Happy New Year from WMSPanel team

The year of 2013 was full of great events for our team. Let's see what we've got for you this year.

WMSPanel

Our control and reporting panel has been significantly re-worked. New control and reporting features for Wowza Media Server brought new excellent user experience for your existing and new customers.
WMSPanel is now available in English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Turkish and Serbian. Thank everyone who participated in this great achievement!
We've significantly re-worked our background early this year. By now we are handling 900+ media servers with ease. Scalable and robust architecture will allow us handling unlimited number of new users with predictably great quality.

Nimble Streamer

This new product was introduced in spring and has grown its audience since then. People love easy HLS VOD streaming! Many customers like improving their live HLS re-streaming with Nimble Streamer edges and protect HLS streams from hotlinking.

We have a lot of plans for Nimble Streamer in 2014 so stay tuned for updates!

Dispersa

The last but not the least - Nimble Streamer and WMSPanel was used as a basis for the newest service which we called Dispersa. It's a streams availability checker which uses distributed network or checkpoints. Early next year we'll introduce periodical checks, statistics collection and other quality of service check overs.


We thank all of our customers and trial users for being with us this year.

Happy New Year! We'll see you in 2014.

Nimble Streamer on CentOS, Red Hat and Debian

Our team created Nimble Streamer to be installed on Linux OS. This is the platform which is best fit for high-load projects. Obviously most streaming media projects are born to be highly loaded, this is why we chose Linux as target platform.

Initially we started with Ubuntu Linux which is once of the most popular OSes on the market. Now we've made the step forward and made Nimble Streamer available on several other flavors of Linux.

Here's the full list of operating systems where Nimble Streamer is tested before every release:

• Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid
• Ubuntu 12.04 Precise
• Debian 6.0.8 Squeeze
• Debian 7.2 Wheezy
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
• CentOS 6

Please read the latest version of Nimble Streamer installation instructions. to see how it needs to be properly installed on these platforms. There are few easy steps there and also links to how-to pages describing the installation process in details and pictures.

Feel free to contact if you need any help with setting up and tuning Nimble Streamer.

Related documentation

Nimble HTTP Streamer, MP4 transmuxing to HLS VOD streaming, Streaming VOD with DigitalOcean and Nimble Streaming, Nimble configs explained, HLS re-streaming set up, WMSPanel Slideshare

Dispersa: a distributed streams availability check service

WMSPanel team proudly presents a new product for improving streaming media quality of service.

It's Dispersa, a service for distributed streams availability checking. This is a first step towards creating a service for checking the quality of experience.

If you're running a streaming media business you need to bring proper quality of service. This requires some significant effort. One of the basic but efficient practices is the stream availability check. This one needs some external point of view at your streaming infrastructure hence the additional efforts.

Currently you can enter a URL of the stream and make it checked over for free.

The following protocols are supported:

• HTTP Live Streaming (HLS);
• HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS);
• Smooth Streaming;
• MPEG-DASH;
• RTSP;
• RTMP;
• Icecast;
• Shoutcast.

The stream is being checked in parallel from all of existing checkpoints. A checkpoint is a server with Nimble Streamer installed. Nimble is performing required check and sends results to WMSPanel which shows all performed actions on the monitoring dashboard.

We will be expanding this distributed network of checkpoints by adding new servers in various geographical points. You may also participate in this: you may add checkpoint at your own locations and be listed in our checkpoints page. Later on we'll add the ability to add checkpoints in your private networks to make all check-overs in closed environment.

Now make your stream availability check now for free.

Also try our 24/7 streams monitoring feature set with streams monitoring history. If you'd like to have same statistics within your monitoring or analytic tools, use Dispersa alerts push API to get notified about streams going offline and online.

Take a look at our screencast describing the service:

Q: My streaming network is protected with WMSPanel hotlinking protection. Can Dispersa work here?

Yes, just set up allow list for Dispersa checkpoints IP range.


Here's what we want to do next:

• Profiling.
• Quality of experience metrics.

Contact us if you need some specific or common use case - we're opened for feedback.

Related documentation

Nimble HTTP Streamer, Nimble Streamer overview video, WMSPanel: cloud reporting and control panel, Set up Dispersa 24/7 stream monitoring, Streams monitoring history, Dispersa alerts push API, Server tasks remote management via web UI

Nimble Streamer edges benchmark

People ask us about the performance metrics of Nimble Streamer. What are the minimum HW requirements? How many connections will it handle on particular server? Even though we have our internal test results, we're always looking for real life examples to prove our expectations and measurements.

