Wowza Streaming Engine Erfahrungen

Nadaje Broadcasting recommends Wowza Streaming Engine

Kommentare: Nadaje Broadcasting use Wowza to stream in multiple use cases: RTMP to HLS/DASH; RTSP to HLS/DASH; Secure token streaming with CDN - protected internal corporate streaming; Transcoding to lower quality to cover all devices. All this makes Wowza very flexible software and Nadaje Broadcasting's main video streaming software partner.

Vorteile:

The most impactful features are transcoding and HLS/DASH web streaming. The software was easy to integrate and operate via the API and integration is stable while upgrading. Our company use Wowza Streaming Engine for over 10 years!

Nachteile:

Additional charges for support and a bit heavy memory usage in some use cases. Also logging was not possible per a vhost.

Wowza Streaming Engine is the heart of our business

Kommentare: Overall, our experience has been extremely good. We run two servers that are load balanced and the primary also is linked to a third party CDN. Without the CDN, we can comfortably stream HD to over 300 viewers and with the CDN enabled, there is no limit. The Wowza Streaming Engine is more tolerant of of venue origin streams than many other services and that is extremely important.

Vorteile:

Wowza Streaming Engine dependably delivers our live sports webcasts. The compatibility with our JW Player is perfect and the live DVR allows fans and statisticians to go back and review plays. The system is well understood by most web developers, it is very full featured and the license fees are affordable when deployed on our own equipment.

Nachteile:

Deficiencies, in my opinion, are the complexities of storing separate files for each ABR resolution and automating a system to create SMIL files for on-demand playback. A single file with all resolutions would be very preferable. There is no function within Wowza to accept an uploaded file and translate it into usable frame aligned files for on-demand playback. We have to use an unauthorized file naming plug-in in order to automate our playlist and SMIL file creation.

Poor customer experience with support and billing

Kommentare: Our overall experience with Wowza Streaming Engine has been a mixed bag. It has required a lot of time and work to achieve the results that we were looking for. Upgrades and patching have been difficult and the documentation is at times out of date, incorrect, or difficult to follow. Support has been difficult to deal with especially since they will reference and send you links to the documentation to "help." It's been very difficult to work with Wowza and our experience overall has been poor. The software works well enough to get the job done but offers nothing exceptional in return.

Vorteile:

Wowza has been an important part of our systems over the past 7 years or so. We have built several systems around streaming video on campus for different purposes. Wowza has been a mostly stable product that has allowed us to transmux, transcode, and distribute video across campus for a decent price.

Nachteile:

The configuration and management of the servers is difficult. Upgrades in our environment are difficult because named user account configurations are difficult to deal with around the Wowza Streaming Engine product. You have not made it easy to upgrade software and full version upgrades from version 3 to version 4 was incredibly difficult. Webrtc implementation took some work to get working properly. Documentation is out of date at times and hard to follow. Customer support has been the worst experience we have had here and is causing us to rethink our use of Wowza. We keep on trying to change our billing but no one will work with us on it and we keep having billing issues every year. We never receive billing notices. We get late notices without ever receiving an initial billing notice or request. We request a PO but only get told to use a card. Our customer service representative never returns our calls and has not been helpful in this matter.

Streaming software for just about anyone

Kommentare: We have found Wowza to be a great company to work with. Even though we use the tiniest fraction of the tools and services that Wowza offers, we get great customer service and attentive help whenever needed. We feel like we are important clients, even though we are nowhere near their largest client.

Vorteile:

As a government TV station broadcasting council meetings and live press conferences to the public, the reliability of our 24/7 live stream is number one priority. But, our live stream is just a small fraction of the services we provide and we don't have time for a product that needs full time handholding. Wowza has been a consistently steady friend in this endeavor. Plus, we also love being able to route the stream to as many places as we need to.

Nachteile:

Setting up a new stream involves a lot of options and settings that, when we were brand new to the tool, were confusing and somewhat tedious. We had to document the settings we wanted and referred to that documentation for a long time before we had it down. A more streamlined set up, perhaps even with a 'copy from previous event' would go a long way in making the tool easier to use.

