Wowza Media Server has been a component of OIT’s media streaming services for many years and currently functions as a complement to our
Warpwire on-demand streaming service. While Warpwire is the preferred method for on-demand streaming because of its simplicity, security, advanced sharing functionality, and its ability to adapt on the fly to varying bandwidth conditions, Wowza is primarily used for live broadcasting. It is used both for events, such as many that take place in Duke Chapel, and for re-broadcasting of IP camera feeds such as have documented the renovation of Wallace Wade over the past year on
goduke.com.
Streaming to mobile devices is something we’ve been working toward with Wowza for some time, and many of you have eagerly anticipated this feature. Now, thanks to our recent upgrade to Wowza Media Server 4 along with some cool new additions to JW Player Premium, which OIT licenses on behalf of the campus community, we are finally able to offer it. We’re working on updating our documentation to solidify processes and workflows, but since I know some of you have been chomping at the bit for this functionality, I wanted to get the word out and encourage those of you interested in reaching mobile users via Wowza to contact OIT Media Technologies so we can work directly with you. In a nutshell, you tell us a little information about your video, and we supply you with industry standard iframe-based embed code that will work seamlessly on desktop and mobile.
For those power users among you who want a little more information, mobile-compatible links to your live broadcasts will look something like this:
http://dukestream.oit.duke.edu:1935/live/toddtest/playlist.m3u8
You can embed links such as this directly in your web pages using the HTML5 video tag (see below for sample HTML), but since support for video and audio codecs and streaming protocols is still not standardized among different browsers, your mileage will vary with this approach. The best method is to use an industry standard player like JW. We can either supply you with embed code for your videos as described above, or work with you to explain how new JW accounts are set up and help you navigate the workflow in your own Premium accounts.
Raw HTML5 video embedding–sample code:
<html>
<head>
<title>HLS Streaming on Mac and iOS</title>
</head>
<body>
<video controls src=”http://dukestream.oit.duke.edu:1935/live/toddtest/playlist.m3u8″>
</video>
</body>
</html>