One of our customers recently allowed making several snapshots of statistics which we'd like to show to you.

There were 13 Nimble Streamer machines actively re-streaming HLS from encoding origins. Here's how all servers real-time chat looked like (origins are excluded):

Real-time connections and bandwidth chart for Nimble-powered 13 edge servers.

As you see there were about 4000 connections total and they've generated almost 7.6Gbps of average bandwidth.
The incoming connections were balanced over all edge servers equally. Let's see some of those edge servers metrics.

This one has less than 1% CPU load and 500 MB RAM used for handling 170 connection at 300 Mbps.

CPU and RAM charts for one of Nimble Streamer edges.

Real-time chart for one of Nimble Streamer edges.

This one has less than 1% CPU and 480 MB RAM used for 270 connections at 130 Mbps.

CPU and RAM charts for another Nimble Streamer edge.

One more real-time report for Nimble Streamer edge.

As you see, Nimble Streamer doesn't consume CPU and much RAM being a re-streaming edge server so you can install it on any available small servers and off-load your encoding origin.

We'll keep posting other bench marking examples to show Nimble Streamer in action.

Related documentation

Nimble HTTP Streamer, Load balancing and failover with Nimble Streamer, HLS re-streaming set up, Smooth Streaming support, RAM caching for effective re-streaming, WMSPanel Slideshare,

Citrix acquires Skytide

Dan Rayburn has recently brought interesting news: Citrix Acquires CDN and Service Provider Analytics Company Skytide.

Skytide's solutions cover analytics and reporting for medium to large CDNs. As per Dan, Citrix plans to integrate Skytide’s technology into their ByteMobile platform.

So our team would like to congratulate Skytide and Citrix with this big step forward!



Meanwhile you can read about WMSPanel for hosting providers and CDNs and see how you can improve Wowza end-user reporting experience with WMSPanel.

Nimble Streamer overview video

We've shot and released a new video! It's about Nimble Streamer.

Watch this:



This video is available on our Demo page, it's streamed by Nimble itself.

You can also read "The Paranoid’s Guide to Internet Video Streaming" by Thomas Gires to see real-life example of using pay-per-view feature set of Nimble Streamer and WMSPanel.

WMSPanel community forum is now opened

We are excited to announce that we've launched a company forum!

Visit WMSPanel community forum

It has 4 major categories.

• WMSPanel functionality - it has general questions regarding our cloud control and reporting panel.
• Paywall - is about hot-linking protection, geo-location restriction, pay-per-view and other limitations provided as part of our services.
• Nimble Streamer - here you can ask and answer questions about our light-weight streaming server for HLS, Smooth and progressive download.
• Case study - it's about showing your real-life examples, here you can tell us about how our products helped your business.

You may post topics using your native language. This would be even better because WMSPanel is international-oriented product used by people from all around the world, so your opinion will be appreciated.

We've also gathered a series of frequently asked questions under FAQ tag. So yo can see what people ask most.

Now, go to the forum and post your use cases of our products.

Playtime statistics for Nimble Streamer

WMSPanel is now able to get statistics about playtime and duration intervals for Nimble Streamer servers. So you may know for sure how much time your users spent viewing the content and it's available for all protocols handled by Nimble Streamer including HLS, SmoothStreaming and progressive download.

This report is available via Reporting / Duration stats menu.

Playtime and duration report.

To start, it has "Play time" column with total play time and average play time.

Also, we made metrics which would allow seeing info about how long do their customers stream the media. Our report shows distribution of viewers among time intervals.

There are 13 intervals chosen:

WMSPanel partners with Vidillion for their Advertising Network Platform

Now it's official: WMSPanel selects Vidillion for their Advertising Network Platform Partner.

Vidillion has been WMSPanel customers for years by now. They've used our solution with high loads which brought us great feedback throughout our project life time. One of the most intensively used feature set for Vidillion is the hot-linking protection. It's been integrated into their core workflow and tested against a variety of use cases.

Now we came to become technology partners for their Advertising Network Platform which we recommend to our customers when it comes to advertising.

