How to Play or Download a VOD Asset

Phenix will create a VOD asset when the on-demand capability is set during publishing, as described in this page.

VOD files can be played in the Portal.

VOD assets created by Phenix can be downloaded and played with any standard media tool. Here we provide examples of two commonly-used tools, FFMPEG and FFPlay, but the steps will be similar for other tools.

Find the Stream ID for the asset in the Publishing report or Channel Publishing History in the Portal, e.g.,

us-central#us-chicago-1-ad-3.bq0yFcD5.20231213.PSn2FWam

URL-encode the stream id, replacing # with %23:

us-central%23us-chicago-1-ad-3.bq0yFcD5.20231213.PSn2FWam

Insert your Application ID and the URL-encoded Stream ID into the command:

ffmpeg -i https://pcast.phenixrts.com/video/<applicationId>/<streamId>/vod.m3u8 -c copy output.mp4

The asset will be saved to a file named output.mp4.

If the VOD asset is protected with token-auth, add a viewing token to the command:

ffmpeg -i https://pcast.phenixrts.com/video/<applicationId>/<streamId>/vod.m3u8?streamToken=DIGEST:eyJ... -c copy output.mp4

Insert your Application ID and the URL-encoded Stream ID into the command:

ffplay https://pcast.phenixrts.com/video/<applicationId>/<streamId>/vod.m3u8

If the VOD asset is protected with token-auth, add a viewing token to the command:

ffplay https://pcast.phenixrts.com/video/<applicationId>/<streamId>/vod.m3u8?streamToken=DIGEST:eyJ...