Streams Menu
A stream is the building block for the rest of the VVCR’s features. It’s what receives your feed from your encoder and brings it into the cloud. Once you have a stream, you unlock all the other features. You can send it to however many destinations your cluster can handle, add it to multiviews, record it, and create clips from it.
You must have an active Cluster before you can create a stream.
All streams are listed in the Streams Menu. Streams are ordered numerically and then alphabetically.
Each stream displays the stream’s Name, Cluster, Input Type, Creation Date, the date it was last updated, and its Status.
The far right column includes the Edit button, Multiview Creation Shortcut, the Duplicate Stream button, and the Delete Stream button.
A duplicated stream will have the same settings & encryption passphrase as the original stream. It just requires a new Stream Name.
Click on the Stream to access the Inputs, Outputs, Output Audio Tracks, and Transcoding tabs.
The Inputs tab displays the IP Address, DNS Address, Passphrase/Stream Key, Status, and Telemetry Reports. Copy the IP Address and Passphrase/Stream Key and paste them into your encoder to route a feed to that stream.
The Outputs tab includes the Pull Outputs, Destinations, and Stream Preview.
The Pull Outputs window displays the IP Addresses and DNS Addresses for the stream’s outputs. VVCR provides an RTMP, and SRT output address.
The Destination window lists all the Destinations that the stream is currently routed to.
Click on the Preview button at the bottom of the window to preview the stream.
The Output Audio Tracks tab allows you to assign audio tracks to the different Output Types. This is only relevant if you have streams with multiple audio tracks.
Audio tracks can also be assigned in the Destination menu. We have more information on this on page 26, or check out our video at support.vvcr.tv.
Creating a New Stream
To start, go to the Streams tab and click Add New Stream.
Then, give your stream a name.
From here, we are going to break down each section of the stream creation menu.
Primary and Backup Clusters:
If you have multiple clusters active on your account, you will see a Backup Cluster dropdown menu appear.
Backup Clusters create region redundancy in VVCR. This provides some protection in case AWS Regions experience issues during your shows.
If you would like to use redundant clusters, start by creating two clusters inside the Cluster menu. Create the first cluster in the region closest to you and the second in the next closest region.
Once there are multiple clusters, click on the Primary Cluster dropdown menu and assign a cluster.
In the stream creation menu, select the first cluster in the Primary Cluster dropdown menu and the second cluster in the Backup Cluster dropdown menu.
If you only have one cluster active on your account, that cluster will automatically be added to the Primary Cluster dropdown menu.
Primary & Backup Encoders:
Primary and Backup Encoders provide extra redundancy for streams while keeping them within the same VPC. Redundant Encoders allow multiple sources to send to the same VVCR stream simultaneously.
Create a new Cluster with at least two Instances.
Create a new Stream and adjust the settings as necessary.
Go to the Encoder Redundancy menu and enable Primary and Backup Encoders.
Select the “cluster-name”-streamer-1 for X Primary and the “cluster-name”-streamer-2 under X Backup.
If there is just one instance, which is the default when you create a cluster, Single Encoder will automatically be checked under the Encoder Redundancy menu and Instances will be set to Auto.
Once you save your new stream, select your stream in the Stream tab and click the Inputs tab.
Each instance is assigned a different SRT address. Send your Primary Stream to the first address and the Backup Stream to the second address.
To switch between your Primary and Backup Output Addresses, go to the Output tab and click on the Input dropdown menu. This is one way to pull down your streams into a decoder for monitoring or for destinations that need to be set to SRT Caller or RTMP Pull.
You can also switch between the feeds in the Destination Menu. Go to the Destinations tab and click Add New Destination.
Give the Destination a Name and select your Stream.
Then, if you need to switch to your Backup Stream during a show, go back into the Destination’s Settings. To do this, go to the Destinations Tab and click on the Edit icon in the far right menu bar of your destination.
Click on the Stream Encoder dropdown menu and switch from Primary to Backup.
Configure the rest of the Destinations Settings and Press Save.
It can take 5-10 seconds for the change to reflect on the platform.
If you want to learn more about Primary and Backup Encoders, check out our video and article at support.vvcr.tv.
Input Types
VVCR can accept input streams as SRT Listener, SRT Caller, RTMP Push, RTMP Pull, or NDI Input. NDI Input is only available on Clusters with Transcoding enabled.
For SRT Caller streams, paste in the Encoder Address and Port Number from your SRT encoder.
For RTMP Pull streams, paste in the Stream URL and Stream Key from your encoder. There is an option to paste in a username and password if the stream source requires extra authentication.
For RTMP Push streams, the stream key will display in the stream creation menu.
The Stream URL is found under the input address section once you save the stream.
Uncheck Generate Stream Key Automatically to create a custom Stream Key for RTMP Push streams.
For NDI Inputs, select a stream under the Available NDI Inputs section.
You need to have active NDI streams from your Production Instance or pull in other VVCR streams with Transcode to NDI enabled. To learn more about this, go to page 44.
Encryption
Enable Encryption under the Input Settings column to require a password to send a feed to the VVCR stream.
VVCR Supports AES128, AES192, and AES256. This can be changed under the Encryption Type dropdown menu. The menu will not appear unless Encryption is enabled.
Uncheck Generate Passphrase Automatically to create a custom password.
Check SRT Output Encryption to require a password to pull the stream down from the VVCR. Output Encryption has the same settings as Input Encryption.
Latency & Stream ID
Click in the Latency window under the Input and Output Settings to adjust the latencies. VVCR accepts anything between 120ms and 4000ms.
If the latencies don’t match between VVCR and the stream source, it will automatically take the highest latency.
If a stream source requires a Stream ID, paste it into the Stream ID window.
Click here to learn more about Redundant Encoders.
Click here to learn more about NDI Streams.
Click here to learn more about Lower-Resolution Multiviews.