Month: May 2017

Video system status and other updates

You should be experiencing less buffering and more stable connections to our video system at this moment. You may go back to using the Chicago ingest server if you haven’t already.

Live Viewers count isn’t showing for everyone, it seems. This issue has been traced to a potential buffer overflow issue in our custom server software. This poses no security threat and is harmless. Mostly annoying.

And we’ve updated our Terms of Service across all of our products. You can find the Terms of Service by clicking the Terms link at the bottom of any of our services.

 

Chicago video ingest issues

If you are a streamer and are experiencing dropped frames or your viewers are experiencing a lot of buffering/choppy playback, try switching to a different video ingest server in your encoder software. At the moment our Chicago ingest server is experiencing some intermittent issues that we are working to resolve.

You can find a list of video ingest servers in the channel settings page of the site you are streaming to. Example: https://breakers.tv/settings/channel

Our sites still use Flash

At the moment all of our sites use Flash to display video and chat. Don’t worry, we’re in the process of moving away from Flash. But in the mean time it appears some browsers (such as Google Chrome) are disabling Flash by default. Here is how you enable Flash on our sites for now:

  1. Click to the left of the URL in your browsers address bar
  2. Change the Flash property to Allow and then refresh the page

You should see something like this pop up if you’re using Google Chrome

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If you’re using Firefox, click the little lego looking icon to the left of the URL in the address bar and click Allow and Remember

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For Microsoft Edge users, click the puzzle piece in the address bar and click Always allow

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New video ingest server and Puffin Browser

In case you didn’t notice, we added a brand new video ingest server located in New York, US about a week ago. You can find the RTMP URL for it in your channel settings, or rtmp://live-nyc.vaughnsoft.net/live

Also, we’ve come up with a workaround for being able to view chat on Puffin Browser for those on our Vaughn Live site. You should now be able to see chat on Puffin Browser once again!

Wowza GoCoder Tutorial

If you’ve wondered how you can stream from your mobile device in HD, then this post is for you! Today we’re covering how to configure the Wowza GoCoder which is available for both Android & iOS for free!

Step 1: Install Wowza GoCoder on your mobile device.

Step 2: Run Wowza GoCoder and you’ll be presented with the following screen

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Step 3: Tap the “W” gear icon

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Step 4: Go to Wowza Streaming Engine

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Step 5: Tap Host

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Step 6: Here you will input the video ingest server and the port number. You can find a list of video ingest servers under the Channel Settings page on the website you’re streaming to.

Note: When inputting the ingest server, do not include rtmp://! Only the domain name! Valid ingest servers (current at the time of this posting):

  • live.vaughnsoft.net
  • live-ord.vaughnsoft.net
  • live-den.vaughnsoft.net
  • live-nyc.vaughnsoft.net
  • live-ams.vaughnsoft.net

Tap Back once you’ve entered the ingest server and port number. The port number is 1935

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Step 7: You should be back at this screen now. Tap Application.

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Step 8: Here is where you input your stream key, which is found under the Channel Settings page of the site you’re streaming to.

Example stream key: btv_abcd_1234

Regardless of what site you’re streaming to, the Application value must be set to “live”. Stream Name is where you input your stream key.

Tap Done and you should now be at the camera preview screen.

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Step 9: To go LIVE on your channel, simply tap the big red button in the bottom right. You can also adjust the stream bitrate by tapping the numbers in the bottom left.

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Step 10: Now that you’re LIVE, you’ll want to be able to read chat. To read chat, you will need to use a second device. At the moment our chat system is Flash based so you’ll need to use either a special app that allows you to load Flash content or a device that natively supports Flash (such as a laptop or an older Android device). We understand not everyone has multiple devices, however this tutorial is for streaming HD content to your channel from your mobile device and does not include chat due to it being a third party app.

To view only chat on a secondary device, we recommend using the popout chat URL. If you are streaming to Breakers.TV and your channel name is themvn, then you would use the following URL:

http://breakers.tv/popout/chat/themvn

For any further technical help, please visit Tech Corner and one of our awesome volunteers will be glad to assist!

Video Ingest Servers

Los Angeles (LAX) video ingest server is being removed due to the numerous connectivity issues streamers have experienced. Those within North America that used the LAX server should use the Denver server instead. If you are outside of North America and used the LAX server, then you should use the Amsterdam server instead.

We’ve also launched a new video ingest server in New York City. It can be found in your channel settings, along with the list of our other available ingest servers.

Bug Fixes

The following bugs have been squashed:

  • Header/Background previews being too large
  • What content is allowed on profile photos, headers, backgrounds, and in the about section
  • Header/Background previews not working on Breakers.TV
  • Updated Breakers.TV to the new video ad player which provides less browser lag and better user experience (no more annoying loading animations and flickering)
  • Breakers.TV browse thumbnails not showing if clicking a category within the browse box