Please read Vidillion and WMSPanel press release to read more about this partnership.

Our team is opened for partnerships and proposals so if you have any ideas, just let us know.

WMSPanel at Streaming Media West 2013

The Streaming Media West 2013 conference is over today. We've posted a bunch of photos from there to give some overview of what was happening there during these three days.

Please take a look at the pictures in the the album at WMSPanel Facebook account.

Here are few pictures from that album:

Conference materials will be available online soon, you can check them at streamingmedia.com.

Visit our WMSPanel Facebook account to see more pictures.

How to make robust streaming with Nimble Streamer

As we mentioned in the previous post, building robust content delivery network means that the content must be delivered regardless of availability of all servers. There we've reviewed the techniques available for anyone to build a simple re-streaming infrastructure with content origin, streaming edges and DNS failover.

Let's build this delivery network using DigitalOcean hosting and Nimble Streamer. We've already used this stack for quick start of VOD streaming, so let's continue using these two for building our first CDN prototype. You can use any other hosting provider best fit for you, like Amazon or Rackspace.

UPDATE: WMSPanel team released the article describing the recommended approach to load balancing for HTTP-based protocols like HLS, DASH, Icecast etc. Please use the technique described there to build your own balancing solution rather than approach shown below.
The DNS failover approach used below is considered obsolete. However, Nimble Steamer installation and the re-streaming setup are correct and may be used for setting up your environment.

OK, so we have a content origin which accepts requests.

We need to make it robust and scalable. The DNS failover technique will be used for that. We'll make a set of re-streaming caching edge servers to provide failover and to allow easily adding new edges in this farm.

Building robust and scalable re-streaming infrastructure.

Load balancing and failover with Nimble Streamer

Nowadays HTTP based protocols become more and more popular for many reasons and about a half streaming media has switched to use them by now. This movement will proceed and this is why it was decided to implement Nimble Streamer, a light-weight media server for HTTP protocols re-streaming and VOD content processing. So it is intended to be used as a basis for content delivery over HTTP.

Building robust content delivery network means that the content must be delivered regardless of availability of all servers. Let's see how Nimble Streamer can be used for these conditions.



UPDATE: WMSPanel team released an article describing the recommended approach to load balancing for HTTP-based protocols like HLS, DASH, Icecast etc. Please use the technique described there to build your own balancing solution rather than HTTP redirect-based approach shown below. The text below is considered obsolete.

A typical CDN consists of two major parts - content origins and delivery edge servers. Origins are typically stores the content, makes transcoding, re-packaging and transmuxing. Origins are heart of any CDN and we recommend using Wowza Media Server as an origin especially in case of live video.

Edges are required to:

• off-load the origins, e.g. they might be too busy with encoding,
• pass around transmission bandwidth limitations as any server has its throughput limitations,
• improve robustness in case of server failures.

Having several edges, we cannot point a player to some certain server. We should use domain name in this case and once any of the edges goes down, we need to make sure that all new connections will go to properly functioning servers. DNS failover (DNS round-robin) technique can be used for having some single domain name as well as providing a robust failover since DNS allows mapping several IP addresses to one domain.

Origin and Nimble Streamer edges with DNS failover.

Let's see a possible network architecture to cover live streaming use case.

1. Origin

We have an origin server that provides a stream which is packaged with HTTP Live Streaming (HLS, or Cupertino), Microsoft SmoothStreaming (Smooth) or progressive download. It may use any streaming media software like Wowza Media Server, Nimble Streamer, nginx, Microsoft IIS etc.

2. Edges

We will take Nimble Streamer as edge software. Nimble will take requests for contents from the player and will request that contents from origin. As soon as the chunk is started to be downloaded, it's being given to the player and then stored in cache - either RAM cache for live streaming or ROM for VOD streaming. Once a content chunk is available in cache, it will not be requested from the origin.

Re-streaming routes are easily set up in WMSPanel. The most convenient feature for this case is that you may describe a route and apply it to multiple servers. So it doesn't matter how many edges you have, you may be sure that all edges will have identical routing settings.

3. DNS

Now let's make sure our content from the origin will always be available for any player via single robust access point.

