Teradek - Can't get out of the building

[chapmanjec]

First time caller from Lehi UT.

Backstory: We had an older Teradek. Stake center has a PTZ camera in the corner, installed a few years ago. We spent three hours one evening trying to bring it online. It went through several firmware updates and finally froze, claiming 'no video input.' Did a few hard resets. No change.

Our system has a no-name composite to HDMI bridge just prior to Teradek in the chain, and I was able to verify live HDMI video at its output by plugging in a TV from nearby. Decent picture for 480 composite being upscaled, but I digress. So video was live and stable. Maybe an HDCP handshake issue? Whatever. Teradek was mad and we couldn't get around it. Facilities sent out a brand new copy, which was clearly a few versions more advanced. It features built-in WiFi for configuration, blah blah blah.

I connected it, ran a couple firmware updates. All seems to be well. I turned off WiFi because we don't need it. It's pulling an IP address from the DHCP server, I can access settings via the wired building computer. Everything looks good. I imported settings via the XML option and the stream ID and details were automagically populated.

Then we hit 'broadcast' and both the Teradek and the web UI say 'starting...' and that's it. The stream is never visible on any receive device, even though the credentials seem to line up perfectly. The video image we're capturing is visible in the local machine's web UI.

Originally I set Teradek to 5 megabits encode because the building connection could support it. Later we received auto-emails saying that the church backend couldn't handle things faster than about 2.3, so I backed the settings way down and tried (multiple times) again.

Then I killed the XML option and build my settings manually. Still no luck. Can't get outside the building. The (church) webcast control panel keeps saying 'start broadcast' and never acknowledges the stream we're sending.

For Sunday, then, we stepped way down to Larix on an iPhone and a tripod, with decent results and fantastic image quality, but that's a different story.

Questions:

1. Does church IT lock things down based on Mac address or similar? The *new* DHCP address was different than the old one, so we manually set it back in case it was just that simple, but no luck.

2. Anyone else been down this road before? A bread crumb or two would be incredible at this point.

Thanks for your time.

John

[russellhltn]

Originally I set Teradek to 5 megabits encode because the building connection could support it. Later we received auto-emails saying that the church backend couldn't handle things faster than about 2.3, so I backed the settings way down and tried (multiple times) again.

Obviously it was getting out.

1. Does church IT lock things down based on Mac address or similar? The *new* DHCP address was different than the old one, so we manually set it back in case it was just that simple, but no luck.

No. But do make sure the building's firewall filter setting is "moderate" (lowest level). It may not be able to get out if set higher.

I'd be careful about manually setting the IP as you could run into a conflict. That will kill the feed. It would be a good idea to have the STS assign a static IP to it.

I'd check the device settings against what's recommended. Perhaps you have something set wrong such that the feed is being rejected.

If you're setting the device manually, be aware that the upload URL/stream ID change with each broadcast. Using old settings will result in a fail.

[chapmanjec]

Thanks Russell, I'll find someone with access to the firewall and take look there. At the time, arp-a was showing a generally empty local network, so I wasn't too worried about collisions. But I sincerely appreciate the feedback.

If anyone reading this works on the webcast portal, it'd be nice to see detailed logs / feedback / stats for failed attempts, even if that view is buried from normal view.

Random: is it possible to directly email trouble tickets to Church AV/IT? I downloaded FIR on my phone, but the mapping is broken for the last few hours, so I can't even submit the beginnings of a ticket. There's nothing worse than writing detailed technical documentation with two thumbs on a screen that's too small.

[russellhltn]

Random: is it possible to directly email trouble tickets to Church AV/IT? I downloaded FIR on my phone, but the mapping is broken for the last few hours, so I can't even submit the beginnings of a ticket. There's nothing worse than writing detailed technical documentation with two thumbs on a screen that's too small.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/fir will get you the same thing as a app. However, that just goes to FM, so I don't know as it will help in this situation.

You can email to MHT. (mht@church.....) That should find it's way there.

[chapmanjec]

Brilliant thanks.

[danpass]

I had similar issues setting up a new VidiU Pro several weeks ago. In my case, I discovered that although DHCP was correctly handing out the static IP I configured in the firewall, and the Teradek did accept that assignment, the DNS server IP's were not getting set in the Teradek's network configuration. Once I manually added the DNS info, the Teradek was able to connect to the auto config server as well as the broadcast server.

Since your device is able to connect to get auto config, it doesn't sound like you have the same problem. But do check the Teradek network settings.

[chapmanjec]

Thanks Dan. Any reason to not force something like 8.8.8.8 or 4.2.2.1 for DNS? DHCP was pulling something obscure in I think 8.* that I totally didn't recognize, and didn't take the time to look up in more detail.

What's super odd is that Teradek was mad, but iPhone / Larix on building WiFi (I know, I know) worked reasonably well. I'll head back over there later today or tomorrow and see what else I can learn. Baby steps.

[danpass]

When the church was using OpenDNS for content filtering, you had to use specific DNS servers and devices manually configured to use anything else were blocked. I don't know if the current filtering has similar restrictions. I just used the DNS I saw the firewall had assigned other devices on the meetinghouse LAN.

[chapmanjec]

Clues for anyone who may come later:

1. I went back to the building and started over. Held down the reset button on the encoder for 10+ seconds to blow away its entire config. Then I rebuilt it line by line. Initially I told the encoder to use the XML file to pull configuration for each stream.

2. Encoder was getting its address from via DHCP. Assigned DNS server was 8.31.31.? (sorry, didn't write it down) which reversed to a box somewhere that's owned by L3. So far, so good.

3. Used the encoder web UI to run a speed test. According to it, our pipe can support full HD at 10+ megabits; however I knew the church backend would barf if I set it that high. So I manually dropped my video encode rate down to 1920 x 1080, 2.0 megabits for video, and best quality for audio. Also, speedtest.net was showing a ~50/12 connection from Comcast. For reference my inline composite->HDMI converter apparently only outputs 1080p30.

4. Attempted to broadcast with the same results as before: 'starting' on the encoder screen, 'starting' on the web UI, 'begin broadcast' prompt on the Church control panel. No joy.

5. Went back to the Teradek broadcast settings and changed configuration to 'local' but didn't adjust the stream data from what was auto-filled in the boxes. The strings (still) matched what I needed to see in the church control panel. Then I changed the user agent to 'Teradek' from its default of FMLE and tried again. Pic stored here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16ShVGA ... sp=sharing

Best I can tell, the user-agent field is *new* to this Teradek and doesn't appear in any current Church documentation.

And now, all is well. Test broadcast was decent to a few different viewers. Upscaled composite video quality still isn't awesome, but that's a dragon to chase on another day.

Tomorrow I'll go back and retry this using the automatic XML file as before. I shut down the computer, but Windows decided that now was a great time to do housekeeping - "DO NOT TURN OFF!!" and since the internal drive is a spinner, I went home. Ain't nobody got time for Win10 updates on a machine without an SSD.

John