MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

MComms Transcode Integration Guide

Version: 3.7

Date: 1 December 2009

Contents

1 PRODUCT OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................. 2

2 STREAMING TO IPHONE ......................................................................................................... 2

2.1 FILE LAYOUT .................................................................................................................................. 2 2.2 INSTALLATION OF IPHONE PLAYLIST ASP SCRIPT IN IIS ............................................................... 3 2.3 INSTALLATION OF IPHONE PLAYLIST ASPX SCRIPT IN IIS 7 ......................................................... 5 2.4 INSTALLATION OF IPHONE PLAYLIST PHP SCRIPT IN APACHE ...................................................... 6 2.5 FINALISE CONFIGURATION ............................................................................................................. 7

3 3GPP MOBILE STREAMING IMPLEMENTATIONS .............................................................. 8

3.1 OUTPUT TO DARWIN/QUICKTIME OR REAL HELIX SERVERS ........................................................ 8 3.2 PACKETVIDEO SERVER ............................................................................................................... 10

4 WINDOWS MEDIA STREAMING ........................................................................................... 12

4.1 OUTPUT TO WINDOWS MEDIA SERVER ....................................................................................... 12 4.2 INPUT FROM WINDOWS MEDIA STREAM ...................................................................................... 14

5 WOWZA MEDIA SERVER ...................................................................................................... 14

6 HIGH AVAILABILITY AND REDUNDANCY ......................................................................... 15

6.1 INPUT REDUNDANCY .................................................................................................................... 15 6.2 SERVER CLUSTERING .................................................................................................................. 15 6.3 OUTPUT REDUNDANCY................................................................................................................. 16

7 GLOSSARY .............................................................................................................................. 17

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

1 Product Overview MComms Transcode software takes live a VoD video in many formats and encodes it for Mobile TV, web and IPTV streaming.

The output from MComms Transcode can be integrated with many different servers in order to service a wide range of end user devices. Typically Windows Media Server (free with Windows server editions) is used to stream Windows Media files and streams to PCs and smartphones. Darwin, pvServer, Sun Streaming Server, Vidiator and Real Server are used to stream 3GPP streams to mobile phones. Apache or IIS web servers are typically used to stream to iPhone and iPod touch.

2 Streaming to iPhone MComms Transcode works as the encoder and stream segmenter for streaming to iPhone.

Figure 1 – MComms Transcode system configuration

MComms Transcode outputs MPEG Transport Stream files suitable for playback on iPhone OS 3.0, each file is approximately the length of the Video Keyframe Interval which should be set to 10 seconds.

These files can be streamed using most popular web servers such as IIS and Apache, a different configuration method is required for each server as detailed below.

2.1 File Layout

MComms Transcode should be configured so that each output is set to save .ts files to a different directory. Normally the directory is named according to the channel name and also the bitrate of each output. E.g. c:/iphone/channel_1/60k/media.ts

If the web server is running on a different server to MComms Transcode, then the files should be stored temporarily on the local server and MComms Transcode configured to FTP the files to multiple remote servers.

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

Figure 2 – Typical directory layout for iPhone files

A HTML file is supplied that contains either an <object> or <video> tags embed video players within a web page. The HTML page can be styled using any elements compatible with the iPhone and multiple video players can be embedded in a single page.

When the iPhone loads a html page with <object> or <video> or <a href> tags containing a link to a .m3u8 file, the iPhone will load the .m3u8 file to find out the contents of the playlist.

The .m3u8 file linked to the HTML page can either be an index file (which is a list of URLs to multiple bitrate playlists of the same stream), or it can be an actual playlist (containing URLs to .TS files).

2.2 Installation of iPhone playlist ASP script in IIS

TranscodeiPhone.m3u8 is an ASP script that will run on Microsoft IIS web server.

In order for a playlist file to be recognised by the iPhone, it must have a m3u8 extension. This is why the Transcode iPhone script has an .m3u8 extensions, instead of an .asp extenstion. Otherwise, TranscodeiPhone.m3u8 is a normal .asp file.