DNS failover is based on using multiple A-type DNS records for the same domain name which point to a set of IP addresses. We use DNS failover for providing robust balancing for our WMSPanel cloud service. The records would look like this:

video.ultimatemediastreaming.com A 162.243.88.159
video.ultimatemediastreaming.com A 162.243.88.131

It's all set.

4. Streaming

Now you may use URLs like this for using in a web or desktop player:

http://video.ultimatemediastreaming.com:8081/live/playlist.m3u8

You can be sure that any new connection will be taken care of using either of those 2 mentioned edges. If one of them goes down, the second one will keep processing incoming connections and give the content back.

Now you can try it yourself. Just follow installation instructions and contact us if you need help.

Check how to build robust streaming infrastructure with DigitalOcean and Nimble Streamer.


You can also read "The Paranoid’s Guide to Internet Video Streaming" by Thomas Gires to see real-life example of using pay-per-view feature set along with Nimble Streamer as light-weight edge for HLS re-streaming.

Related documentation

Nimble HTTP Streamer, MP4 transmuxing to HLS VOD streaming, Streaming VOD with DigitalOcean and Nimble Streaming, Nimble configs explained, HLS re-streaming set up, Smooth Streaming support, Nimble Streamer HTTP hotlinking protection, RAM caching for effective re-streaming, WMSPanel Slideshare, Geo-location load balancing with Nimble

How to stream VOD with Nimble Streamer

Nimble Streamer is a light-weight HTTP streaming media server. The "light-weight" means that it’s targeted for being used on small virtual servers. These small servers can be deployed both as a single server and as a task force, or a farm, which can effectively stream the media via HLS, Smooth and progressive download.

Nimble is provided free of charge and its target platform is Ubuntu. If you want to make further savings, you look for the cost-effective hosting provider. DigitalOcean has the unbeatable prices which makes it a great virtual cloud provider for streaming media hosting. Of course you can use any other hosting provider like Amazon or Rackspace. WMSPanel is not affiliated with neither of the mentioned companies.

Let's see how "DigitalOcean + Nimble Streamer" stack can help you start streaming VOD content within just several minutes. We’ll follow these easy steps:

1. Create virtual server in DigitalOcean.
2. Install Nimble Streamer.
3. Set up streaming routes.
4. Test the VOD streaming on a desktop and on a mobile device using HTML5 player and JWPlayer.

Geo-location and IP range restriction for Nimble Streamer

This page has been moved to Softvelum website: Geo-location and IP-based restriction in paywall security and control feature set.

Hot-linking protection for Nimble Streamer

This page has been moved to Softvelum website: Hotlink protection in paywall security and control feature set.

Nimble Streamer Slideshare

Nimble Streamer is created to be a basis for streaming media infrastructure. To make decision on trying the software in production environment, company representatives need to see a solid description of why they should try it.

That's where a presentation is the best way to show key thoughts. Take a look at the first presentation describing Nimble Streamer which will be useful for decision makers.

Nimble Streamer overview from WMSPanel

It shows basic features and the business model for both Nimble Streamer and WMSPanel as its front-end.

You are very welcomed to share this presentation to anyone who may find this useful. Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

You can also read "The Paranoid’s Guide to Internet Video Streaming" by Thomas Gires to see real-life example of using pay-per-view feature set along with Nimble Streamer as light-weight edge for HLS re-streaming.

Related documentation

Nimble HTTP Streamer, MP4 transmuxing to HLS VOD streaming, Nimble Streamer HTTP hotlinking protection, Nimble Streamer geo-location restriction, Nimble configs explained, HLS re-streaming set up, Smooth Streaming support, Geo load balancing with Nimble Streamer, HTTP pseudo-streaming progressive download, WMSPanel Slideshare,

Transmuxing MP4 to HLS for VOD streaming

Nimble Streamer provides wide variety of VOD-related features and capabilities.

In this article we describe HLS to MP4 transmuxing feature set in Nimble.

Re-packaging MP4 to HTTP Live Streaming (HLS)

This feature set allows transparent re-packaging of MP4 to HLS, which is also called transmuxing. Such transmuxing will re-package existing MP4 file encoded with H.264/AAC/MP3 into the MPEG TS segments necessary for HTTP Live Streaming, without having to re-encode the file. It supports VOD transmission mode.

Supported formats are:

• video+audio;
• video;
• audio;
• mp4 compatible brand
• Apple QuickTime extension;
• Adobe f4v
• files with CTTS atom in TRAK.

