Overview
In this article you will learn about Kaltura’s Live plugin features and capabilities.
Setup
To learn how to set the Live and Live Q&A plugins on the player, see The Kaltura Player Studio Admin Guide - Top & Bottom Bar Settings.
Features
- The live plugin contains a live bar section, including the following buttons: Pause, Rewind 10 seconds, Forward 10 seconds, live/Preview, and a Scrubber.
- There are 3 states for live streaming:
- Preview - Entry started streaming using FFMPEG, but isn’t live yet (“Go live” button is displayed in webcasting app).
- Live - Entry is live for all users that have access to the entry page (“End live” button is displayed in webcasting app)
- DVR - User moved backward in the progress bar/ pause entry
- Branding - The live plugin allows changing the default background images used for the pre-Live and post-Live slates.
What is DVR?
DVR allows you to dynamically seek any time position within the currently playing video. The DVR is enabled only if configured on the Live entry in the KMC. To use this feature, users need to slide the scrubber back in the timeline and watch previous sections of the video. You are then no longer in Real-Time of the Live broadcast. Click on the Live button to navigate to the live broadcast. This ends the DVR mode.
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When in DVR mode, there are the following options:
- Users may scrub back any time and be able to replay the correlating time in the video.
The scrubber may move back. This could happen for several reasons:
You may have paused the video.
The live video is not playing but the broadcast is continuing to receive video.
The scrubber may approach the Live point in time:
This may indicate that for some reason the broadcast stopped.
The scrubber stays relative to where it’s located when set to DVR by the user.
If you pause for a time that exceeds the DVR window (time that the DVR can maintain a recording), after you click Play, you are directed back to the Live broadcast.
When in DVR mode, there is an indication instead of the Live button.
When a live broadcast ends, you may continue to view the DVR until the end of the recorded video
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Examples
The following displays the live entry view with the Catch-up feature (DVR) disabled. Note there is no scrubber.
The following displays the live entry view with the Catch-up feature (DVR) enabled. The scrubber is displayed.
Live Catchup - The following displays the progress over the scrubber when hovering on it. You can move the scrubber back to review a live video portion.
Live - The following displays where the video is actually live at this point.
The pre-live slate (Pre slate) displays before a live event starts. A similar slate with a different message (Post slate) is displayed when broadcasting has terminated for a live entry.
Pre/post broadcast image or video slate
By default, the entry thumbnail image is used as a background image for the pre and post slates, but you may provide entry IDs or URLs of a selected image or video to be used as alternative backgrounds for a specific player.
To do so, set the entry IDs URLs in the Live section within the Player Studio in KMC. See The Kaltura Player Studio Admin Guide - Player Settings.
