Announcing ClearCaster Universal Mode
The Wowza ClearCaster™ appliance now supports broadcast-quality streaming to any destination with Universal Mode, a cloud-based user interface that simplifies command and control over your encoding workflows.
Focused on preventing encoding mishaps and first-mile delivery issues, the new #ClearCaster Universal Mode allows event producers to reliably power their encoding workflows with advanced monitoring, encoding presets for popular streaming destinations, cloud-based workflow management, and adaptive network encoding. Additionally, ClearCaster can be integrated with the Wowza Streaming Cloud™ service or the Wowza Streaming Engine™ software for support and monitoring from encode to distribution.
The Problem: Video Contribution Issues
Event producers and service providers continue to tell us that the least reliable part of their video streaming workflow occurs from the encoder through the first mile of ingest. Because there simply aren’t enough tools on the market to help event producers succeed, this fragile segment leads to frustration. In fact, 72% of event producers recently surveyed by Wowza said they were unsatisfied with their ability to detect a problem before broadcasting a live stream.
In response to this feedback, Wowza got to work building the ultimate solution for reliable encoding workflows.
The Solution: Advanced Control and Visibility to Automate Decisions
The Wowza solution is focused on providing better control, monitoring, and automation to enable a more reliable streaming experience overall. In order to enable this model, Wowza optimized the encoding workflow and simplified management.
A typical encoder exposes encoding presets to local event producers and then presets these settings from broadcast to broadcast. While this is useful when streaming engineers are on hand, this doesn’t suit the fast-paced and ever-changing world of live event streaming. What’s more, an encoder that only looks inward at its local configuration files lacks visibility into network conditions.
To improve this model, the ClearCaster’s Universal Mode now relies completely on cloud-based intelligence for command and control. The powerful encoder receives configuration settings on a per-broadcast basis from a cloud API — while also sending out real-time telemetry data that can be used to make informed decisions.
This new approach improves reliability via increased control, monitoring, and automation.
Streamlined Control: Prevent common on-premises issues from occurring and improve reliability by leveraging the Wowza model for stateless appliances. The ClearCaster Manager and API control all encoder decisions, ensuring you can easily manage your appliance from anywhere — with new broadcast settings sent to the appliance each time it goes live.
Advanced Monitoring: Leverage visibility into the on-premises workflow to quickly identify issues and pinpoint the cause of the problems. Receive a constant stream of health data from your on-premises equipment in a centralizing cloud manager. If local, you’ll also receive a full view of your encoding workflow via the streaming engineer HDMI monitor view.
Improved Automation: Use the full control and real-time monitoring capabilities to automate decisions. New features include Wowza’s adaptive network encoding capability, which constantly monitors network conditions and automatically decreases the bitrate in adverse conditions.
ClearCaster Feature Updates
There have been some exciting new additions to the ClearCaster feature lineup since our last release. Here are the latest ClearCaster capabilities.
Encoding to Any Destination
Simplify your broadcast workflows through streamlined templates.
Gain full control over remote management from any browser via our cloud-based user interface.
Select your encoding output (including #4K) and deliver it to multiple destinations.
Adaptive Network Encoding
Increase reliability with adaptive intelligent network encoding, which constantly monitors network health and automatically decreases bitrate in adverse conditions.
Simplified Workflow Management
Use the cloud-based ClearCaster Manager for command and control, as well as real-time health monitoring over all your appliances.
Integrate ClearCaster into your Wowza Streaming Cloud or Wowza Streaming Engine workflows for the highest-quality publishing from encode to distribution.
Leverage end-to-end support from Wowza, including stream health metrics and logging across your entire workflow.
Use trusted encoder presets fully integrated with Wowza Streaming Engine and Wowza Streaming Cloud.
Deliver over the first mile with our reliable, proprietary WOWZ™ protocol.
The new Wowza ClearCaster Universal Mode is just the first step in solving for reliable video contribution. Contact a sales account representative today to learn more or set up a demo.