This covers most of the use cases for MP4 usage.

Both H.264 and H.265 videos are supported.

Free of charge

First, this MP4 re-packaging within Nimble Streamer is not eligible for patent fees. We do not do any encoding or transcoding thus no patented technologies are used. We do not use any third-party tools as well so there are no license dependencies. We got confirmation from MPEGLA that our implementation does not require patent payments.

Knowing that Nimble Streamer itself is available free of charge and that we don't pay patent royalties, you can install and use Nimble for MP4 transmuxing for free. You can use common installation instruction and configure using config files description.

We are a service company so we take money for providing WMSPanel for calculating statistics and having convenient web control over the server. Having Nimble Streamer in WMSPanel makes it eligible for subscription with common terms described in our pricing page.

Setting up transmuxing for Nimble via WMSPanel

Let 's see what you need to do for HLS VOD streaming from a single MP4 file.

1. Install Nimble Streamer.

2. Upload your MP4 file encoded with H264/AAC/MP3 to a designated location on the server. The user called "nimble" must have read access to this directory.

3. Go to WMSPanel under Nimble Streamer / Edit Nimble Routes menu.

4. Click on Add VOD streaming route.

5. For fields set 1 enter the domain and the directory where the files will be accessible for HLS streaming. You can mention just a "Path" having a "Domain" as blank.

6. For field 2 enter a local directory where the content is located.

7. Choose which Nimble servers need this route and click OK.

 Setting up HLS VOD streaming via MP4 transmuxing.

Here's an example.

1. You have Nimble installed on a server available at 198.101.232.28.
2. Your file is /home/user/content/sample.mp4.
3. In a field set 1 you set "/hls/" as "Path" with a blank domain.
4. In 2nd field you set "/home/user/content/"
5. You select server "198.101.232.28" from list of Nimble servers and click OK.

Now to view the file using HLS you should use this URL:

http://198.101.232.28:8081/hls/sample.mp4/playlist.m3u8

Now with this HLS origin functionality combined with edge re-streaming capability you can set an effective HLS VOD streaming infrastructure based on Nimble Streamer.

The streaming VOD may also be protected in the following ways:

• Hotlinking protection and domain lock
• Geo-location and IP ranges restriction

Need to support ABR and multiple tracks for my VOD

You can create ABR VOD HLS using SMIL files with Nimble Streamer. Also, multiple audio tracks and audio-only/video only tracks are supported.

Server-side ads insertion for VOD

Nimble Advertizer allows dynamically insert ads into VOD streaming. It supports pre-roll, mid-rolls and custom business logic based on programmable handlers.

Need to convert MP3 or AAC to VOD HLS

Check this article about MP3 and AAC to HLS transmuxing.

Need to convert RTMP to ABR HLS and UDP MPEG-TS live stream into HLS

Check the following posts:

• Transmuxing RTMP to ABR HLS;
• MPEG-TS UDP conversion to ABR HLS with Nimble.

Need to deliver fragmented MP4 (fMP4) using same files

Nimble Streamer supports fMP4 for VOD HLS for both H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC content. It also supports ABR VOD via SMIL files.
Read this article for more details.

Subtitles support for VOD HLS

Take a look at this article to see how you can use WebVTT, SRT and TTML subtitles with your VOD HLS streams

Troubleshooting

Nimble Streamer internal transmuxer buffer sometimes may not be enough to fit generated HLS chunk. This may lead to this error in Nimble Streamer logs:

[tmux1] E: buffer is too small to generate

By default the buffer is 40MB. You can increase it using "vod_transmuxing_buffer". Read Nimble Streamer configuration description for config setup details.


You can also take a look at the video where Jan Ozer of Streaming Learning Center and Yury Udovichenko of Softvelum discuss pros and cons of dynamic packetizing of live, VOD and DVR content. It gives more details about Nimble Streamer VOD streaming.

Related documentation

Video-on-Demand feature set for Nimble Streamer, Create ABR VOD HLS with SMIL, HLS re-streaming set up, RAM caching for effective re-streaming, HTTP pseudo-streaming progressive download,

Devices and players report in WMSPanel

Streaming media is expanding to a variety of devices these days. So one of the things any streamer wants to know is the statistics for devices which his clients use for watch media. As most video is done via the desktop or handheld devices, the players and browsers report is also important. WMSPanel obtains this information from user agent specification which Wowza and Nimble Streamer provide for each connection.

