Record Live Stream

This tutorial will guide you on how to record your live stream and send it to the encoder.

Requirements

For this tutorial, you will need

1. The plugin SendRecordedToEncoder
2. Streamer and Nginx Live Stream Server need to be on the same server
3. If Streamer and Nginx are separated make sure you configure the getRecordedFile.php

Step 1

Make sure you update your streamer and encoder. if you are not sure how to do this, check this tutorial

Step 2

create a directory to store your recorded lives, and gives permission to Apache and Nginx to write on it. Make sure this path match with the record_path parameter on Nginx conf

For example:

sudo mkdir /var/www/tmp && sudo chmod 777 /var/www/tmp

Step 3

Change your nginx.conf file

sudo nano /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf

and then add those lines to your file

recorder video{
    # record all; # Use this line if you NOT want to use the controls
    record all manual;
    record_path /var/www/tmp;
    record_notify on;
    record_max_size 2048M; 
    #will produce files of the form yourUserKey-24-Apr-13-18:23:38.flv
    record_suffix -%d-%b-%y-%T.flv;
}

your RTMP section should look like this.

rtmp {
        server {
                listen 1935;
                allow play all;
                #creates our "live" full-resolution HLS videostream from our incoming encoder stream and $
                application live {
                        allow play all;
                        live on;
                        #record all;
                        #record_path /video_recordings;
                        #record_unique on;
                        hls on;
                        hls_nested on;
                        hls_path /HLS/live;
                        #hls_playlist_length 4s;
                        #hls_fragment 1s;
                        hls_fragment 10s;
                        on_publish http://192.168.25.16/YouPHPTube/plugin/Live/on_publish.php;
                        on_publish_done http://192.168.25.16/YouPHPTube/plugin/Live/on_publish_done.php;
                        on_play http://192.168.25.16/YouPHPTube/plugin/Live/on_play.php;
                        on_record_done http://192.168.25.16/YouPHPTube/plugin/Live/on_record_done.php;
                        recorder video{
                            record all manual;
                            record_path /var/www/tmp;
                            record_notify on;
                            record_max_size 2048M; 
                            #will produce files of the form yourUserKey-24-Apr-13-18:23:38.flv
                            record_suffix -%d-%b-%y-%T.flv;
                        }

                }
        }
}

Check your on_record_done directive, it needs to be pointing to the live stream plugin, on_record_done.php file

Step 3

Restart your Nginx server

 sudo /usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -s stop && sudo /usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx 

Step 4

Go to your plugin menu and enable SendRecordedToEncoder plugin

Start Record

you can trigger the recording with the following URL: {$global['webSiteRootURL']}plugin/SendRecordedToEncoder/recordStart.json.php?key={live key/name} if you are admin or the video owner this should start recording right the way, but if you trigger it from a third-party app you may need to validate it with the Start Recorder Callback

Parameters

webSiteRootURL

After a live stream, your video will be sent to the encoder. if you want to force a Streamer URL use this parameter.

This is useful when your Nginx uses a different network to connect with the streamer.

In case you are not sure, just leave this empty

Start Recorder Callback

This URL will be used to validate all recording requests and will always return a JSON

1. If it is not legitim it will deny the record with error=true: {"error":true,"msg":"error message"}
2. If the record request is legit, it may respond error=false: {"error":false,"msg":"message","recordLimit":3600,"username":"admin","password":"123"}

• recordLimit: it is the record time limit in seconds, so 3600 = 1 hour
• username: that is the username that this live will be recorded to, so it will be the owner, this user will be created in case it does not exist
• password: only need in case the user does not exist, we will use this password as its default password

This URL can also be replaced by your own custom validator.

Features

Download and Save the moment

These two features work in a similar way, but when clicking on Download the user will download the video and when clicking on save, the video will be sent to the encoder and saved in the video library

DVR

The DVR feature is required to make the Moment work

DVR is a feature that lets your viewers pause, rewind, and continue during the live stream. Once a viewer resumes playing, the live stream will continue from where they hit pause.

How to configure

hls_playlist_length

Make sure you have this option uncomment on the nginx.conf

hls_playlist_length 60m;

where 60m means you will have a 60-minute DVR saved on your server

Usually, you can edit nginx.conf with this command: sudo nano /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf

hls_fragment

HLS streaming is the process of creating small fragments (typically only a few seconds in length)

You need to pay attention to the hls_fragment size, is recommended to keep it 4 or 5 seconds only, this configuration also reflects in your latency, so 4 or 5 seconds are good enough.

hls_fragment 5s; the amount of time for each segment of your live stream (HLS)

Plugin Save The moment Segments Count and Download The moment Segments Count

So if you want to set your Save/Download the moment to save the last 20 seconds of the live, you have to set the "Segments Count"=4, so when you click on the button you will save/download the number of segments defined in the option "***The moment Segments Count"

for example, if you have the following configuration:

hls_fragment 5s; Save The moment Segments Count (plugin configuration) = 4

When you click on the Save button we will convert the last 4 segments (5 seconds each) of your live stream into a single 20 seconds MP4 file, so (4x5=20). this count is not always exact, but it comes to a value very close to 20 seconds.