Streams¶

The Streams screen is the central workplace of the node: a single list of the configured streams with their state, active input, bitrate, “Uptime” and the continuity error counter “CC”. Each row expands on click and shows the inputs and outputs of the stream with their state, reservation priority, notes and active alerts; an individual input or output can be paused and resumed from here, while the “Show in library” button next to the address opens the list of the other domain endpoints at that address (Library — this feed). The stream concept and the transmission model are described in Transmission model: Stream, Sender, Receiver, Peer; SPTS processing — in SPTS streams, the MPTS multiplex — in MPTS streams.

The list is grouped by type: single streams (SPTS) form a common list, below it are the “MPTS streams” and “Adaptive streams” (ABR bundles) groups. The navigation and control facilities are placed above the list:

Search and filters: The “Find stream…” field searches by name, note and input/output address and highlights the matching row without shortening the list. The “Tags” filter limits the list by stream labels, the “SPTS / MPTS / Adaptive” switch shows or hides the type groups, and the “All / Active” segment hides paused streams.
Actions on the selected stream: The header contains the actions applied to the expanded (selected) stream or ABR bundle: “Stream statistics” (Stream statistics), “Open in pipeline” (Pipeline), “Configure stream” (Configure stream) and “Delete stream”. The “+ New stream” button opens the creation window. The administrator can drag rows to change their order — only among SPTS streams and only when the list is shown in full: with no tag filter, in the “All” mode and with all types enabled. The same move is done with the Alt+↑ and Alt+↓ shortcuts (Keyboard operation).
State and alerts: A color state indicator, the stream attribute badges (CBR/VBR, scrambling, DRM protection, operation on the backup input, audio-only or video-only, codecs, TRACE) and the mark of active alerts. Alerts are bound to the stream and to its inputs and outputs (Alerts (alerter)); the TR 101 290 report and the deep analysis section are opened directly from the row.

The individual windows of the screen are described below.

New stream¶

The stream creation window. The type is selected with a switch: a single program (SPTS), a multiplex (MPTS) or an adaptive bundle (Adaptive); for SPTS the “Content type” is specified additionally. After an SPTS or MPTS stream is created, the editor opens immediately (Configure stream). No separate editor is opened for an adaptive bundle — the members and their bitrates are set directly in this window, because the bundle is built from already configured OTT streams. The differences between SPTS and MPTS are described in SPTS streams and MPTS streams, adaptive bundles — in Adaptive bundles.

Configure stream¶

The main stream editor. The settings are grouped into tabs; for MPTS streams the “OTT” tab is not shown.

Stream: Identification (name, display name, for SPTS — the stream type, note) and stream behavior: timeout, check interval, re-check of the main input, mosaic generation (Mosaic), EIT extraction into the EPG database (EPG Database) and the scrambling attribute for SPTS. For SPTS, EIT generation from the selected EPG source and its channel is configured here as well (EIT generator).
Inputs: The list of the stream sources with their priority and reservation (Source redundancy and distribution). Adding and editing an input open the input and output editor (Input and output editor); an individual input can be paused. The muxer input is offered only in an empty list: in an MPTS stream it is added first, and while it is there the “Add input” button is disabled with the note “The muxer input must be the only input of the stream.” — a multiplexer has no input reservation. An MPTS stream that receives a ready multiplex over the network does not have this restriction: its inputs are ordinary and are reserved.
Outputs: Delivery of the stream over the transmission protocols (Peer protocols for reliable transmission) and the standard transports (Other inputs and outputs). Every output is added and edited through the same editor. A stream can have only one ps1 output — when the next one is being added, this type is no longer in the list; the other types are repeatable.
MPEG-TS: The bitrate mode of the output transport stream (Bitrate control) and — for SPTS — the “Network ID”, fixing of the PAT/PMT interval, filtering of the service tables (CAT/ECM/EMM, EIT, NIT, SDT, subtitles, TDT, teletext; MPEG-TS filtering), rewriting of the SDT and of the program number (Stream modification), as well as automatic PID arrangement for the program and the base PID of its window (Automatic PID arrangement).
OTT: OTT delivery of the stream: the HLS and HTTP service modes (Delivery modes), the stream name in the URL, extraction of teletext subtitles into WebVTT, chunking and low latency (Segmenter), DVR recording to the selected storage (OTT and DVR) and DRM content protection — HLS AES-128 or CENC (Content protection (DRM)). SPTS only.
Analysis: Quality control of the transport stream: verbose tracing, deep analysis of the elementary streams, the TR 101 290 monitor, analysis of PCR/PTS discontinuities and of the T-STD video buffer, synchronization drift compensation (Analyzer).
Alerts: The general switch of the stream alerts and the delay before raising alerts on the errors of its inputs and outputs (Alerts (alerter)); the thresholds are set at the node level (Alerter).