So we've created two new reports - Devices report and Players report. They are available under Reporting menu. All reports allow selecting dates ranges and specific servers. You may also export the statistics to CSV file and print if you want a hard copy.

Each number is a number of connections. This means if 1 user connected 2 streams, or opened same stream twice them, this will be counted as 2 connections.

Devices report

This report has statistics for major device types available on the market.  There are popular platforms as you notice in column names. It's Windows of several flavors, Macintosh, iPad/iPhone, Android, set-top-boxes (Roku, Apple TV), gaming consoles and a few others.

You can see a pie chart and detailed statistics table. There is also a line of links that allow browsing devices' statistics which is "sliced" per player.

Selecting dates range and per-browser slicing or devices.

Devices percentile pie chart.

Devices detailed statistics.

Players and browsers report

Take a look at another report below. You can see the major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE etc) and several players in it. And then there's Flash, of course. It's also sliced by devices the same way we saw per-player division in devices report.

Selecting dates range and per-device stats for player report.

Players pie chart and detailed statistics.

These two reports give you a vision of how your content is played. If you see that some device or browser is missing, send us your feedback to include new entries in our report.

Devices and players report is available for Wowza Streaming Engine and Nimble Streamer.

Read more about WMSPanel streaming reporting features.

Related documentation

Daily statistics, Daily stats API, Players and devices stats API, Real-time stats API, Geo location reporting, Data slices for statistics, Screencast for daily statistics, Statistics import API, Paywall for Wowza

Prototyping HLS VOD for MP4

When our team started working on Nimble HTTP Streamer we wanted to concentrate on basic HTTP streaming use cases. First basic things to cover were edge re-streaming and progressive download. Now when basic cases are mostly covered we wanted to try ourselves in handling origin HTTP streaming.

First use case to try is HLS VOD streaming. People want to take their VOD media libraries and stream them to a variety of devices which support HLS (which is quite a lot). So we started implementing this feature set with a prototype to estimate the effort and see major implementation problems.

So some time ago we've completed a small prototype implemented with Ruby and released it on our gihub account. It make re-packaging of MP4 content into MPEG-TS chunk.

It is used as follows:

ruby mp4hls.rb sample.mp4 sample.ts

where sample.mp4 is input MP4 file and sample.ts are output file

This prototype supports the following formats:

• video+audio;
• video;
• audio;
• original MP4;
• Apple QuickTime extension;
• files with CTTS atom in TRAK.

The implementation is available via MIT license and it's not eligible for patent fees according to confirmation from MPEGLA.

We are currently working on this feature set as part of Nimble Streamer so soon it's going to be available as part of the major product.

UPDATE: We've implemented it as part of Nimble Streamer: MP4 transmuxing to HLS VOD streaming

Contact us if you have any questions regarding this product.

Related documentation

Nimble HTTP Streamer, MP4 transmuxing to HLS VOD streaming, HLS re-streaming set up, HTTP pseudo-streaming progressive download, Softvelum github

Nimble Streamer disk cache for VOD re-streaming

One of the major use cases for Nimble Streamer is the re-streaming of HLS and Smooth Streaming. Our customers use it to off-load their origin servers by moving light-weight Nimble edges closer to their audience.

Currently Nimble has a RAM-based cache for live re-streaming and a disk cache for VOD re-streaming.
Let's see how disk cache works for delivery of VOD content.

1. A viewer requests a playlist, Nimble downloads its and determines whether it's live or VOD.
2. The playlist is sent back to the viewer.
3. A viewer requests a new chunk from the previously downloaded playlist.
4. If there is no pre-downloaded chunk, it's being requested from the origin.
5. Once downloaded, it's being placed to disk cache.
6. If the disk cache is full, the chunk is stored into RAM if possible.
7. The chunk is being stored on disk for 24 hours then removed.

Live caching will be done in similar way, but it will be primarily stored in RAM and then on disk in case of overflow.

The following parameters are added info config file to allow some fine tuning of disk cache:

• cache_path is a path to the file cache storage, with default value /var/cache/nimble.
• max_disk_cache_size is a size of file cache measured in MB with 4096 MB by default.