Once you have configured Transcode to generate iPhone compatible output files you will need to copy TranscodeiPhone.m3u8 and TranscodeiPhone.html to the same directory that you have configured Transcode to write the iPhone streaming files to. Of course, this must be a directory that is served by your IIS web server.

By default, IIS serves up .m3u8 files without processing them. Since TranscodeiPhone.m3u8 is actually an .asp file, we need to modify IIS's Application Extensions configuration.

/ base directory

HTML file

M3U8 multirate index file

Bitrate 1 folder

M3U8 playlist file

Media00001.ts to Media0000x.ts files

Bitrate 2 folder

M3U8 playlist file

Media00001.ts to Media0000x.ts files

Bitrate n folder

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

From Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager do the following:

Right click the website serving the iPhone stream and select Properties

Select the Home Directory tab in the properties dialog

Click the Configuration button

In the Application Configuration, select the Mappings tab and click Add...

In the Executable text box, enter: C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\asp.dll

In the Extenstion text box, enter .m3u8

Leave all other settings and click OK

Click OK on the Application Configuration dialog, and OK again on the web site properties dialog

Now you need to change some MIME types so that IIS can serve up the iPhone stream:

Right click the website serving the iPhone stream and select Properties

Select the HTTP Headers tab and click the MIME Types... button

In the MIME Types dialog, click New...

In the Extension textbox, enter .ts

In the MIME Type textbox, enter video/MP2T

Ensure that you have ASP scripting allowed, this will result in 404 errors if not correctly configured:

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

2.3 Installation of iPhone playlist ASPX script in IIS 7

Please note that the above ASP script will still run in IIS7 and is preferred to the ASPX script for simplicity. The ASPX script will also run on IIS 5/6, but is more difficult to configure.

The above process should be followed, keeping in mind the extension is now .aspx.

The additional step required is the following code should be added to machine.config in the

directory: c:\Winnt\Microsoft .NET\framework\<version>

<httpHandlers>

<add verb="*" path="*.m3u8" type="System.Web.UI.PageHandlerFactory" />

</httpHandlers>

2.3.1 Setting up IIS 7

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

2.4 Installation of iPhone playlist PHP script in Apache

Live streaming using Apache requires the use of PHP to generate playlists dynamically. As the iPhone OS version 3.0 only checks the file extension of .m3u8 files, it is necessary to use an Apache (mod_rewrite) to perform URL rewriting. URL rewriting works by changing URLs ending in .m3u8 to .php on the server so the iPhone OS 3.0 requests a .m3u8 URL but the Apache server processes the request as a .php file.

Please ensure that PHP 4 or 5 is installed prior to installing this

script, you can check this by loading version.php in a browser.

Place the supplied .htaccess file in the root directory of the web server, for Apache this is usually named "htdocs". If there is already a .htaccess file, then append the text to the existing file.

A change to MIME types doesn't seem to be required for Apache and the iPhone ignores them in OS 3.0, this may change in OS 3.1.

2.4.1 Enable Mod_Rewrite

Apache must have a module called mod_rewrite enabled in order to map URLs ending in .m3u8 to the correct PHP script

To do this open the “httpd.conf” file in the apache\conf directory and remove the hash # from all lines that contain “mod_rewrite”.

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

2.4.2 Test PHP Playlist

If you put the “MCommsiPhonePlaylist.php” file in a directory with .TS files. Use a PC browser (IE, Firefox etc) with the URL of the .php file

http://server/iphone/MCommsiPhonePlaylist.php

IE or FireFox will ask you to save the file, you should see a m3u8 playlist with lines starting with hash #.

If you instead see the php script source code, then you need to check your php file, URL and php installation.

2.4.3 URL Rewriting

Ensure that the “.htaccess” file supplied has been copied or merged to the root directory of the website.

