Media Server Software: Be the Streaming Hero
By Jim Bask
Such technology offers the ability to record, transcode for adaptive bit rate, transcode for Facebook Live video requirements, and can even provide a time-shift DVR service for your satellite campus and more.
Have you ever been distracted by video content, in a good way?
Recently, I met a dear friend for lunch, in a popular sports-themed restaurant, where I was peculiarly impressed with the great number of LED displays and video walls showcasing some unbelievable content. As we sat together, commenting on various topics, I asked my friend, “Have you ever thought about where all this content comes from?”
A multi-sensory media experience is more than simply tuning a DVB receiver to ESPN and setting the display input to HDMI 1.
Video content serves a very specific purpose at a very specific time.
In many ways, using video to convey important messaging and information is similar to the complex task of running a small television station. Considering the investment of content creation and acquisition, curation, and delivery, it is critical that audio and video media is delivered at the right time and place in order to maximize the message and return on overall media investment.
As church production leaders, we deliver content across many different modes of technologies and formats.
Quite often, the local church “video guy” is responsible for scheduling content delivery for social media, the church website, public displays, and “just in time” during weekend services.
Without an organized approach, hitting these multiple delivery targets can result in a hodgepodge of overlapping technology and services. As the ministry grows and expands their skillset in content creation, the demand for accurate, timely media delivery will increase, to an extreme. What this means is that the “video guy” will need to get very creative in how media is delivered to different screens.
Imagine being asked to serve live video content to projectors, LED walls, and multiple mounted displays while simultaneously streaming to Facebook Live, YouTube Live, and to visitors of your church website. In the same production, what if you are asked to supplement the live service stream with special content between services for promotional messaging? To complicate matters worse, what if you needed to deliver unique promotional messages, specific to the foyer/lobby, church nursery, or website?
Without a strategy, the initial response may be (politely), “not gonna happen.” Believe it or not, there is a very effective technology that can help you overcome this challenge, to wow the masses, and elevate you to media super hero status: Media server technology.
Media servers are often referred to as a “Swiss army knife” solution for video. In the past, media servers were primarily used to scale video for streaming to multiple devices and players on a network. While they still do this well, hosting media server technology, in the church, opens up a host of special capabilities and services that reliably provide control and centralization for both live and on-demand content delivery.
Let’s use the scenario I listed above, but add the requirement to live stream the pastor’s message to a nearby satellite campus. For production, let’s assume you have a small team, running a few cameras, a video switcher, and a graphics solution for your worship, announcements, and sermon notes – a standard configuration. In addition, let’s assume that the church has tasked you to display a different set of on-demand media between services. In the lobby, during greeting times, you will roll an announcement and event highlight reel. For the church nursery, you will run a parenting class promo. On Facebook Live and the website, you will feature a weekly online devotional highlight and a different set of announcements for people out of the area.
Using Wowza Streaming Engine, a leading media server solution, I would configure the server with three playlists, sourced by media files provided by your video editing team: (1) greeting time, (2) parenting promo, and (3) social media promo. Each of these playlists will be configured in a “pre-roll” configuration that switches to a live stream, when data from a live encoder device is present.
Also on the server, I would setup a stream target to the following services: Facebook Live, Wowza Streaming Cloud, and a local multicast push to the lobby and church nursery mounted displays (multicast is used to keep all displays in perfect sync). More configuration would include routing of live streams to each service to invoke the pre-roll function, which would be covered when the media server is deployed.
With these configurations setup and tested, your team will arrive on Sunday morning, proceed with their normal setup tasks and begin sending a primary live stream to Wowza Streaming Engine. On the media server, simply by logging in and clicking a few buttons, you will activate the stream targets to Facebook Live, Wowza Streaming Cloud, and your multicast displays, which will immediately begin rolling your playlist content.
When the service begins, switching manually (again, a single button on a web configuration page), or using a schedule, the server will override the playlist streams and seamlessly push the active live stream to all endpoints and displays for the duration of the service. When the services concludes, the server will switch back to the playlist content, specific to what was defined for each venue or network. Across town, the satellite church will pull the stream directly from your church network (using your public IP address).
In addition, the media server provides the ability to record, transcode for adaptive bit rate, transcode for Facebook Live video requirements, and can even provide a time-shift DVR service for your satellite campus and more.
It is amazing to imagine that all these capabilities can be run from a powerful desktop PC. It is also hard to believe that with thoughtful preparation, your only tasks on Sunday morning are to click a few buttons on a webpage. Deploying a media server, the only hardware you will need is the server/computer, a multicast capable set top box, like the Amino H140, which will be physically connected to each mounted display in the workflow. Facebook Live and Wowza Streaming Cloud targeting capabilities are part of the Wowza Streaming Engine feature set.
Future capabilities between media servers will include technologies like SRT, which will enable delivery of high-quality and secure, low-latency video across the public internet. Such a capability will dramatically enhance the stability and reliability of streaming across town to your satellite campus.
A media server can be deployed by a general technology expert with guided setup support from the vendor. Cost and capabilities vary depending on the selected media server technology and hardware selected.
In all cases, routing streams and presenting media accurately and dependably will enable your organization to maximize the impact of multimedia messaging, which will dramatically improve your live streaming experience, and… may even wow the masses, and elevate you to media super hero status.