VOD Locations

Content:

• Creating a VOD location
• Managing files via the web interface
• Using multiple directories in one VOD location
• VOD settings

Creating a VOD location

To enable the VOD broadcasting feature, you need to specify a virtual filepath, called a VOD location. One VOD location can contain multiple directories — multiple VOD locations can be used to organize video files and apply different sets of settings to files in each location.

For example, if we would like to broadcast files from the /movies directory, we would first add a vod directive to /etc/flussonic/flussonic.conf:

vod myvod {
  storage /movies;
}

Here, myvod is the unique name of our VOD location. VOD files in this location will be served with the myvod prefix. The movies option specifies the directory that Flussonic scans for VOD files.

It is also possible to create VOD locations from the Web UI. Navigate to the media list in Media, and click the add button next to the Files (VOD) heading. Enter the location name and a filepath (or a URL path). Click Save to apply your changes.

Under this configuration, files will be served with the prefix vod via the HLS, DASH, RTMP, and RTSP protocols.

You can specify multiple sources in one file prefix. Files can be broadcasted from local and cloud storage. See Setting up multiple paths for one prefix

You can find the whole list of VOD location settings here.

Managing files via the web interface

Flussonic Media Server's web interface includes a full-featured file manager. It is possible to load and view files on the local disk as well as those stored in the cloud.

After adding a vod prefix to a VOD location in the configuration file or in the web interface, go to the VOD tab:

Then click Browse. On the page that opens, you can add files to the VOD location, create nested directories to organize files, play files and get links for playing VOD files.

Using multiple directories in one VOD location

When dealing with a high volume of streaming traffic, the best strategy may be to put your system's hard drives in a JBOD (non-RAID) configuration, where each hard drive mounts to a separate directory.

It is possible to configure a common file zone from multiple directories in Flussonic Media Server. Under this configuration, a file's URL will stay the same, even if it is moved between different devices (which are all mounted on different directories):

vod myvod {
  storage /mount/disk1;
  storage /movies;
}

VOD settings

Described below are the options that can be used in the vod directive. They specify various file broadcasting settings.

vod

cache

domain

domains

storage

read_queue

download

max_readers

thumbnails

auto_mbr