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

Use the same URL as above in a PC browser, except modify the extension to .m3u8

http://server/iphone/MCommsiPhonePlaylist.m3u8

In IE or Firefox you should see the same playlist with lines starting with hash #, you should also see a list of .TS files in ascending order.

If you receive an error or URL not found, you need to check that the “.htaccess” file supplied by MComms is correctly located in the root directory of the website.

If you receive Error 500, check that Apache has mod_rewrite installed.

2.4.4 Single Bitrate Test

Load the html URL on the iPhone and make sure that the media player icon displays correctly and shows WITHOUT a cross through it.

If the icon displays with a cross through it, then the php/m3u8 URL above is not working. Check that the HTML code has the correct relative path to the php/m3u8 URL

The HTML code can have a link to the php generated playlist or the playlist index with multiple bitrates, for a simple test use only one bitrate and adjust the link to the MCommsiPhonePlaylist.m3u8 file.

Click the icon and the media player should open.

2.4.5 Multiple bitrates

Change the HTML source to point to the playlist index file “MCommsiPhoneIndex.m3u8”, make sure that the relative paths are correct.

The “MCommsiPhoneIndex.m3u8” file should contain links to all the php “MCommsiPhonePlaylist.m3u8” files.

2.5 Finalise Configuration

Please note that the iPhone cannot directly use .m3u8 playlist files. Instead, get your iPhone to load the TranscodeiPhone.html file, which should be in the same directory as the

MCommsiPhoneIndex.m3u8 file.

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

3 3GPP Mobile Streaming Implementations MComms Transcode can output RTP streams to all 3GPP compliant streaming servers, normally it is necessary to copy the SDP file that MComms Transcode generates to the streaming server. This is not necessary for multicast outputs as the SDP file is broadcast in SAP messages.

MComms Transcode will create a SDP file whenever an output starts, this file tells the streaming server how to receive the RTP stream.

Server Default SDP File Location

Default URL

Darwin C:\Program Files\Darwin

Streaming Server\Movies

rtsp://127.0.0.1/YourFileName

.sdp

Helix Server

C:\Program

Files\Real\Helix

Server\Content\rtpencoders

dp\YourFileName.sdp

rtsp://127.0.0.1/rtpencoder/Y

ourFileName.sdp

PacketVideo Server

/opt/pvns/content/public rtsp://192.168.0.1/public/You

rFileName.sdp

3.1 Output to Darwin/Quicktime or Real Helix Servers

MComms Transcode supports up to 16 outputs, each output can be delivered to a different streaming server. To stream to 3GPP mobile phones set the video compression to one of (H.263, MPEG4, H.264 and the audio compression to one of (AMR-NB or AAC/3GPP/LATM).

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

3G

Network

Packet Switched Streaming

Video Call

Encoder

Streaming

Servers

Video Gateway

MComms Monitor

Mcomms

Transcode

Proxy

Figure 3 - Output to Streaming Servers

If using Darwin server 5.5.1 to 5.5.5 there is no configuration necessary on the server itself other than to save the SDP file in the correct directory.

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

3.2 PacketVideo Server

PacketVideo Server or pvServer sets up an RTSP connection from the pvServer to MComms Transcode. pvServer can be configured to receive multicast RTP streams (which is the preferred option) or to initiate the stream by connecting to MComms Transcode using RTSP.

3.2.1 RTP Multicast - Push

Configure one or more of the outputs of MComms Transcode to output to a multicast IP address e.g. 234.5.5.5. Copy the SDP file to the pvServer or put ftp commands in the OutStart.bat script.

Run the following commands on the pvServer:

cd /opt/pvns/tools/bin

./aliasServiceClient.ksh -h 127.0.0.1 -p 10000 -am

/public/live -sn multicastLive -si 192.168.126.1

./upstreamSessionMgmt.ksh -h 127.0.0.1 -p 10000 -startm -f

sdpFile.sdp

3.2.2 PVServer RTSP Request - Pull

PVServer is configured to initiate the encoding process by initiating a RTSP request to MComms Transcode and then MComms Transcode starts an output and delivers the stream to PVServer.

