Glitchy webcasts

Using the church webcasting portal to stream sacrament meetings for the stake.

I got some feedback submitted that users couldn’t hear audio and were having buffering issues.

I logged into the church webcast portal and saw the “media server” icon for all of my buildings flashing red. The streams were reporting encoder bitrates of 100-300 kbps, with the targets being 2,100 kbps.

I don’t know why the media server icon was flashing red. But it eventually went back to solid green. The encoder bitrates on all of my streams are still low.

I lost audio on two sacrament meetings today and wound up reloading the browser page before I was finally able to get the sound to return.

Can you direct message me your stake name so I can have the team look at the event logs. If you had several events in your stake, also provide the times or event names for those events that had problems. I am not aware of a widespread issue, but having all the media servers flashing red is concerning for sure.

bphilli7, you may also want to provide information on what type of encoder you are using and what the internet bandwidth capacity for the building is. Also information like: Do you turn off wifi in your building for broadcasts? was the encoder using a wired connection? etc.

bphilli7 wrote:I logged into the church webcast portal and saw the “media server” icon for all of my buildings flashing red. The streams were reporting encoder bitrates of 100-300 kbps, with the targets being 2,100 kbps.

I'm not sure if connectivity would affect the media server servers.

One thing that might be worth considering is re-checking which data center gives best results from your chapels. During the test, I'd keep an eye on which ones are consistently good rather than one that comes from the back of the pack to finish first.

russellhltn wrote: I'm not sure if connectivity would affect the media server servers.

One thing that might be worth considering is re-checking which data center gives best results from your chapels. During the test, I'd keep an eye on which ones are consistently good rather than one that comes from the back of the pack to finish first.

I don’t have problems with connectivity.

I have re-checked and confirmed I was set to the best data center setting. There’s no “back of the pack which finishes first” thing going on.

The stream bandwidth suddenly drops to 10-100 kbps and the stream suffers.

hicksticks2001 wrote:bphilli7, you may also want to provide information on what type of encoder you are using and what the internet bandwidth capacity for the building is. Also information like: Do you turn off wifi in your building for broadcasts? was the encoder using a wired connection? etc.

I am using a teradek vidiu pro in one building and a jtech encoder in the other building.

Both buildings have 40Mbps down/5Mbps up DSL with centurylink.

I turn off WiFi in the buildings.

The encoders are using wired connections.

bphilli7 wrote:The stream bandwidth suddenly drops to 10-100 kbps and the stream suffers.

It might be time to talk to your ISP. That sounds like throttling.

russellhltn wrote:

bphilli7 wrote:The stream bandwidth suddenly drops to 10-100 kbps and the stream suffers.

It might be time to talk to your ISP. That sounds like throttling.

Is that what causes the Media Server icon to go red?

I’ll give them a call.

bphilli7 wrote:Is that what causes the Media Server icon to go red?

I think so. I think it will also go red if there is no stream during the event time.

Different buildings, different encoders, no one else having the same multi-complaint. The local connection seems to be what's in common.