This gives an ability to effectively deliver VOD content to any edges from any type of origin.

Please also learn more about latest VOD cache control features here.

You can also take a look at the video where Jan Ozer of Streaming Learning Center and Yury Udovichenko of Softvelum discuss pros and cons of dynamic packetizing of live, VOD and DVR content. It gives more details about Nimble Streamer VOD streaming.

Related documentation

Nimble Streamer, VOD re-streaming cache control, MP4 transmuxing to HLS VOD streaming,, HLS re-streaming set up, Smooth Streaming support,  HLS caching for effective re-streaming, HTTP pseudo-streaming progressive download, Progressive download re-streaming, 

UPDATE: WMSPanel users management

We've released s small update for our users management feature set. Your company admin may now specify if the non-admin user is allowed to create data slices by his own. This feature as well as server management permission is a good thing for the companies which want to give some flexibility over Wowza management for their clients.

Users management.

User details.

Read more about WMSPanel streaming reporting for end users.

Related documentation

End user reporting for Wowza, Data slices for statistics, Streamed slices for Wowza, Users details and permissions management

Setting up live stream for Wowza via WMSPanel

Many people who enter the business of media streaming start their way with live streaming. They look for easy way to begin streaming and make something that will be the basis for their future streaming platform. This is where Wowza Media Server helps. It has rich feature set and detailed documentation for beginners.

WMSPanel has Wowza server management feature set which allows simplifying the set up of the application by using wizard-like interface and re-using global application templates.

Let's see how live streaming may be set up using these features.

1. Enable Server management for Wowza by going to Control / Server management menu. You'll need to load server configuration first, but that's a single time operation.

2. Click on Create an application and choose Live streamer template from templates list.

Choosing live streaming template.

3. After the application is created, click on its name to make user and password settings. Here's a brief screen shots instruction.

4. Go to server's management page and click on application name.

Applications list.

5. Click on Config application button to go to app configuration page.

New application details and a button to configure it.

6. Click on Set password button to see dialog for setting user and password.

7. Enter user and password with the format that appear in the dialog. Select servers and click on Apply to apply user/password settings to selected servers.

Setting password for Wowza application or instance.

8. Set up your encoder with rtmp://your_server_ip:1935/live or rtsp://your_server_ip:1935/live .

That's it

You can start publishing your live streaming. Beginner users may find a lot of features that might help them to start up faster.

You may also consider WMSPanel server tasks remote management via web console for convenient control of server-side commands. Launch any command, like ffmpeg process, with no need to log in via SSH, just an easy-to-use web interface.

Feel free to contact us if you have any Wowza set up questions

Related documentation

Server management for Wowza, Application templates, MediaCaster and LiveStreamRecord streams control, Wowza application authentication, User permissions management, Paywall for Wowza

Running Nimble Streamer on ports lower than 1024

Nimble Streamer is designed to handle HTTP streaming of any kind. To make it happen, it binds on non-privileged port 8081 by default and listens to it waiting for incoming requests.
You can change the port number to make it fit your network infrastructure. It can be done via configuration file.

Simply change the "port" parameter to required number (e.g. 80) and re-start Nimble Streamer.

Please also take a look at Nimble Streamer presentation describing basic features.

Related documentation

Nimble HTTP Streamer, Nimble configs explained, HLS re-streaming set up, Smooth Streaming support, Geo load balancing with Nimble Streamer, HLS caching for effective re-streaming, HTTP pseudo-streaming progressive download, Progressive download re-streaming, Nimble Streamer HTTP hotlinking protection, Nimble Streamer geo-location restriction, WMSPanel Slideshare

WMSPanel users management

We get requests from media hosting companies which want their clients to have more control over the service functionality.

That's why we make some steps forward. First one is to enable account admins to allow end-users to have full control over the servers. This is reasonable because a client may rent server at hosting company's server farm. So he wants to have full control over it.

We got a section called Users management. It's located in Control top menu. This is a place where all account's users from all data slices are listed. For each user you can see it's name and email, user role (admin or user) default data slice name and number of assigned slice, and then links to actions - Edit, Delete and Abilities that allow enabling extra capabilities.

Account's users management page.

You can also add new user by selecting its default slice, email for login and a password. A new user will be created with non-admin permissions so please do not select Full data slice for this user.