The URL to configure in PVServer to connect to MComms Transcode is in the form:

rtsp://<ip address>:port/sdpfilename.ext

<ip address> is the IP address of the MComms Transcode server, note that MComms Transcode listens on all interfaces

Port is the TCP port number, a different port number is used for each “Channel” tab in MComms Transcode. The port assigned is 554 + channel number. I.e. Channel 1 is port 555, Channel 2 is port 556, Channel 16 is port 570

sdpfilename.ext is any text configured in the SDP File box of the SDP File tab in MComms Transcode output settings.

MComms Transcode must be configured to wait for the PVServer to connect before starting the output, this is done by unticking the “Stream Enabled” check box as shown below:

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

In some cases you may want to configure multiple PVServers to connect to the same URL for scalability and redundancy. For PVServers initiating outputs using RTSP, each PVServer must be handled by a different output. However multiple outputs can be configured with the same settings and same “sdpfilename”, MComms Transcode will choose the first available output that matches the URL.

This is done by configuring a group of outputs with the same settings and then setting the SDP file of each output to the same name without a file path as shown below:

If the pvServer is configured to ask for a URL without a filename or directory (i.e. rtsp://1.2.3.4:555/), then any non-running outputs will be used.

The settings under the Audio and Video tabs should be configured to the desired codecs etc before the PVServer connects.

Under the RTP tab, the Stream Name may be configured but the server IP address and RTP port can be ignored.

On the PVServer run the following commands to initiate a stream on Channel 1:

cd /opt/pvns/tools/bin

./aliasServiceClient.ksh -h 127.0.0.1 -p 10000 -au

/public/live -c rtsp://192.168.126.1:555/sdpname

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

./upstreamSessionMgmt.ksh -h 127.0.0.1 -p 10000 -startu -cid

rtsp://192.168.126.1:555/sdpname

To Remove Streams:

./upstreamSessionMgmt.ksh -h 127.0.0.1 -p 10000 -stopu -cid

rtsp://192.168.126.1:555/sdpname

Remove a specific alias

./aliasServiceClient.ksh -h 127.0.0.1 -p 10000 -da

/public/live

Remove all aliases

./aliasServiceClient.ksh -h 127.0.0.1 -p 10000 -ca

3.2.3 Check Stream Status

On the pvServer run the following commands to initiate the stream

cd /opt/pvns/tools/bin

./aliasServiceClient.ksh -h 127.0.0.1 -p 10000 -ga

./upstreamSessionStatus.ksh -h 127.0.0.1 -p 10000 -su

4 Windows Media Streaming

4.1 Output to Windows Media Server

MComms Transcode can be set up to output to multiple Windows Media Servers. The connection between MComms Transcode and Windows Media Server is always HTTP but it can be initiated by WM Server (PULL) or by MComms Transcode (PUSH).

Click Output Settings, select Windows Media Stream as the Output Type.

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

The audio and video codec settings should be configured as required, be sure to select a type of Windows Media codec for both (WM Server cannot support other codecs).

Take note to set the Video codec buffer length, as this will affect the time that the end client buffers the stream for before starting to play.

Set the WMSink to either Push or Pull to match the Windows Media Server configuration.

On the Windows Media Server, create a new publishing point using the Wizard:

Select “Encoder (a live stream).

Make sure that the IP address configured in the WM Server matches the MComms Transcode IP and configured Port number ie.

http://192.168.1.40:8089

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

Test the stream by using Windows Media Player to stream from the WM Server in either MMS, HTTP or RTSP protocols.

Note: that if you haven’t configured the Windows Media Server, you can also use Windows Media Player to stream directly from MComms Transode over http – in this case configure MComms Transcode not to push to the server.

4.2 Input from Windows Media Stream

The inputs of MComms Transcode can be connected to a Windows Media stream. HTTP, RTSP and MMS protocols are supported however the MMS protocol is often the easiest to implement because this protocol is not used for any other purpose.