Saving changes that affect a recorded DVR archive is additionally protected by a confirmation (Confirm DVR changes). The individual windows of the editor are described below.

Input and output editor¶

The window for adding and editing a stream input or output. The transport type is selected at creation and cannot be changed afterwards (to change the transport, the input or output is re-created). The parameters are distributed over tabs:

Properties: The address, port, binding to a network interface and the connection parameters of the selected transport. Peer protocols and standard transports are described in Planning and data transmission protocols; encryption — in Stream encryption. For PS1 and SRT inputs, automatic sign-in by Meshwork peer authorization is available, with the option to switch to a manual login and password. The address can be pasted from the clipboard (“Paste URL”) or a source can be selected from the domain catalog (“Select from library…”, Library sources). For a transcoder input, the decoder and the encoding parameters, including the frame resize mode, are set here as well (Transcoders).
MPEG-TS PID: Selection and remapping of PIDs on an input or an output: PID accept (white-list), PID reject (black-list), remapping of PIDs and of the audio-track language. While automatic PID arrangement (Automatic PID arrangement) is enabled for the stream, the PID remapping group is hidden on the inputs and has no effect; the accept and reject lists keep working as before. On the muxer output PID remapping is retained — it belongs to the multiplexer (PID mapping) — but the source PIDs in its pairs become the PIDs assigned by the automatic arrangement.
BISS: BISS descrambling keys for a scrambled source — a single key for SPTS or one key per program (PNR) for MPTS (BISS descrambling).

Library sources¶

Selection of an input from the common resource catalog of the Meshwork domain: a list of the streams of the same transport already delivered on the nodes of the domain, from which a source can be connected without entering the address manually. The list is filtered by source node and by text and is split into pages; sources of the same domain in peer protocols are marked with the “peer” attribute (Shared resource catalog). Not to be confused with the Library — this feed window: here the catalogue is used to pick a source, there to see who else works with an address that has already been set.

Library — this feed¶

The “Library — this stream” window: the source and the consumers of one address. — The “Library — this stream” window: for the input of a stream it shows the source (`output`) and two other consumers (`input`) of the same address.¶

The window answers the question “who else works with this address”. It is opened by the “Show in library” button next to the address of an input or an output: in the expanded row of the stream list, in the input and output lists of the stream editor, on the input and output cards of the pipeline (Pipeline) and in the statistics window — at the active input and in the “Outputs” section. The subtitle of the window is the address of the endpoint it was called from.

The button exists only for the transports that enter the shared domain catalogue: UDP, RTP, Pro-MPEG, RIST, PS1 and SRT (Shared resource catalog). A transcoder, muxer, demuxer, file or test generator input has no entries in the catalogue, and therefore no button either — this is not a sign of a fault.

The window lists the other endpoints of the domain that work with the same address. The own inputs and outputs of this stream do not enter the list, including its backup inputs: the operator sees them anyway. Another stream of the same node listening on the same address, however, is an ordinary neighbour and is shown on a par with the rest.

The “Direction” column shows the role of the endpoint: output — it delivers this stream (the source), input — it receives it (a consumer); the sources are listed first. The other columns are the same as in the shared catalogue: “Proto”, “Node”, “Stream” and “Destination” (the address and the port). After the address the “verified” mark is shown: this pair was confirmed by the node through the domain authorization rather than inferred from matching addresses — when working through NAT the addresses of the two sides do not match anyway. No more than one row per listening socket receives the mark: the node names a single representative among the confirmed sessions, and it changes as clients connect and disconnect. The absence of the mark therefore does not mean that the link is not real.

A click on a row opens the admin UI of its node at the statistics of its stream. A row of the own node opens in place, a row of a neighbour according to the “Open nodes in” setting of the top bar (Common bar); Ctrl or ⌘ forces a new tab. The row of a node that is unavailable or unknown to the network has no action and carries the “Node unavailable” tooltip.

A match is computed by protocol and by the full address — the group and the port — and for UDP, RTP, Pro-MPEG and RIST by the VLAN and the SSM source as well. An endpoint on the same group but in a different VLAN or with a different SSM source will therefore not enter the list, and neither will an endpoint of another transport at the same address. For PS1 and SRT no address match is required at all: the calling side names its partner by host name, and that name is matched against the membership of the domain — which is why the address of a row found this way may look entirely different. The confirmed pair is found the same way, by the node and stream names given by the listening side.

