Fallback of published RTMP, RTSP and Icecast streams

RTMP, RTSP and Icecast live protocols can be pulled by Nimble Streamer for further processing, and in order to improve robustness each pulled stream can have fallback streams. So if a primary stream cannot be pulled for some reason from the origin, an alternative stream is pulled to do a failover. The playback is not stopped so the user experience is not harmed much.

The aforementioned protocols are often used in publishing mode when the stream is pushed into Nimble Streamer for processing. In this case there is no built-in way to cover that.

Nimble Streamer provides another reliable mechanism for covering fallback of RTMP, RTSP and Icecast published streams, the Live Transcoder hot swap feature set. It allows shifting to secondary stream if the primary one is down for some reason, while maintaining the playback output  for video and audio.

The following steps allow setting this up.

1. Install Live Transcoder

Hot swap feature set requires Live Transcoder premium add-on for Nimble Streamer.

There are two main reasons for Live Transcoder usage:

• Secondary (substitution) stream needs to fit the primary (original) stream by video resolution and audio sample rate.
• The primary stream need to be decoded in order to get the substitution smoothly.

You need to obtain a license for Transcoder, then install the add-on and register a license for it.

2. Set up published inputs

You need to have both primary (original) and secondary (substitution) stream being set up and published into Nimble Streamer. In case you haven't done it yet, check the articles for RTMP, RTSP and Icecast publication setup.

3. Set up hot swap failover

Having both streams ready and Transcoder installed, you can set up failover hot swap for them. Follow the instructions and make sure you complete all steps.

4. Test the setup

As always, you need to test the setup before using it in production use cases. If you have any questions or issues, please contact our team so we could help.

Related documentation

Live streaming via Nimble Streamer, Failover hot swap, Emergency stream hot swap,