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JW7 Wowza DVR Streaming through Cloudfront - Can't get DVR to work.

I'm sending a live nDVR stream through wowza and while I can get the stream with full DVR functionality when I set the source file using the Wowza url but whenever I try to use the cloudfront url to the stream I can only see the live stream. No DVR.

I've checked using Wowza's test players and can get the DVR stream using their silverlight player (although it only seems to seek back to when I started viewing the stream, not all the way to when the stream began).

I'm using Self hosted JW7.0.1, with a Premium license, and trying to use HLS for the multiplatform support.

I've already contacted Wowza support on this and couldn't figure out the issue so I'm wondering if it might be a problem with JWplayer.

Wowza support mentioned that most query variables aren't supported when doing streaming through Cloudfront, but they did say that the "DVR" variable should be working.

Is there a way to get this to work? If so, I'd love to see an example.

9 Community Answers

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Todd

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Is your DVR stream working correctly in our Stream Tester at http://demo.jwplayer.com/stream-tester/ ? Do you feel comfortable pasting your HLS URL here so we can test on our side?

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dbreit

User  
0 rated :

Sure. Here's the test page I'm using. The stream itself is the same 3 minutes of content in a loop.

http://jupiter.rmxpres.com/TestJW7/main.htm

The Wowza Stream URL:

http://video03.rmxpres.com:1935/rmxedge/smil:bxvideo.smil/playlist.m3u8?DVR

The Cloudfront URL:

http://d3tykex7tjv52j.cloudfront.net/rmxedge/smil:bxvideo.smil/playlist.m3u8?DVR

I just tried the Stream Tester and got the same results.

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dbreit

User  
0 rated :

Sorry, I had to shut down the stream since the DVR recording is eating up the hard drive space on my server.

Is there a time we can schedule to where I can run the stream so you can test on your side?

That way I can avoid filling up my entire server.

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Todd

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

How about tomorrow at 11 am EST?

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dbreit

User  
0 rated :

Certainly. I'll start the stream at 10:30.

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Todd

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Ok, here’s what I see when I curl your chunklists from the command line:

The Wowza URL I tested (http://video03.rmxpres.com:1935/rmxedge/smil:bxvideo.smil/chunklist_b1496608_DVR.m3u8) returns a list of all the fragments and increments the list to add a new fragment with each refresh. This is exactly what I would expect from a DVR stream.

Your Cloudfront version at http://d3tykex7tjv52j.cloudfront.net/rmxedge/smil:bxvideo.smil/chunklist_b1496608.m3u8 is just returning the three most recent fragments. When I request the same chunklist a few seconds later, the new fragment is listed, but the oldest of the three has dropped off, so it is acting like just a live stream.

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dbreit

User  
0 rated :

Thanks, that helps a lot.

Currently we have Wowza set up to stream both live and DVR.

What it sounds like is that the Cloudfront url is only accessing/seeing the live stream, and not the DVR stream even when I specify it to look for it.

It seems like the problem's not related to JWplayer, and as far as I could figure out the Wowza stream is setup correctly the problem may be with how our cloudfront instance is setup.

Thanks again for the help.

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Todd

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

You’re welcome. I’ll leave this thread open in case you want to report back with a possible resolution, in case anyone else comes across a similar issue in the future.

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jordi

User  
0 rated :

Hi guys, I thought I should share my findings since I've been testing the same thing with Wowza and CloudFront and found the solution.

dbreit, you have to go to the CloudFront distribution > go to the distribution settings of the distribution > Behaviours > Edit the default behaviour > Select Yes for Forward Query Strings and Save. This will make the ?DVR parameter get forwarded to the origin.

Let me know if you find any further problems, I might have been through them as well and have a solution. I myself am considering buying JW 7 Premium since all open-source players are one step behind and I don't feel like coding, so if all goes well for you, I'll probably buy the license to develop my project.

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