Using Wowza to stream to .NET console application over HTTPS

Kommentare: We have customers that are requesting a level of security that requires all documents and files, including videos, to be transported over HTTPS. We could copy and cache the videos on each user's machine, but it is far more efficient to be able to use a streaming video server to stream the videos over HTTPS and Wowza enables us to do this.

Vorteile:

It was very easy to set up and use the streaming engine. It supports a wide variety of formats. It is capable of doing everything we need it to do and much, much more. The documentation was, for the most part, very clear and easy to follow, and the support staff that I contacted were very responsive and helpful.

Nachteile:

As stated, the documentation was helpful, clear, and easy to follow, for the most part. I realize that our use case was an edge case as compared to the standard Wowza user, and that learning how to set up https/SSL/Streamlock, creating certificates, etc. does not actually have anything to do with Wowza software per se. However, their documentation in this regard was a big sparse and I had to supplement this with additional research. The stated requirement and references to OpenSSL was particularly confusing, because this piece of software was not required to do what I needed. I am unsure why half of the references say to use the Java keytool to create certificates, and other references state a requirement for OpenSSL to perform actions for which the keytool is definitely capable. Additionally, there was some confusion regarding the format of the URL to get the videos to successfully play over HTTPS. The format that the support team sent me did not work. However, by thoroughly reviewing the software in order to fully document my case for further support, I was able to come up with a format that did function. The fact that all these link formats should in fact point to the same place and perform the same function, but that only one actually worked, is probably my biggest, and really only, complaint with the software.

Wowza Streaming from a 2nd-generation admin

Kommentare: Having inherited the administrative duties and development/implementation of the Wowza Streaming Engine from my predecessor, it's been an interesting experience. The interface came across as a little daunting, with terminology I didn't recognize, at first, however; after quite a bit of homework, I feel quite comfortable with the system now. I went through the process of installing, configuring, and updating a secondary trial version on one of our internal testing servers to learn more about the system. Overall, the experience of working with the Wowza Streaming Engine has pleasant.

Vorteile:

Most of the features of the Wowza streaming engine are extremely easy to use; Streamlock, creating/updating VOD applications, and configuring server setting (e.g. media cache) to name a few. The analytics tools are also extremely useful for reading usage over time, as well as identifying moments in time when the server(s) started experiencing issues, making any necessary debugging less time-consuming.

Nachteile:

Sometimes the bugs are extremely difficult to debug. We had a recurring issue where the server would suddenly become unresponsive. There was never really any clear indication why it was hanging, nor was there any sense of cause. It seemingly occurred at random points of the day without any clear cause. Restarting would quickly fix it, but it was still a frustrating system-interruption. Customer Service made this issue easier to manage.[SENSITIVE CONTENT] were all extremely helpful. After updating to a newer version the issue appears to have been alleviated (though it did still occur once last month).

The WOW factor in Wowza Streaming Engine

Vorteile:

Super smooth effortless and simple installaton, amazing flexibility with different OS, minimum computing requirements, Wide & vast Streaming input and output options , Scalability without disturbing existing workflow, seamless harmony for low to high load needs , indepth forums for help , intelligent engine that understand your needs at ease and delivers in abundance .

Nachteile:

Miss the turnkey options like raw wireframes for key verticals like VOD pages with options of brand logo etc , video mixing , native features like screen grabber & streamer , video or GIF overlays . Expected option of Whitelabel or Blacklist feature for IP on the fly, transcoder control via infographcis as a rolling window menu, a more iteractive menu window with complete controls on stream IO page or Test page itself could be a boon for users.

Support is really long and troublesome

Kommentare: I've used Wowza for ten years and tbh my recent experience of support is poor. Its always been slow and not great but recently we've been trying to implement a server for nearly 3 months with out of the box features not working properly. Support is slow, they don't respond fully, they will only deal with one issue at a time and they miss the point a lot. It's not a great experience and all Wowza say about it is spend £2k with us and we will do it for you - well that misses the point that the support is just not up to standard at the moment and hasn't been for quite some time now (months).