Mcomms

TranscodeWindows

Media

Server

HTTP/RTSP/MMS

Media

Mobile

Streaming

Server

MobileAudio/Video

Source

Figure 4 - Windows Media Server

5 Wowza Media Server Wowza Media Server can receive RTP or MPEG Transport streams from MComms Transcode, and convert these to Flash and other transport formats.

When using Wowza Media server with MComms Transcode with RTSP outputs there are three steps that must be done. The first step is the server address of the RTSP output in MComms Transcode must point to the server address of the Wowza Media server.

The second step is to place the SDP file in the specified content directory of your Wowza media server. By default this directory is

<Wowza installation directory>\content. Finally the

video encoder type must be set to H264. Other than these three steps the output may be configured as you wish.

If you are streaming mpeg transport streams from MComms Transcode then it depends on whether the stream is unicast or multicast to how the stream should be configured. If the stream is unicast then stream must be sent to the server running Wowza Media Server. For a multicast stream the Wowza Media server must be on a network that is able to receive the multicast.

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

6 High Availability and Redundancy MComms Transcode supports full redundancy at the inputs (with redundant inputs), server failover and multiple outputs. Multiple levels of redundancy can be designed depending on the desired level of availability.

6.1 Input Redundancy

MComms Transcode supports 2 content inputs and a background image for input redundancy. Normally input number 2 is played out to all the outputs, if the buffer of input 2 runs out then input number 1 will be shown at all the outputs. If the buffer of input 1 and 2 is empty then the background image will be shown at the outputs.

The input buffer time can be changed by clicking Tools/Options.

Click the Advnced tab:

Changes should only be made to the Optimal buffer time and the Start buffer time. The Optimal Buffer time can be anywhere from 2 seconds to 20 seconds depending on the input source (shorter for high stability, low jitter local source, longer for distant high jitter sources). Set the Start when buffered time to approximately half of the buffer time.

6.2 Server Clustering

Windows 2003 Server Enterprise and Datacentre editions support clustering, please view the Microsoft guide on how to set this up:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/enterprise/clustering.mspx

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

6.3 Output redundancy

Output redundancy can also be achieved when using Helix Server or another server that supports redundant streams.

Figure 5 – High Availability

When the encoders connect to Helix Mobile Server the SDP files must be saved with a number after their name. Consider this example:

live.sdp.2 connects first

live.sdp.3 connects second

live.sdp.1 connects third

Under normal circumstances all media players receive the stream live.sdp, and have no knowledge of the encoder sending the stream. In the preceding example, live.sdp originates as live. sdp.2. If the encoder delivering live.sdp.2 fails, media players reconnect to the next live. sdp stream in the queue, which is live. sdp.3. If live. sdp.2 returns, it goes to the bottom of the queue. A subsequent failure of live. sdp.3 causes media players to connect to live. sdp.1, and so on.

If an encoder fails, then the media player must stop and reconnect to the stream. Helix Mobile Server can take up to 30 seconds to recognise an encoder has failed.

MComms TV

ABN 73 118 968 988

Level 1, William Street | Melbourne Vic 3000 | Australia

www.mcommstv.com

7 Glossary 3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project

AAC Advanced Audio Coding

AMR Adaptive Multirate Codec

DRM Digital Rights Management

GUI Graphical User Interface

HA High Availability

IP Internet Protocol

Kbps KiloBits per second

Mbps MegaBits per second

MIB Management Information Base

M-JPEG Motion JPEG

MPEG Moving Picture Experts Group

O&M Operation and Maintenance

QCIF Quarter CIF resolution (176 x 144 pixels)

QVGA Quarter VGA resolution (320 x 240 pixels)

RDT RealNetworks Data Transport

RTCP RTP Control Protocol

RTP Real-Time Transport Protocol

RTSP Real-Time Streaming Protocol

SDP Session Description Protocol

SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol

UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

URI Uniform Resource Identifier

URL Uniform Resource Locator

WCDMA Wideband Code Division Multiple Access