Your Content Delivery Network Checklist
Our product manager Blake Wenzel was a recent guest speaker for a Streaming Media webinar on How to Master Live Streaming. During the webinar, Blake highlighted a great checklist for what a company should look for when setting up their CDN (Content Delivery Network) to stream a live event. Here’s a quick summary of what he covered on the webinar:
Test your encoder with real content
Don’t just run a black feed through your encoder. Make sure to check the correct upload of your encoder through your content delivery network with realistic video content. Use past footage, preferably of similar content to what you’ll be putting into your encoder for your live event.
Know your content and adapt your ABR cascade
Don’t use 3mb/s for 720p talking head content, because you can get away with less bandwidth for those “low action” streams. Tune your stream for the content. High movement, action-heavy content will require more bandwidth than fixed images or talking heads.
Don’t underestimate audio quality
When you’re streaming in the low 100’s of kbs make sure not to drop too low on audio. Most viewers in the 100-200kbps range are viewing the video on a mobile device, so they won’t benefit from extra video quality as much as they will from the audio quality. And, you can always consider switching to mono when you’re looking to conserve bandwidth.
Make sure your encoder’s network isn’t available to everyone
Either have a dedicated network or a QoS set-up so that if someone is on your network and downloading a file or updating a system they won’t slow down your video during the live event.
Know your support team
Make sure you have the numbers and names of key people on speed dial just in case something goes wrong at the last minute.
Have a backup plan
Depending on how critical the live stream is, consider having a backup network or even a backup CDN in case of a worst case situation.
Get access to real-time stream diagnosis
Real-time analytics on your live stream aren’t only good for the marketing team. Stream diagnosis can give you a heads up if there’s an issue with the stream, so you can correct on the fly.
To learn more about using your CDN for live events and how to master live streaming, you can watch the Streaming Media Webinar here.
