: SET UP THE WOWZA STREAMING CLOUD

LIVE STREAM

Once you have Wirecast set up, with your live feeds and content

coming into Wirecast, you sign in to Wowza Streaming Cloud

using the browser-based interface at cloud.wowza.com. Click

on the Live Streams tab, and then on Add Live Stream. On the

Live Stream Setup page, follow the five easy steps to set

up your live stream. Enter a live stream name and choose a

broadcast location—the location of the origin server that will

ingest the live stream. The best practice is to choose the location

that is closest to you geographically to reduce potential latency

in your live stream.

The Video Source Settings page is where you choose the

camera or encoder you’re using to capture and encode your

video. Wowza Streaming Cloud can also receive encoded

live video from a Wowza Streaming Engine server or from the

Wowza GoCoder™ mobile encoding app for iOS and Android

devices. You can connect any H.264 encoder that supports

RTMP or RTSP to Wowza Streaming Cloud by either a push

or a pull stream. Wowza Streaming Cloud can also connect

seamlessly to high-end, professional encoders or IP cameras

from our Works With Wowza partners, including Telestream.

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

and adjusting the quality to provide the best-possible-quality

stream for each user.

At this point you download a configuration file from Wowza

Streaming Cloud and import it into Wirecast to easily stream

to the cloud service. (If you were to use a different encoder,

you would manually enter the server IP address, stream,

name, username, and password rather than use this shortcut

configuration file.)

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

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

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

suitable, high-quality streams across any kind of client

connection, to any device.

When preparing a source encode, use the following rules of

thumb to make sure the size of the encode doesn’t exceed

your available bandwidth.

• Determine the bandwidth for your source encode.

• If you’re sending a backup source encode,

factor in 100% more data.

• Allow 40% of your total bandwidth for overhead.

IN PRACTICEFor our live stream at a recent tradeshow, detailed in the

example implementation here, we had a dedicated 10 Mbps

wired Internet connection between our encoder at the

show and Wowza Streaming Cloud. We conducted several

speed tests (via speedtest.net) the day before and on the

morning of each live stream. Allowing 40% for overhead, we

determined that our primary and backup encodes should

not exceed 6 Mbps total, or 3 Mbps each. We encoded the

stream in HD at 720p at a bitrate of 2.5 Mbps for the H.264

video and 128 Kbps mono for the AAC audio. That way we

had plenty of overhead in case the bandwidth fluctuated.

A note on configuringyour sourceencode

You can test that your stream works as expected by selecting

your live stream within Wowza Streaming Cloud, clicking Start

Stream at the top of the live stream detail page, and clicking

Start to initiate the stream. Wowza Streaming Cloud opens the

stream and connects with the Wirecast encoder. In Wirecast,

start your video source, then in the Wowza Streaming Cloud

web manager, confirm that the stream is working by looking at

the video snapshot in the Overview tab. 

When you’re satisfied with your test, you’re ready to stream live. 

STEP 3: STREAM LIVE!

Wowza Streaming Cloud lets you deliver live streams to viewers

using a Wowza-provided player and customizable hosted web

page, or you can output to just about any player you like. In

addition, advanced settings let you create custom transcoding

workflows, receive live streams into selected Wowza Streaming

Cloud content delivery network (CDN) sources, and deliver

streams to multiple RTMP target destinations, offering the

control and scalability required for large-scale, professional

deployments. Think of additional ways you can distribute your

live stream ahead of the event—whether it’s through your

Facebook page or partner websites—to reach your users where

they are.

A REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE:

STREAMING LIVE FROM A TRADESHOW

Since Wowza is in the business of live streaming, we used

this very end-to-end workflow at the National Association

of Broadcasters 2015 trade show to stream our partner and

customer presentations to a global audience.

