Ingest and publish an SRT stream with Wowza Streaming Engine

With Wowza Streaming Engine™ 4.7.3 and later, you can ingest MPEG-TS packaged Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) streams and deliver the streams to viewers with the Stream Targets feature. Wowza Streaming Engine supports SRT version 1.4 and earlier. This article describes how to configure Wowza Streaming Engine to ingest SRT streams and deliver them to to viewers.

Notes:

• Wowza Streaming Engine 4.7.3 or later is required to both ingest and deliver SRT streams. Wowza Streaming Engine 4.7.2 only supports ingesting SRT content.
• Linux or Windows installations of Wowza Streaming Engine are required.

Video tutorial: Send an SRT stream to Wowza Streaming Engine

See how to send an SRT live stream from Wirecast to Wowza Streaming Engine and play the stream using HLS.

Before you start

If you're installing a new instance of Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.0 or later on Windows, you may need to install additional dependencies to ingest SRT MediaCaster streams or use the generic SRT stream targets destination to publish an SRT stream.

To address this, install the latest version of the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio appropriate to your operating system. This is not an issue for pre-existing installations of Wowza Streaming Engine that are updated to Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.0 or later.

1. Configure playback

Before connecting a live source and publishing a live stream, complete the following steps to configure playback support for your application.

1. Click the Applications tab at the top of the page and then select your application in the contents panel.
2. Click the Setup tab on your application's page and then click Edit.
3. Under Playback Types, select any streaming protocols you need to support for playing streams sent to this application. The playback types enable transmuxing a source stream into MPEG-DASH, HLS, RTMP, and RTSP/RTP.
4. Click Save.

5. In the application's contents panel, click Playback Security, and then click Edit.
   
   
    
6. Under Client restrictions, select No client restrictions to allow players to connect from any IP address.
   
   
7. Click Save and then restart the application.

For more information about Playback Security options, see Playback security options.

2. Connect to a source stream 

1. Sign in to Wowza Streaming Engine Manager as an Administrator. You must have administrator privileges to create stream files. For more information, see Manage credentials.
    
2. In the Server contents panel, click Stream Files, and then click Add Stream File.
   
   
    
   
   

   Note: You can also access the Stream Files feature from the Applications tab under the currently selected application.
3. In the Add Stream File dialog box, enter a name for the stream file and the URI of the source stream, and then click Add. Note that it is important to use the IP address of the server hosting the stream as the Stream URI.
    

   The Stream URI is formatted http://[stream IP]:1400/stream for pull streams.

   
    
4. (Optional) Specify per-stream settings. Per-stream settings override those in the application configuration for that stream and apply only to the types of streams identified by the configuration. For more information, see Specify per-stream settings in Wowza Streaming Engine .stream files.
5. To start the stream, click the Connect icon to connect to the stream.
   
   
    
    
6. In the Connect a Stream File dialog box, for Application Name, select the live application that will host the stream.

7. For Mediacaster Type, select srt to pull a stream using a Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) connection.

   

8. Click OK.

Note: Only one SRT stream can be sent per port. You must create a separate .stream file, each with a unique port, for each SRT stream.

3. Verify the connection

To verify that Wowza Streaming Engine is receiving the published stream, complete the following steps in Wowza Streaming Engine Manager.

1. Click Incoming Streams in the contents panel for your live application.

   You should see your stream listed with Active for the status.

   

2. Click the stream name to see the uptime, network throughput, and other information about the published stream.

   

4. Test playback

To test playback of the SRT stream over the other streaming protocols you enabled for Playback Types, complete the following steps.

1. In Wowza Streaming Engine Manager, in the contents panel for your application, click Stream Files.
2. In the Stream Files list, click the name of your stream file.
3. From your stream file's page, click Test Playback.
4. Review and, if needed, edit the following information in the Test Playback window for your stream:
    
   • Server – The IP address or domain name of the server and the streaming port ([address]:[port]).

   

   Note: The stream name should include the .stream file extension.

5. (Optional) In the Streaming URLs section, select Secure URL for the streaming protocol you want to use to test playback if you have configured SSL/TLS for streaming over https, rtmps, or rtsps.
6. Click the Copy icon for the streaming protocol you want to use to test playback.
7. Paste the playback URL into your player or a mobile browser depending on the protocol. Alternatively, you can use the Wowza Video Test Players webpage.

For more information about playback URLs, see About playing Wowza Streaming Engine streams.

Next steps

• Use SRT to distribute live streams
• Transcode live streams
• Scaling and load balancing

More resources 

• Troubleshoot live streaming
• Specify per-stream settings in Wowza Streaming Engine .stream files