Hey guys! I’m quite confident this is a network issue, but as I don’t have access to the network I need to know what to tell the IT guys to check for. When I try streaming to twitch using RTMP I am getting an “input output” error, but when I try streaming to Youtube I get an “empty URL” error. I use rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2 as the URL for Youtube and the streamkey as the Stream Name. For twitch I am using rtmp://den.contribute.live-video.net/app/{stream_key} as the URL (with my actual stream key in there instead of the braces). I have checked with IT, and they have unblocked port 1935 for RTMP, but still the errors persist. Are there any other ports or network settings I need to get configured?
Hello Chris,
I’m sorry you’re running into these errors! At first glance they might appear to be network errors, but it’s entirely possible they’re related to issues on the Pearl, or possibly in how the streaming information is configured. There are a couple things I’d like to check, first and foremost, which version firmware is your Pearl running? The most recent version is 4.14.2f, and that “Input/Output” error is usually seen on older firmware. If there are network restrictions blocking the firmware download you can contact us at info@epiphan.com and we can give you some direct links so you can manually update.
Second, for your Twitch section are you entering the entirety of the stream key at the end of that URL? On Pearl you actually don’t need to enter anything at the end there, you could even leave it as {stream_key}! The important thing is to make sure you enter the stream key in the ‘Stream name’ section.
Hopefully, checking these two things will get you up and streaming, but if not we can always keep troubleshooting!
Thanks for the speedy response! I am on version 4.8.0g, however when I check for updates it says I need to register before I can install new firmware. I just registered, but it is still not allowing a firmware update. I will check again tonight and see if the registration just needed time to process.
I added my stream key to the stream name in my twitch stream settings, however I am still getting an input/output error.
Registration can be a little tricky, there’s a confirmation email that sometimes get sent into spam so folks miss it. I can see a registration on our end though, it looks like it’s been confirmed so that’s good! At this point it shouldn’t take the Pearl longer than 30 minutes or so to acknowledge the registration. This can be affected by firewall rules and network restrictions in some cases though, so if you aren’t able to download it soon definitely send us a message or give us a call!
Alright, I’ve got the firmware updated, and am still having issues with my streaming output. I’ve got two channels set up, one for YouTube and one for Twitch, and both have the same behaviour. When I click on a channel, select “streaming” and then go to start the stream, the button is greyed out. I have tried several of Twitch’s ingest servers as my URL, and an currently set to their Toronto server. I am using my stream key as the Stream name. On YouTube I am using their main ingest server, and also have my stream key set as the stream name.
Under the configuration menu, in the network section, I ran a network diagnostic for connectivity status which return all check marks except 802.1x which is disabled, and the Support server which reports “Connection denied by support.md.epiphan.cloud”.
I then ran a ping to 8.8.8.8 which returned 0% packet loss, and a ping to Twitch’s RTMP server (rtmp://yto.contribute.live-video.net/app/{stream_key} which returned “Error performing ping”. When I looked up an IP address for the ingest server, DNS Lookup returned 52.223.243.249 as a potential IP address, and a ping to this address returned a Timeout performing ping.
It looks like I can perform a traceroute to that IP address, which seems odd, but I can’t ping it. Do you have any other ideas?
The grey Start button is something we see occasionally after a firmware update. Typically all you need to do to resolve that issue is perform a hard refresh on the page by pressing Ctrl+F5 if on a Windows PC, and Shift+Command+R on a Mac. You can also manually go into the browser settings and clear browsing history/cache and this should do the trick as well. It’s purely a visual glitch that can occur due to browser cache issues, happens to some folks, but not others.
As for why the Ping test to that address doesn’t work, it’s possible that particular server is configured in a way that doesn’t allow it to be pinged. What you could try instead is a Probe test using the “rtmp://” option to the url “yto.contribute.live-video.net/app/{stream_key}”, this should return an “OK” response if all is good.