The two messages about the absence of neighbours mean different things:

Message	What it means
“There are no other registered endpoints at this address.”	The endpoint is announced in the catalogue and has no neighbours.
“This endpoint is not announced in the library (only running network inputs and outputs are announced).”	There is no entry for the endpoint itself in the catalogue: the stream is not running, the input or output is paused, has only just been started or has been excluded from publication by the Peer private field (Shared resource catalog). In this case the neighbours are not absent — they are unknown.

The same catalogue in its entirety is shown by the Library screen.

Programs¶

The multiplex (MPTS) program editor, opened from the muxer input configuration window: the program composition of the output stream, the program order in the PSI and PID assignment. A program is added from among the configured SPTS streams or removed; the order is changed by dragging, and on a narrow screen by the Alt+↑ and Alt+↓ shortcuts (Keyboard operation); an individual program can be paused. When automatic PID assignment is disabled, the PMT PID and the elementary stream PIDs are edited for each program. Multiplex assembly is described in Multiplexer, the allocation of programs and PIDs — in Program parameters and PID mapping, transit and analysis of MPTS streams — in MPTS streams.

Confirm DVR changes¶

A warning shown before saving stream changes that affect an already recorded DVR archive: disabling the recording, switching to another storage, reducing the retention period or the protected minimum, as well as changing the DRM key of a stream with recording (the previously recorded encrypted segments then become inaccessible). The window lists exactly what will be affected and requires confirmation; safe changes (the first attachment of a storage, an increase of the retention period) are saved without a prompt. Recording and archive retention are described in OTT and DVR and DVR: the stream archive.

Stream statistics¶

Detailed stream statistics in a separate window, updated in real time. Opened by a link from another screen, the window also shows this stream in the list behind it: it clears the filter that was hiding it, expands the row and scrolls the list to it. The sections are:

State summary: The current state and message of the stream, the attribute badges, the active input and the number of outputs, the bitrate mode, the picture format and codecs, the OTT delivery links and a live frame snapshot (Mosaic). Here as well are the TR 101 290 verdict icon that opens the full report and the “Show in library” button at the active input (Library — this feed).
Multiplex / KPI: For SPTS — the key counters (input bitrate, CC errors over the window and in total, scrambled packets); for MPTS — the multiplex table with the aggregate rates and the state of the programs (Per-program analysis).
Charts: Time series: bitrate, continuity and scrambling, PCR jitter, packet loss — with a choice of window and scale.
MPEG-TS check: An express check of the structure (TS, PAT, PMT, PCR, audio/video and their ES), the overall TR 101 290 verdict and the program signaling attributes (Validity check).
Input diagnostics: Expandable blocks: “Media information”, “Input connection”, BISS decryption, EIT generation, “Analyzer” (PCR and synchronization metrics, and below them the PID table of the active input with the “PID”, “Type”, “Bitrate” and “Packets/s” columns), stuffing and “Deep analysis” — the GOP structure, the T-STD buffer, the video codec passport, PTS/DTS discontinuities, SCTE-35 (Continuous measurements, In-depth analyses). The composition of the section depends on the input: a muxer input has no section at all — it has no socket, and the programmes are shown by the multiplex table; on network reception of a ready MPTS only “Input connection” with the indicators of its own transport remains, while “Media information”, “Analyzer” and “Deep analysis” are hidden — such an input has no per-programme measurements. BISS decryption is shown for SPTS only: for MPTS the BISS counters are kept per programme (BISS descrambling). The EIT generation and stuffing blocks appear by themselves when the stream generates EIT or adds NULL packets.
Outputs: Telemetry of every running output: state, destination, bitrate, counters of sent traffic and the transport-specific indicators (PRO-MPEG FEC, PS1, RIST, SRT, RTMP). The outputs in the transports of the shared domain catalogue carry a “Show in library” button (Library — this feed).
OTT / DVR: The delivery URL templates, the metrics of the chunk ring and of the DVR archive, the charts of archive coverage and of subtitle replicas (OTT and DVR, Archive playback (VOD)).
Profiler and Stream log: The load of the processing threads (share of a core) and the structured log of the stream events.

The TR 101 290 report also opens as a separate window; the analyzer as a whole is described in Analyzer, the TR 101 290 monitor — in TR 101 290 monitor. The administrator can reset the cumulative statistics and erase the DVR archive.

Adaptive bundle¶

The adaptive bundle (ABR) configuration window: the bundle name and the name in the URL, the composition of the member streams and their bitrates (“0” — auto). Only SPTS streams with OTT delivery enabled can be members; they are added and removed directly in the window, and the bitrate is set for every variant. The bundle is published as a single master playlist by which the client selects the quality. Adaptive delivery is described in Adaptive bundles, DVR recording for OTT — in OTT and DVR.