About playing Wowza Streaming Engine streams

Wowza Streaming Engine™ media server software supports live and on-demand stream playback on many desktop and mobile players, OTT devices, and set-top boxes. All streaming in Wowza Streaming Engine is initiated with a uniform resource locator (URL).

Playback URL formats

The URL formats used for streaming to any destination follow a similar format:

[protocol]://[username:password]@[address]:[port]/[application]/[appInstance]/[mediaTypePrefix]:[streamName]/[post-fix]?[query]

Where:

• [protocol] - The URL scheme. (http, rtmp, rtsp, etc.)
• [userinfo] - (Optional) The username and password when authentication is required for the stream, such as RTSP.
• [address] - The IP address or domain name of the Wowza Streaming Engine server.
   

  Note: If you’re using SSL/TLS for secure playback, replace [address] with [ssl-certificate-domain-name]:443, where [ssl-certificate-domain-name] is the domain name, or hostname, of the SSL/TLS certificate (for example, https://5ab4321c0d123.streamlock.net:443/myApplication/mp4:sample.mp4/playlist.m3u8.)

• [port] - The port number Wowza Streaming Engine is configured to use for streaming. The default port is 1935. 
• [application] - The name of the live or on-demand application in Wowza Streaming Engine.
• [appInstance] - The name of the application instance, if used. If no name is specified, the default name (_definst_) is used. 
• [mediaTypePrefix] - (Optional) The media or file type of the stream.
• [streamName] - The stream name or stream file name.
• [post-fix] - (Optional) Additional information specific to the player technology.
• [query] - (Optional) Additional query parameters, such as DVR for nDVR or SecureToken query parameters. 

However, in most streaming scenarios, when the [streamName] doesn't have path elements and the default [appInstance] name is used, the playback URL can be shortened to:

[protocol]://[address]:[port]/[application]/[streamName]

Example playback URLs

The following are example URLs for various streaming protocols and media types. The examples assume the content is a stream named myStream, the application streaming it is named myApplication, and the default streaming port (1935) is used.

HLS

http://example.com:1935/myApplication/myStream/playlist.m3u8

MPEG-DASH

http://example.com:1935/myApplication/smil:myStream.smil/manifest.mpd

RTSP/RTP

rtsp://example.com:1935/myApplication/myStream

RTMP

Server: rtmp://example.com:1935/myApplication

Stream: myStream

SRT

srt://example.com:1935/myApplication/srt.stream