You may change user details any time by clicking on Edit link. You will see a dialog like show below.

Read more about WMSPanel streaming reporting for end-users.

Creating slices by non-admin user

As you see from the screenshot above, an admin user may allow any specific non-admin user to create custom data slice. An admin just needs to edit user details and check the "Can create data slice" check box.
This option is good for the companies which prefer giving their clients more flexibility and control over Wowza and its reporting.

Server control

Another option for this kind of flexible companies is server control. A user may be allowed to see selected servers' internals and ability to control them.
A user will be able to perform control of both Nimble Streamer and Wowza media server available in WMSPanel. For designated user, click on Abilities link to see the dialog shown below.

Assigning servers for user control

Just choose which servers to allow your user to control and manage and then click Save.

After that the end-user may choose Servers menu, then click on server name to find control capabilities.

Data slice also provides a mechanism for assigning non-admin users to control certain features of Nimble Streamer. Read this page for more details.

Slice relations

Each user has a name of the slice which he is assigned to and a number of data slices which he or she is assigned. Clicking on the data slice number link you will see the slices' list in a separate dialog. This dialog will allow following to each slice' details and un-assigning user from the slices.

Use data slices operations.

If you have any ideas for more end-user features, just let us know about it.


Read more about slice-related features in on the dedicated Slices & Branding page.

Secure your account in 3 easy steps article gives more ideas about working securely in WMSPanel.

Related documentation

End user reporting for Wowza, Data slices for statistics,

Lite slice cost reduction

In WMSPanel statistics are collected and accessed via data slices. It's a point of view at the data collected by all customer servers. They may be applications-based or streams-based. Our pricing is also based on slices - just because we need to pay for data processing and storage.

While data slice provides full variety of reporting, many customers want to get just a very basic statistics. Like, they don't need streams real-time reports, they just need daily statistics with geo and duration details. So we came to the option that would allow to reduce the reporting functionality of data slices in exchange to reduction of the price.

We call this option a "lite slice". Let's see what is the difference.

	Full	Lite
# of non-admin users per slice	Unlimited	1
Streams real-time chart	Yes	No
Deep statistics	Yes	No
Custom slice cost	$20	$10

Here are some details.

No streams' real-time and retrospective charts

If you go to "Streams report" for the full slice you can see the list of active streams which currently have connections. Each name is the link to the stream dashboard where you can see real-time chart with connections, bandwidth and top-20 countries of visitors, as well as retrospective charts for last 24 hours.

For lite slice, there will be no link to the page and no stream dashboard page itself. Just list of streams with number of current connections.

One non-admin user per slice

Lite slices are targeted for those small clients of our customers who check their simple stats on a periodical basis and don't need complicated workflow. That's why this kind of slices should be seen by just 1 user besides admin users.

In-depth statistics

Since lite slice has not streams data, the Deep stats are also not available for this slice type, sorry.

Default "Full data slice"

When account is created, a default Full data slice is created to collect all incoming data. You cannot convert it to lite slice due to that reason. So whatever custom slices you create, you can convert them between lite and full while default slice remains full.

Usage and Pricing

The limitations mentioned above are the only ones applicable for lite slices. All other reports and capabilities, including white label, billing or streams control, are used the same way as for full slices.

Stream-based slice is the best case for using this limitation because there an admin may set the streams name and so real-time chart for a slice will be the same as real-time chart for the stream. Application-based slices are also fine being lite, of course.

Reduced functionality allows reducing the price. It's cut by half. and it starts from 10 USD per month and goes down as you create more slices.

Create lite slices

Existing full slices may be converted to lite ones by following these steps:

1. Click on Manage link in top menu for slices.
2. For designated slice, click on Edit link
3. In the new dialog box, un-check the "Show streams real-time and retrospective reports" check-box.
4. Save changes

For new slice, this would be the same - just use the same check box.

If you want to switch back from lite slice to full slice then check the "Show streams real-time and retrospective reports" check-box and click the "Save" button.

Before your next billing period starts, our team representative will contact you regarding subscription price changes.

Read more about slice-related features in on the dedicated Slices & Branding page.

Read more about WMSPanel streaming reporting.

Related documentation

Nimble Streamer, End user reporting, Daily statistics, Geo location reporting, Data slices for statistics, Streamed slices, User permissions management, Statistics import API, Paywall,