We used a MacBook Pro to capture the raw video and audio

feed from our JVC GY-HM650 camera with the Blackmagic

Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt capture device. We incorporated

IP cameras mounted in our tradeshow booth as additional

camera sources, and used the Telestream Wirecast Desktop

Presenter software utility to capture the presenter’s computer

screen and pull it into Wirecast as a video source across the

local network. Wirecast allowed us to add effects such as

lower thirds, graphics, and music to produce a professional-

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 APPROACHSometimes 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

your own infrastructure, or you plan to stream frequently or

even 24x7, an on-premises workflow is your answer. We’ll walk

through how you can manage this yourself, and then take a look

at how one end-to-end service provider has used this workflow

to build an all-in-one turnkey solution for customers.

Let’s look at a proven on-premises, end-to-end streaming

solution. You’ll capture video and audio, send that to

Telestream Wirecast for producing and encoding into an RTMP

feed, then send that feed to Wowza Streaming Engine. Wowza

streaming server software takes in the high-quality RTMP

(H.264 and AAC) feed, and the built-in transcoding feature

transforms the live incoming stream and creates multiple

bitrate renditions that are used for ABR streaming. Wowza

Streaming Engine then packages each rendition into multiple

streaming formats, including popular HTTP adaptive streaming

formats such as Apple® HLS. Finally, Wowza Streaming Engine

delivers those streams to a player, such as JW Player, which

can be embedded on your website to play your content back

to viewers anywhere, on any device.

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

STEP 1: SET UP TELESTREAM WIRECAST

As in Wowza Streaming Cloud, you’ll want to bring all your live

feeds, web streams, video clips, and graphics into Telestream

Wirecast software, and set up your Wirecast document.

Wirecast users benefit from integrated publishing options

in Wowza Streaming Engine to automatically configure the

Wirecast encoder to publish live streams to Wowza server

software. 

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,

and other preferences, and then save your configuration. Click

the Stream button, and Wirecast will send the live view as a

stream to Wowza Streaming Engine.

STEP 2: SET UP THE WOWZA STREAMING ENGINE

LIVE STREAM

Using this workflow we are pushing only one live stream

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

Engine, and see those updates in real time, with almost no

latency via the RTMP protocol.

Once you’re satisfied with what you see in the test players,

you’re ready to play back the stream within your player.

STEP 3: STREAM LIVE!

When developing an end-to-end solution, you can limit possible

failures by having a solid, reliable player. Using a third-party

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

Dynamic Streaming (HDS), Microsoft Smooth Streaming,

or MPEG-DASH. You can also send streams to target

destinations, including media servers, external CDNs, and

streaming services, using the Adobe HDS, Apple HLS, MPEG-TS,

RTMP, and RTP protocols.

Choosing a feature-rich player such as JW Player enables you

to deploy both Flash and HTML5 playback functionality as well

as get full, intuitive integration with Wowza Streaming Engine,

making your end-to-end solution that much smoother.

As a Works With Wowza partner, JW Player has worked hand-

in-hand with Wowza for years to create a tight integration

between the technologies. Wowza Streaming Engine delivers a

list of the transcoded ABR streams in a manifest file for JW Player

to access. JW Player is able to detect a user’s bandwidth and

CPU capacity in real time and adjust the quality of the video

stream accordingly. JW Player’s Adaptive Engine transitions

between quality levels seamlessly so viewers won’t experience

buffering that makes for a bad streaming experience.

Additionally, the network digital video recorder (nDVR)

functionality in Wowza Streaming Engine is integrated with

JW Player so viewers can pause and rewind your live streams.

This is available for all stream-quality levels, so viewers get

this functionality no matter what their hardware and local

bandwidth conditions.

A TURNKEY SOLUTION FOR END-TO-END STREAMING:

CHURCHSTREAMING.TV

For organizations such as houses of worship who are

streaming as little as once a week and are staffed largely by

volunteers, setting up a full streaming workflow themselves

may not be cost-effective or realistic. That’s where end-to-

end service providers come in. The cooperation between

Wowza and our technology partners lets companies like

Churchstreaming.tv develop turnkey live-streaming solutions

that are robust and reliable for their own streaming customers.

