CODEWITHSUNDEEP
azureazure-media-services
Chris Kooken
Chris Kooken

Reputation: 33870

Azure Media Services/Player Auto Start with Live Event

I am starting to get familiar with Azure Media Services and I wanted to see if anyone had some thoughts on live events and start times.

We offer a paid live event, so via our web application, users can join the "presentation" up to 30 minutes before it starts.

In azure, we typically start the channel 1hr beforehand to get everything set up, and start the "Live Event" at the exact start time. What is the best practice for showing a "this presentation will begin shortly" message and auto-starting the feed when the event starts?

Is it best to start the "Live event" 30 min early, and use a slate, or can the Azure Media player basically sit and wait for the event to start? Does this happen automatically, or would I need javascript to keep trying when OnError happens? Basically, I don't want users to have to refresh the page or anything when the even starts. It should just start playing right at the start time.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 485

Answers (1)

johndeu
johndeu

Reputation: 2512

I'll take a stab at this one Chris.

For most live events that are produced by our customers (including Microsoft Studios here on campus), we typically start the channel about 20-30 minutes prior to the event time with a slate and music. Usually that slate is coming from the encoder rather than from a slate on the live channel in Azure Media Services. Reason for that is there is a lot more control locally in the production pipeline for animated slates, music, fading and switching, etc. You can achieve this with low cost options like Telestream Wirecast, or a NewTek Tricaster setup.

n azure, we typically start the channel 1hr beforehand to get everything set up, and start the "Live Event" at the exact start time. What is the best practice for showing a "this presentation will begin shortly" message and auto-starting the feed when the event starts?

We then monitor the Preview feed URL from the Live Channel in Azure just to make sure everything is operational and running correctly. When it is close to showtime (5-10 minutes or so ahead), we will start the recording (Start a new Program). This is not automatic, but you could certainly use multiple methods to automate the calling of the API to create, start, and stop the Program via our REST API or client SDKs.

To your point, the new Program creation will generate a new Program URL for playback. Your users or web page code would need to refresh. If you have a requirement that the users are going to arrive really early, you could either start the Program recording a lot early and publish that URL - but you would then want to use our Dynamic Filters or Subclipping feature after the event to remove the long slate at the head of the event.

Another trick could be that if you automate the start of the live Program recording, you could also use SignalR or some other out-of-band notification to signal the player in the page to reload the src URL and begin playback. I've seen that trick used before as well.

Hope that helps. Bottom line, there are a lot of creative options, but nothing "built-in" and automatic at this time.

Upvotes: 2

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