How to find ingest and playback base URLs

There are two types of base URLs: ingest and playback.

1. The ingest base URL is the first part of the (rtmp) ingest URL, used for the broadcaster to ingest the video stream.
2. The playback base URL is the first part of the playback URL, used for the viewers to watch the stream.

A base URL pair references hardware in different parts of the world. This is important because the ingest point should be as physically close to the broadcaster as possible. Each region is three letters, the airport code of the server location. Use the ingest and playback URL pair in the region closest to your broadcaster.

For any stream session, you must use the ingest base URL and playback base URL pair from the same region. Even though the playback base URL references the ingest location, playback will work for your viewers everywhere.

Find the closest ingest point

You can get the base URL pair for the ingest point nearest to you by calling https://livepeer.com/api/ingest. For example:

curl "https://livepeer.com/api/ingest"

And you should get results like this:

[
  {
    ingest: "rtmp://{nearbyRegion}-rtmp.livepeer.com/live",
    playback: "https://{nearbyRegion}-cdn.livepeer.com/hls"
  }
];

Return a list of all base URL pairs

At times, you will want to use a base URL pair of a region different from the one closest to you. You can get a list of all base URL pairs by calling https://livepeer.com/api/ingest?first=false. For example:

curl "https://livepeer.com/api/ingest?first=false"

And you should get a result similar to this:

[
   {
      "ingest":"rtmp://{region-1}-rtmp.livepeer.com/live",
      "playback":"https://{region-1}-cdn.livepeer.com/hls",
      "base":"https://{region-1}-cdn.livepeer.com"
   },
   {
      "ingest":"rtmp://{region-2}-rtmp.livepeer.com/live",
      "playback":"https://{region-2}-cdn.livepeer.com/hls",
      "base":"https://{region-2}-cdn.livepeer.com"
   },
   {
      "ingest":"rtmp://{region-3}-rtmp.livepeer.com/live",
      "playback":"https://{region-3}-cdn.livepeer.com/hls",
      "base":"https://{region-3}-cdn.livepeer.com"
   }
]

Next, learn how to broadcast a live stream with the Livepeer.com API.