Even though Nimble Streamer allows building live streaming networks, there are cases when some external CDN needs to be used to provide additional geo coverage and off-load your network during peaks.
This is why we added Akamai CDN RTMP publishing support in Nimble Streamer. It's based on RTMP re-publishing scenario with a few additional steps.
Here is the setup instruction.
Enable interleaving compensation
Akamai requires synchronized video and audio in your live stream, so you need to enable interleaving compensation for the source application for further publishing. This application needs to be used as a target for your encoder or transcoder which you use as an origin for your stream.
Another requirement for the source stream is that its time stamps must be sequential.
Now, being logged into WMSPanel, go to Nimble Streamer -> Live streams settings top menu. Open application settings.
Now click on Add application settings to open the dialog below. Here you will enter the name of the application that will be publishing RTMP stream to Akamai. So your encoder needs to have that stream as output.
Adding application for further Akamai publishing.
You can define the application name as well as its publishing login and password if required. Selecting RTMP protocol from the list of check-boxes should be enough.
Click on Enable interleaving compensation and fill in the following field as follows:
Min. delay to 0
Max. delay to 10000
Max queue items to 500
Then save this setting to the designated servers. Your apps list will be appended with new item.
Notice that you also need to define interface and port for RTMP publishing in Interfaces tab as well.
Now your stream is ready for re-publishing to Akamai.
Set up re-publishing with Akamai authentication
Go to Republishing tab
Now click on Add Akamai RTMP button to see the dialog below.
Here you need to fill the fields:
Source application - this is the app which you previously created.
Source Stream - this is the stream created by your source encoder.
Akamai Stream ID is provided by Akamai
Destination address and Port are also defined by Akamai
Destination application an Stream are defined by yourself.
Authorization schema will be set to "Akamai"
Login and Password must be known to you.
Saving these changes you'll see new entry in the list.
That's it. Once you start streaming from your origin encoder, you'll get the stream in the CDN. Using the playback URL provided by Akamai.
Other useful features
Besides Akamai, see some other examples of republishing:
republishing to EdgeCast;
publishing to YouTube;
For other live streaming scenarios, check our live streaming use cases.
We also recommend using our Live Transcoder for content transformation activities. It overcomes the performance of FFmpeg while having flexible web UI.
Having that, you can create flexible delivery chains using Nimble Streamer for media hubs and WMSPanel for easy-to-use control panel. Install Nimble Streamer if you still haven't done that and contact us if your streaming scenarios need any updates of described functionality.
Related documentation
Live Streaming features, Live Transcoder for Nimble Streamer, RTMP feature set, Build streaming infrastructure with Nimble Streamer,