Vorteile:

Some features if you can get them working

Nachteile:

Difficult to setup, lots of things are very different in implementation than on help articles

The most flexible and economical streaming video platform

Vorteile:

Simple to use, a large community available to find more specific solutions, good frequency of updates, excellent support.

Nachteile:

The documentation is sometimes too vague, to solve a simple and specific problem you have to proceed with trial and error.

A versatile and flexible streaming solution

Vorteile:

High number of ingress protocol compatiblity, modularity.

Nachteile:

Transcoding quality cannot be compared to libx264, required too high datarates compared to quality. Transcoding resource requirement is high.

Worst software ever

Kommentare: My experience has been horrible. I have not had a single positive interaction with the software or the support staff. I was hired at my current company and no one had administered this software that was left at the company. All but one of the active live streams all broke on the same day and I have been trying to get any of them to work again. I have submitted multiple tickets with Wowza and have been given no assistance. They send me pre bottled scripted answers to questions I did not ask then ask me for information about the topography of the internet. I will say that again, I am told by the support team that they can not assist me because I can not give detailed information on all hops and network between my wowza streaming server in our DMZ and the client computers failing to stream files from somewhere out on the internet. I have tried talking to them to get past this, but they just close the ticket on me. I have had one technician reply after the initial response email was sent out before they too closed the ticket. None of them giving me answers. I have followed the guides that they have on their website with multiple other engineers at my company and we have not been able to get a single stream to work. From what I have seen this is the worst software I have ever tried to use that was considered complete and on the market.

Vorteile:

I liked the IDEA of what this software could accomplish, but it barely functions at that.

Nachteile:

Everything from the interface and where things are to configure streaming to the capabilities of it streaming.

Powered by Wowza

Kommentare: We were able to customize the software using their catalog of RestAPI endpoints in conjunction with custom Wowza Modules to deliver a customized, end-to-end streaming solution used by countless organizations worldwide.

Vorteile:

Wowza Media Server and eventually Wowza Streaming Engine were game changers for our organizations. Prior to finding Wowza, our live streaming solution was a compilation of several vendors. We were able to customize the software using their catalog of RestAPI endpoints in conjunction with custom Wowza Modules to deliver a customized, end-to-end streaming solution used by countless organizations worldwide.

Nachteile:

The java-based software is a bit heavy on system resources as compared to non-java solutions, but it's certainly manageable.

High in reliability and flexibility

Vorteile:

We have Wowza running 24/7/365 within our streaming platform and it has remained rock solid throughout, with minimal issues or errors. Setup is straightforward and offers a high degree of flexibility - you can build almost anything streaming related on top of it. Outstanding feature set. We have also appreciated the continual improvements and updates made to the product over time.

Nachteile:

It takes a substantial amount of technical expertise to get anything but the simplest streaming workflows up and running. This is not a problem for us, as our team has a high level of technical knowledge, but I imagine it could cause an issue for some organizations.

Wowza - our customers love it!

Vorteile:

Wowza has been the number one streaming software pretty much since it was introduced to the market. We have OEM’ed Wowza into our product for many years now & its always stood up to any challenges we have thrown at it. I have personal connections to many of the Wowza team & they have done well to keep a personal touch even when scaling their business

Nachteile:

Some of Wowza’s features can be a little fiddly to set up & configure for non techs, however that creates opportunities for companies like ours who have created a UI that makes it easier to use

Wowza Engine at GST

Vorteile:

Easy to use right out of the box to do Live Streaming.It has its own API for us to use in our applications.

Nachteile:

The (UPGRADE) process could be a little more smoother.

High Reliability & Scalability. Great Value.

Kommentare: It has been a very positive experience. Use the product every day and have not had any issues.

Vorteile:

The Wowza Streaming Engine is supported by our commercial webcasting products because we have found it incredibly reliable, easy to deploy, and efficient in its ability to handle load. As we tested the server at scale, we were pleased to see how cost effectively we could scale, if necessary, to meet our customers' requirements.

Nachteile:

It does everything we need it to at this point.

