Using Stream Targets for Simulcasting to Social Media With Wowza Video

 

With Wowza Video, you aren’t limited to streaming on one platform — you can deliver content to your audience across social media channels, all at once. How? With stream targets. Watch the video above or read the transcript below to learn everything you need to know.

   

Set Up a Stream Target

Justin Miller: Wowza Video’s advanced function of stream targets allows you to stream simultaneously to other platforms beyond your own, like Facebook Live, LinkedIn Live, and YouTube. This can be done with both live available streams, as well as managed VOD assets.

To set up stream targets, go under Stream Targets from the Wowza Video dashboard and select Add Target. Here you’ll find the options for Wowza CDN on Fastly, but you’ll also see Facebook Live as well as LinkedIn Live for easy setup. Other RTMP options like YouTube can be entered under Custom.

We’ll start by adding Facebook Live. Now for this to work, we’ll need to be logged in with a proper account. We’ll first want to add a target name that references where the video will be streamed, and we can also add a title and description, but remember that these get attached to any live stream that uses this stream target. Under Video Destination, you can choose your timeline, page, group or event, and we’re going to choose Page. A page we administrate.

Now, depending on your selection, you can also choose a level of privacy such as when you use Timeline. And don’t forget, you can also stream 360. We’ll save this for now while we’ll also go back and add LinkedIn Live. Now, when it comes to LinkedIn Live, you can choose to stream as either yourself or as an organization that you administrate, but please be sure that you’ve met all the requirements to stream to LinkedIn before doing this.

First, add a target name that references where the video will be streamed. And then if you’ve chosen an organization, you can select the organization that you want to stream as. You can also add a title and description and both will post with your live stream. And you’ll also need to choose a region closest to where you’re located. Once you’re done, we’ll save this for now, while we also add that custom option of YouTube.

 

Customizing Your Stream

Now, Custom can be used for several other simulcasting options, but we’re going to show how to do this with YouTube. First, add a target name that references where the video will be streamed, then from Provider we’ll choose RTMP since that’s what YouTube uses. Now, YouTube generally provides a stream key, stream URL, and backup URL for its live streams, so we’ll start by copying the stream key and pasting it under Stream Name. Then we can go back and copy the stream URL and paste that under Primary URL. And finally, we’ll take the backup server URL and paste that under Backup URL. Because we already store the RTMP://, we’ll need to remove that information before we save this stream target.

Now we can go back to stream targets and verify that these targets have been created. Once we’ve done that, we can apply them to a stream or an asset. Now this gets done under Transcoders. These transcoders generally reference streams that are already created. So, under Transcoders, we can select the transcoder for the stream we want, and then go under Outputs and Targets. Here you’ll usually go to the Passthrough, and there, Add a Stream Target. From the dropdown, we’ll choose existing stream target, and then we can assign one of the stream targets that we’ve just created. If we repeat this process, we’ll be able to simultaneously stream to our own website, Facebook Live, LinkedIn Live, and other social media that accepts RTMP, such as YouTube.

 

Re-Stream VOD Assets

In the case of Managed VOD Assets, things work a little differently. We’ll need to select the VOD asset and choose to Re-Stream Asset for the encoded to be created. Be sure you know the code for the re-streamed assets, so under Transcoders, you’ll be able to select the correct one. Then as before, we can go to Outputs and Targets. In here, we’ll add a stream target to the Passthrough. With YouTube added, we’ll test the stream target. So back in managed assets, we’ll select the VOD asset, and from here, choose Re-stream Asset. And now that we’re ready to stream, we can select Start Live Stream.

This will take a few seconds to get up and running, and then once it has, it will automatically re-stream the VOD asset as a live stream to your hosted page or where you’re using the embed code, as well as YouTube. When the stream’s done, it’ll automatically end everywhere. And I recommend adding a 15 second buffer to any live stream at the end or re-streamed asset to ensure that it doesn’t end too early.

Okay, well, that’s it on simulcasting to your own website as well as social media with stream targets using Wowza Video. Thanks for watching everyone, and may all your streams flow smoothly.