IPTV Live Video Encoding & Streaming with Multiple Profiles

Adaptive / Dynamic Bitrate Streaming

Adaptive bitrate streaming is a video delivery technique that adjusts the quality of a video stream in real time according to detected bandwidth and CPU capacity.

To enable adaptive bitrate streaming, you need to create multiple profiles of different video resolutions, framerates and bitrates, from low quality to high, for a same stream source. For example:

SDTV @ 15fps @ 800Kbps
HD @ 24fps @ 1200Kbps
FullHD @ 30fps @ 2000Kbps

IPVTL supports up to 5 profiles per channel, in RTMP, HLS, and MPEG-TS over UDP output formats.

To set up multiple bitrate profiles, create or delete profiles by clicking "+" or "-" button on bottom of encoding settings panel. In each profile, you can define different video sizes, bitrates and even encodings. Make sure to specify a distinguishing output address for each profile. And remember to set a same Key Frame Intv. for all profiles to keep video key frames aligned.

HLS Adaptive Bitrate Streaming

After setting up multiple bitrate profiles for HLS output, we got several live playlists like 1080p.m3u8, 720p.m3u8 and 480p.m3u8. A master playlist is required for end users to switch among these playlists. You can create the master playlist manually like below:

XTM3U
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=2000000,RESOLUTION=1920x1080
1080p.m3u8
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1200000,RESOLUTION=1280x720
720p.m3u8
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=800000,RESOLUTION=854x480
480p.m3u8
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=400000,RESOLUTION=640x360
360p.m3u8

Put the master playlist with other playlists in the same file folder. And publish it on your streaming website.

Note: Multi-profile encoding consumes more computing resources than single profile does. So consider your hardware specification before doing so.

Stream from Single Media Source to Multiple Destinations

Another case of IPVTL multi-profile streaming is to cast one video stream to several sites synchronously. For example you can stream your live tv program to Youtube, Twitch, Facebook and wowza at the same time in one channel.