Feature rich, reliable and well supported

Kommentare: We integrated our hardware encoders with the Wowza Streaming Engine to enable a simple workflow for customers to get live streaming quickly and easily. Wowza provides all of the features our customers require to securely distribute video both inside their company and out in a way that is friendly to the viewers and their IT network.

Vorteile:

Very feature rich and rock solid reliable performance. These guys know streaming better than anyone. It is a very popular product so knowledge and experience gained with it is very transferable. They also have a great team of folks to help you out if you need it.

Nachteile:

There's really nothing not to like about it. It's relatively intuitive to use and does everything our customers need.

The most versatile and cost-effective streaming video platform.

Vorteile:

Wowza Streaming engine is easy to use, develop customized solution which helps us to develop feature on top of streaming service, frequent updates for technology , and outstanding customer support available.

Nachteile:

The resource demand for transcoding is substantial.

Exceptional Support and community

Vorteile:

We found wowza to be easy to use, and implement with a versatile solutions across the board. Support is available at all levels of care and they have an exceptional engineering team to pull from. Well documented and enthusiastic community - 10/10

Nachteile:

there were some unforeseen issues between updates but this was mostly due to not following release details.

Newtek MS1 Wowza Streaming Engines

Kommentare: Good boxes when the work. If you can fix the random stopping. It would be a perfect box for a 24/7 operation. If not, I could not recommend it to anyone who needs a reliable streaming system.

Vorteile:

Easy to use, very nice quality and easy to maintain

Nachteile:

Streaming stops randomly. Unknown reason. Sometimes it runs for weeks, then stops randomly. Newtek gave me software updates, beta software etc.. none have given me a 99.99% up time. I have remote in on weekends and holidays, and after hours just to check if the streaming is running. I think the reason it keeps on stopping maybe due to the constant nagging of the Microsoft Update popup. Don't know. Or it loses it's license information randomly. Who knows. But THIS HAS TO BE FIXED.

Wowza

Kommentare: Again it was great for many reasons like the ease of live streaming and the initial setup.

Vorteile:

I really liked the ease of use and the easy setup. I found all of the video codecs really frustrating and Wowza cleared all that up. As well it made setting up a live stream through our ip camera very simple which was a relief.

Nachteile:

I really found the support documents confusind and hard to follow. When we did run into an issue with CORS headers there seemed to be no straight forward answer with out paid support.

Great and powerful streaming server

Kommentare: The WSE is truly amazing, easy to set up and works with. The support that the company provides is fast, polite and always on point

Vorteile:

Easy to set up, powerful, great support.

Nachteile:

It is sometimes hard to release new modules for different versions because of different Java version support, but not a deal-breaker.

Horrible support packages, no integrity!

Kommentare: Customer service is limited and not a priority. Company integrity is questionable as refunds are not offered post subscription renewal date, even though no service has been rendered. Lots of available options with better customer service and higher standards available.

Vorteile:

Worked with limited functionality. Lots of options that are better.

Nachteile:

Support takes days unless you pay extra.Back and forth with support very slow, not built for a production environment. Failed to cancel on the day of renewal and was not offered a refund (though we are not using the software) Customer service is not a priority.

Quality transmissions

Kommentare: When using WebRTC, Apple Low-Latency HLS or SRT, its speed is incredible, providing perfect image quality, which was previously difficult for us to achieve when streaming.

Vorteile:

I like how well it works, at first I really liked their customer service where they explained everything to me in a friendly and easy way to understand the functions to put them into execution in the transmissions that have been more innovative and more stable at the time

Nachteile:

I just have to say that they have provided an excellent service more than expected

A good software for sending your video streamings to third-parts

Kommentare: I have solved the viewing of cameras which make the connection using 4G allowing to me to save and resend the video to another departments witouth lossing quality.

Vorteile:

The software is very easy to use , you need the minimun time for making the installation and put the settings for testing it. You dont need to have specifical skills or an special enviroment.

Nachteile:

the documentation is very hard to understand, specially if you need to make addons to the software like customizing the website or offering a good front-end to other customers. In additiont to that, I dont see a policy of profiles with restricitions for giving your streamings. You could have clients connections which need 100% of the videos using passwords and another free connections.