How do I record streams for VOD playback?

Recording assets is built into the Phenix platform. We provide a simple workflow for recording streams for subsequent VOD playback.

You can easily try creating an asset using the Portal's publishing feature. Select the on-demand capability, click on the Permalink, and start publishing.

Once publishing has stopped, the VOD file can be played in the Portal or as detailed in this page on playing and downloading VOD assets.

To create a VOD asset from a real-time stream that has already started publishing, see Recording an Existing Stream.

To create a VOD asset from a real-time Phenix stream, include on-demand in the capabilities of the publishing token.

When publishing a real-time stream with the on-demand capability, Phenix will also create a VOD asset as a chunked HLS and DASH stream which is stored in perpetuity or until it is explicitly deleted by the customer.

To receive on-demand notifications, set up a notification callback.

The asset will be availble for viewing or downloading after publishing ends. To view content during publishing, use replay.

You can directly access the playlists by fetching the playlist URL from our API to integrate playback with your own player.

Please see additional details on playing and downloading VOD assets.

Alternatively, you can use the same subscribing mechanism as for our real-time streams. In this case, you would need to know the stream id (which can be obtained from the ExpressPublisher object via a getter).

In most cases, creation of a VOD asset starts at the time of publishing, using the on-demand publishing capability as shown above. If you wish to turn VOD capture on and off for an existing stream , use the Start Transcoding and Stop Transcoding APIs.

To start and stop VOD recordings:

1. Note the streamId that you wish to record. This can be obtained by subscribing to notifications or from the API response to the publish-uri method.

2. Determine what asset type is desired (DASH or HLS) and any other options such as quality.

3. Send a POST request to the /pcast/transcoding endpoint as shown in the API documentation. Note the transcodingId returned by the API call.

4. To end capture of the VOD asset, send a DELETE request to the /pcast/transcoding/<urlEncodedTranscodingId> endpoint as shown using the transcodingId returned in the previous step.