Azure Media Services custom streaming/recording (RTMP) setup

Azure Media Services is an enterprise-ready media streaming and encoding service offered by Microsoft. It is highly customizable and configurable with the ability to apply enterprise policies to the distribution of the content. For more information see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/services/media-services/.

You can stream a Pexip conference to Azure Media Services and then share links to that conference with other people. See Live event streaming and recording for details about other streaming options.

Note that this article does not cover the full configuration options that are available in Azure platform, only how to configure a channel for RTMP ingestion of the Pexip Service VMR stream. Distribution of the live stream and/or recording is also out of scope for this article.

  1. Create a Media Service:

    1. From the Azure Dashboard search for or select Media Services.

    2. Select +Add or Create media service to create a new service.

    3. Specify the Account Name, Subscription, Resource Group and Location.

    4. Select a storage account or create a new one.

      When creating a storage account you can choose the specific type account based on your requirements.

    5. Select Create and this will build your asset. This takes a few minutes to complete.

    6. When complete, go to your Resources.

  2. Create an Azure Channel. A channel is a Microsoft name for a live video encoder.

    1. You can create a channel by scrolling or searching Live Streaming then choose Quick create or Custom create. Quick create is shown here.

    2. Name the channel and then select Create. It takes a few minutes to deploy the channel.

      While the channel is being deployed the message Starting channel is displayed.

      When the channel is set up the channel Dashboard is displayed. This page is the Azure control center for the streaming channel and live events. It also has the ingestion URLs that will be used to send the RTMP stream to the channel (video encoder).

    3. Copy the Ingest URL as you will need to use this for the MyPages streaming integration.

    4. When the channel is first created, a default live event is created.

  3. Create Azure Streaming Endpoints.

    You now need to create a streaming endpoint to send the RTMP stream for encoding. A Streaming Endpoints entity represents a streaming service that can deliver content directly to a client player application, or to a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for further distribution.

    1. From the side bar menu scroll or search to locate the menu item Streaming Endpoints.

      In this menu you will see that a default endpoint linked to the default live event already exists. You can use the default endpoint or create new endpoint.

      If you select the default endpoint you are taken to the endpoint page.

    2. From the endpoint screen you can now select Start to initiate the endpoint. This takes approximately 30 seconds to start.

  4. You can now initiate the conference connection from your Pexip app.

Connecting (dialing out) to Azure Media Services from the Pexip app

When your scheduled stream is ready to go live, start your encoder from the Pexip app.

  1. In the Server or stream URL field paste the URL from Azure Media Services, for example: rtmp://streamtest-pexcloud-aueas.channel.media.azure.net:1935/live/ca6f0e832f4342449857f15e648ae589.
  2. In Stream name or key you must enter a stream name, for example pexstream.

    The <whatever> recording will not work if you leave the stream name blank.

See Using a custom RTMP stream/recording integration in the Pexip app for more information.

Starting and playing the stream

When the stream starts in MyPages you can go to the Azure Channel Dashboard.

  1. Select the Live Event (default in this example).

  2. Select Watch to ensure that the encoder is receiving the stream.

    This opens the embedded media player to preview the stream. If you see the stream from your VMR the stream is being sent to the encoder and you're ready to go.

  3. From the Locators on the Live Event page you can distribute different versions of the stream.

  4. When the stream is complete, you must stop the Live Event.

    If the Live event continues to run it will consume your account credits or your account will be charged.

More information: