Overview of Kaltura Live Recording to VOD
Kaltura Live supports Live to VOD recording. Providing live events/programs to on-demand viewers extends the reach of your live content and allows users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content when they choose to.
The VOD recording is done in real-time while the live stream is broadcasted. When the recording session is completed, the content is uploaded as standard VOD into the Kaltura platform.
How to Enable Recording?
When creating a live stream entry in KMC, you will see a checkbox allowing you to enable/disable recording and a drop-down which allows you to select the recording mode. For additional information on see Creating a Live Stream Entry in Kaltura Using the KMC.
What is Defined as a Recording Session?
A recording session starts when the live broadcast starts and recording is enabled.
A recording session ends when:
- A live broadcast is stopped for longer than 3 minutes.
or - The recording duration has exceeded 24 hours.
Recording Modes
- "Create new entries for each broadcast session" - This mode creates a new recording for each recording session. This is the default.
To split recordings between live broadcast sessions, we recommend to stop broadcasting for at least 5 minutes before starting a new event. Otherwise, the system assumes an accidental disconnect and will continue appending the recorded content. - "Append the recorded content to a single entry" - This mode appends any recorded content to a single recording asset. Chose this option if you want to append different live events/parts into one recording. Note that the maximal recording duration is 24 hours.
What is Being Recorded?
All the live flavors are recorded, regardless whether they are generated by cloud transcode or pass-through modes. These is no transcoding performed during/after the recording process.
Metadata and channel membership (ie. category) attribute can also be synched from live entries to their corresponding VOD, which is helpful for playlists and other places where the Live EntryID is added but the VOD is used for playback. This feature is enabled by your Kaltura admin on the backend.
Live Redirect to Recording
When a recorded live session ends, the platform automatically redirects viewers to the recording entry ID. This is useful as there is no need to publish a different URL for the recording.
Recording Redundancy
Recording is performed both on the primary and backup data center (as long the encoder stream is to both data centers), but only the recording on the primary data center is published. Be certain that you stream to the primary endpoint, otherwise, your recording may be compromised.
Known Limitations
The maximal recording duration per recording entry is 24 hours.
Live clipping is not supported (The ability to create a clip out of a live stream while it is still live)
Changing encoder configuration (resolution/bitrate/codecs/different flavor set) in the middle of a recording session will end up with a partial recording.