Churchstreaming.tv provides an affordable end-to-end live

streaming solution to churches of all sizes—built from scratch

on the Wowza and JW Player APIs, and with Telestream

Wirecast as a preferred encoder for incoming streams. When

building an encoding workflow, choosing proven, industry-

leading tools was paramount to Churchstreaming.tv so it could

be confident in its own offering.

Here’s how it works: In Wirecast, customers select

Churchstreaming.tv as a provider, then enter their username

and click Authenticate in the Churchstreaming.tv interface.

Wirecast provides easy encoding presets and advanced

settings for configuring the encoder to your liking, and

Churchstreaming.tv has created specific encoding profiles that

it has identified as well suited to each of its customers based

on their upload bandwidth. This takes the guesswork out of

encoding profiles for Churchstreaming.tv customers.

Then in real time, Churchstreaming.tv queries Wowza

Streaming Engine to get the desired encoding presets. Finally,

when JW Player loads, it contacts the Churchstreaming.tv

server, which builds out the proper manifest to describe the

ABR streams that can be pulled from Wowza Streaming Engine.

Customers easily schedule events in the Churchstreaming.tv

interface. Behind the scenes the database is updated and

the system is prepared so that when a stream goes live from

Wirecast, it starts streaming live through Wowza Streaming

Engine and JW Player, and automatically begins recording.

ABR streaming is a huge factor. Audiences may be watching

streamed videos on Roku devices over a high-speed

connection, or they may be on vacation watching a live stream

over 3G on a cell phone. The Churchstreaming.tv ecosystem

runs a speed test on each house of worship’s connection to

see what upload bandwidth is possible, and accordingly creates

a range of appropriate bitrate renditions via Wowza Streaming

Engine. The end result is that the most appropriate bitrate

rendition is delivered to each viewer and adjusts dynamically

with changing network conditions—all transparently to viewers.

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

The ability to use Wowza for packaging also is critical

because it means Churchstreaming.tv can say goodbye

to concerns over protocol compatibility and be assured

that viewers can access a stream on any device.

Building the solution on Wowza technology also allows

Churchstreaming.tv to pull RTSP streams directly from

customers who are using network cameras, and stream that

video live while also recording it. Because network cameras

are extraordinarily easy to operate and require no separate

hardware or software encoder, they are invaluable for

streaming customers such as houses of worship, which may

involve few or no camera operators or technical specialists.

THE TAKEAWAYYou may have been unsure of exactly what’s involved in going

from your camera to your audience’s screens; wonder no

more. Now you know what’s possible, whether you choose

a cloud-based deployment or an on-premises one. When

pursuing an end-to-end solution, choosing best-in-class

live streaming providers at every step in the process—from

production and encoding to transcoding, packaging, and

distribution, and then to playback—puts professional-quality

live streaming at everyone’s fingertips.

ABOUT WOWZA MEDIA SYSTEMS, LLCWowza Media Systems is the leading software and cloud-based services provider that continuously simplifies the complexities of high-quality video and audio streaming for organizations worldwide. Wowza delivers an award-winning, extensible solution set that provides unparalleled customization, configuration, and control for an unlimited number of streaming use cases. The company’s integrated, hybrid model empowers direct end customers, service providers, and an extensive worldwide partner network. Proven, patented Wowza technology enables organizations to expand their reach, more deeply engage with key audiences, and increase their monetization opportunities. Wowza has rapidly built a fan base of more than 19,000 customers, in 170+ countries, across all industries. The company was founded in 2005, is privately held, and is based in Colorado. For more information, please visit www.wowza.com.

ABOUT TELESTREAMTelestream provides world-class live and on-demand digital video tools and workflow solutions that allow consumers and businesses to transform video on the desktop and across the enterprise. Many of the world’s most demanding media and entertainment companies as well as a growing number of users in a broad range of business environments, rely on Telestream products to streamline operations, reach broader audiences and generate more revenue from their media. Telestream products span the entire digital media lifecycle, including video capture and ingest; 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 sales@wowza.com.

© 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