Configure and Enable Live Webcasting

Overview

The administrative tasks for live webcasting involve a variety of configuration and setup items, and consists of these phases:

1. Prepare the infrastructure.

2. Train Academic Staff to use live webcasting.

3. Enable live webcasting for the section or special event.

4. Notify students of the live webcast.

5. Monitor the live webcast, if necessary.

6. Control the live webcast as needed. 

Prepare the Infrastructure

The architecture for live events consists of:

• A source: The EchoSystem SafeCapture HD or the Echo360 PRO

• A reflector: The Wowza Media Server (Wowza) to stream live Flash media content

• A sink: One or more EchoPlayers that allow students to view the content

Preparing the infrastructure consists of these phases:

1. Enable licensing.

2. Registering the ESS with Echo360's Collaboration and Statistics Service (only required if using chat and presence features of live webcasting).

3. Configure the Wowza Media Server, including configuring the system streaming settings for the ESS.

4. Optional - Distribute live webcasts with a CDN.

If you are currently using an Internal configuration of Wowza, and the combined load of live webcasts and on-demand recordings exceeds the capacity of the media server, you will want to convert to an External configuration of Wowza. Furthermore, the use of Wowza v4 with EchoSystem requires you to use an External configuration.

See Configure the Flash Media Streaming Server and Configure an External Wowza Media Server for media server configuration information as needed.

Enable Licensing

1. Update the ESS to use the EchoSelect license. This license includes live webcasting as an option.

2. Do one of the following:

   1. If you have a site license, continue with the configuration. See Configure the Wowza Media Server

   2. If you have venue licenses, assign the licenses to venues (typically classrooms) that will have live webcasting.

Configure the Wowza Media Server

1. Make sure the Wowza Media Server has a production license. Each viewer receiving the live webcast requires, at least, four connections to the Wowza Media Server and may need as many as seven. Development or staging licenses do not have enough connections to support a typical class.

2. Estimate your anticipated media server requirements for both live webcasts and on-demand recordings. See Deployment Planning and Bandwidth Requirements for Capture and Media Formats.

3. Install and configure your Wowza Media Server. See Configure the Flash Media Streaming Server and Configure an External Wowza Media Server for external configuration instructions.

4. Reconfigure the firewall ports for the Wowza Media Server.

5. Review, and if necessary, edit the Streaming Settings.

Optional - Distribute Live Webcasts with a CDN

Echo360 does not provide a CDN integration, but you can integrate your Wowza Media Server with certain CDNs as described in this article: http://www.wowza.com/partners.html. Please also see the push publishing article on the Wowza Support forum. The RMTP solution described requires some custom configuration on the Wowza server.

Enable Live Webcasting

Enabling live webcasting consists of the following phases: 

1. Determine which sections might have live webcasting, and verify those sections occur in rooms containing a SafeCapture HD device.

2. Configure product group defaults and security settings for the section. 

3. Configure a schedule for the section. The section must be scheduled in a room containing a SafeCapture HD device.

4. Review the Person and Section roles for the section. Make sure you have a Teaching Assistant assigned to the section.

5. Notify the students/participants as necessary.

The sections below explain how live webcasting configuration differs from on-demand capture configuration.

Configure Product Group and Security Settings for the Section

If a section will typically use live webcasting as a normal part of its schedule, or there is a Special Events section dedicated to live webcasts of specific events, assign a live-enabled product group to those sections as the default. You can always select a different product group when scheduling the section if necessary.

Default Product Group selections include different bandwidth options, including low bandwidth streaming for mobile connections. Users can view live webcasts on mobile iOS devices, however, depending on which product group is selected for the webcast, a WiFi connection may be required for the event to stream smoothly.

If there are no existing live-enabled product groups that suit the needs of the section, you can configure a custom product group. See Manage Product Groups for details on product groups.  

Security defaults for a section determine whether students need to log in to view the Echoes or live webcasts for a section, or if the section outputs, including any live webcasts, are available to anyone with access to the proper URL.

The portion of the Edit Section page that contains these settings is shown in the figure below.

Open

1. Use the Product Group drop-down list to select a live-enabled product group. The selected product group is passed through to each schedule you generate for this section, however, you can select a different product group for each schedule if appropriate.

2. Use the Security Module drop-down list to identify how users access captures for this section (either live webcasts or Echoes).

   • If you select Allow All, users are not required to log in to view any live webcasts or Echoes published for this section. This also means that the chat and presence capabilities for the live webcast are also disabled because these features require users to be identified (via their logins).

   • Selecting a different Security Module will require authentication (student login) in order to access the live webcasts or Echoes, and also allows the use of the chat feature for live webcasts if you have the Collaboration and Statistics Service  configured for your system.