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Windows Server Forum / Windows Media Server / March 2008Windows Media Broadcast Point Reliability
We've recently configured a Windows Media Server to broadcast live video, and we're having some reliability problems. The main issues we are seeing is that the video will stop, or the video will get stuck in a loop and keep displaying the same video over and over. Our Media Encoders have 4-head Osprey Video Capture Cards, and are running 4 instances of the Windows Media Encoder on different ports to provide the live video to our Media Server. The broadcast points are configured to pull from the encoders. I have tried disabling network buffering and disabling then fast cache, and neither of these options seemed to help. We have also tried using 'push' encoding, but it had trouble when we tried to run more then a single instance of the encoder. Does anyone have any ideas how we could improve the reliability of our service? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Well, first off, we recommended not using that setup for continuous live streaming. We have found that the operational issues and trouble shooting problems with multiple encoders in a single server outweigh the incremental hardware costs. We recommend using four servers and four separate encoders if you are continously streaming four live channels. For example, if one channel 'freezes up' and you have to reboot the server, you lose streaming from the other three channels. Thus, to improve reliability our first recommendation would be to use four distinct servers with four separate capture cards, four separate encoding processes (for continous live streaming) What are you seeing in task manager as far as CPU load and avaiable memory when this occurs? What other programs, such as anti-virus, are running when this occurs? Also, how many player streams and distribution streams are being pulled off the encoder? You arent overloading the encoder with too many streams are you? When you see this behavior, what happens if you pull a stream directly from the encoder versus the media server? > We've recently configured a Windows Media Server to broadcast live video, > and we're having some reliability problems. The main issues we are seeing [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Thanks. Right now the CPU on our Media Server is at about 6% and the CPU on our encoder is hovering around 48%. When the feeds get stuck, they're still available from the encoders, and once we manually stop and restart the publishing point on the media server things start working normally again. Well, first off, we recommended not using that setup for continuous live streaming. We have found that the operational issues and trouble shooting problems with multiple encoders in a single server outweigh the incremental hardware costs. We recommend using four servers and four separate encoders if you are continously streaming four live channels. For example, if one channel 'freezes up' and you have to reboot the server, you lose streaming from the other three channels. Thus, to improve reliability our first recommendation would be to use four distinct servers with four separate capture cards, four separate encoding processes (for continous live streaming) What are you seeing in task manager as far as CPU load and avaiable memory when this occurs? What other programs, such as anti-virus, are running when this occurs? Also, how many player streams and distribution streams are being pulled off the encoder? You arent overloading the encoder with too many streams are you? When you see this behavior, what happens if you pull a stream directly from the encoder versus the media server? On Mar 3, 1:41 pm, "Mike Sheppard" <shep...@wsdot.wa.gov> wrote: > We've recently configured a Windows Media Server to broadcast live video, > and we're having some reliability problems. The main issues we are seeing [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > > Thanks. > Our Media Encoders have 4-head Osprey Video Capture Cards, and are running 4 > instances of the Windows Media Encoder on different ports to provide the > live video to our Media Server. The broadcast points are configured to pull > from the encoders. When the server gets 'stuck', can you still see the stream from the encoder? You should be able to connect directly to the encoder with WMP. Two other things to check: 1. Is this occuring when anyone connects to the encoder or wms server using remote desktop? 2. Do you have any monitoring software, or web/application servers using the same port numbers as the encoder? We ran into this where it turned out that they had an intranet web server running on port 8080 > We've recently configured a Windows Media Server to broadcast live video, > and we're having some reliability problems. The main issues we are seeing [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Thanks. |
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