Manage Events on a Decoder

Decoders take content captured by your encoders and broadcast it to an audience at a physical location. Here’s how a decoder fits into streaming with Resi:

1. Content travels from your camera through the signal path to the encoder.
2. The encoder captures that data and either sends it to the cloud or stores it for loading on a decoder on a LAN.
3. Your decoder then pulls the data from the cloud (or encoder on a LAN) and broadcasts it to a physical location. 

Before powering on your decoder, plug a mouse, monitor, and keyboard into it.

If you plug in the monitor after you power on the decoder, it will not show the user interface. Any time you change cables or monitors, you will need to power cycle the decoder to see the user interface. 

From there, you’ll be able to access the decoder interface. Use the venue login you received or manually created to log in to your decoder, not your personal email. To learn more about adding a decoder to your Studio account, see Add a Decoder.

You then can load the event to broadcast to viewers. Once you’ve got the event configured how you want it and ready to go, just click play and it will start broadcasting to the audience. 

Resi Control supports remotely starting decoders. This feature is planned, but not currently available in Studio.

Navigating Your Decoder Interface

You can quickly and easily manage events from your decoder interface. When you log in, the decoder interface will default to the Events tab, which will show you any encoder videos it has access to. To learn more about granting encoder access to your decoder, see Grant a Venue Access to an Encoder.

When you want to stream a live encoder video, either schedule or manually start the video in Studio and click Refresh List in the decoder interface.

The video will appear in the list of events. It may take up to two minutes for the event to show.

Based on the timezone your decoder is configured to, event dates will show as MM/DD/YYYY in the USA, YYYY/MM/DD in Canada, and DD/MM/YYYY in all other countries. To manually change the timezone:

1. Click on Settings > General.
2. Under Time Zone, click Change.
3. Enter your timezone and click Apply.

What is LAN Mode on a Decoder?

Local area network (LAN) mode allows you to load content directly from an encoder on the same network without having to download data from the cloud. By default, decoders try and pull content if LAN is available. For a decoder to access local content on an encoder, it must be able to access both the internet and the encoder from the same connection. We've seen organizations have success with multi-wan router, which provides a single gateway from multiple ISPs. 

In some cases, you may need to disable LAN mode. To do so:

1. Navigate to your decoder interface > Settings tab.  
2. Toggle off LAN Mode.  

Load a Video on Your Decoder For Playback

To broadcast an encoder video in a physical location, first load it on the decoder. Your decoder will download live or on-demand videos from the cloud or directly from an encoder on the same network via a LAN connection. 

1. Click the event you want to broadcast in the Events tab.
2. Click Select Event.
3. In the modal that appears, choose whether or not you want to clear the disk cache.

There is a limited amount of disk space available on the decoders (approximately 250 GB). It’s comprised of past content you’ve broadcasted, which is still available for broadcast.  If you want to keep that content on the decoder click Don’t Clear.

We recommend clearing the cache often. You can’t clear the cache in the middle of a broadcast. If you end up running out of disk space before your entire broadcast is downloaded, it will end the broadcast after the downloaded content has streamed. To remove the data in the cache, click Clear. If there’s currently no data in the cache, you’ll be prompted to confirm opening the event instead.

4. The event will now download to your decoder. The event doesn’t need to be entirely downloaded to start playback. You can begin the event immediately once you load it to your decoder. Use HDMI or SDI to connect the decoder to your screen and just press play to begin broadcasting to your audience. 

The D2202 model does not include HDMI output. To learn more about Resi’s decoders, see Resi Multisite Decoders.

Play Back the Video to Your Audience

The bottom section of the decoder interface is how you’ll play, stop, lock, and scrub through your events. You can also control how far your event will be delayed from live.

Playing, pausing, and locking your video

If you have a dual-channel encoder and you’re not seeing video, make sure the video output is set to the right channel. For example, if the decoder is set to output from channel 2 and your HDMI/SDI is plugged into the output from channel 1, you won’t see any video. 

In the bottom-left of the decoder interface, you can play, pause, use the Seek Amt. bar to scrub through your content, and lock the buttons to avoid accidental clicks during a broadcast.

• To play a video, click the Play button.

When you press the play button, content will begin broadcasting.

• To pause a video at any time, click the Pause button.
• Use the Rewind or Forward arrow keys to move backward or forward through the event. Each time you click, the video will scrub once the amount of time in the Seek Amt. bar. For example, if you set it to 1 second, when you click Forward once, it will scrub 1 second forward. 
• Use the Lock button to lock the bottom section of the decoder interface. This will prevent any accidental clicks or button presses.  You won’t be able to use any of the buttons until you click Unlock (the same button).

Content has to be playing for the Lock button to be accessible. 

Fade to black

Fade to Black (FTB) allows your videos to fade to black in the last second instead of abruptly ending. To turn it on, click the FTB toggle. The monitor screen will display a “fade to black” tag when FTB is active.

What are the timers?

You can see how far a video’s played, how far the audience is from the end of the video if on-demand (or from live if it’s a live encoder video), and the buffered time remaining. You can also use the scrub bar to move through content as you choose. 

• The timer in the top left shows how far the video has played.
• The timer in the top-right shows how far the video is from the end (if on-demand) or from live (if a live encoder video).
• The buffered time remaining is how much of the video the decoder’s downloaded that you haven’t played yet. For example, if it says 30 minutes, that’s how much you could broadcast to your viewers if your internet connection dropped. Your decoder will download as much content as you allow it to up to 60 minutes.

  

Scrubbing through the video past the buffered time remaining will cause it to reset and your decoder will need to build up a buffer again.

To manually change how much buffer your decoder will allow:

1. Navigate to the Settings tab > General.
2. Use the Buffer Size slider to let your decoder how far ahead content will download from the video’s current position.

   We recommend the largest bugger size your connection will allow. In the event of an outage, your event can still broadcast for as much buffer as you have loaded to the decoder.

Delay content for live events

You can have your decoder broadcast content at a constant delay from live. For example, if you want it to play content five minutes from live, enter 5 minutes into the Delay from live field.  To bring your content at a constant delay from live:

1. In minutes, enter how far you want the event to be from live in the Delay from live field. 
2. Click GoTo.

   

Advanced Options

There are also several things you can do to enhance the broadcast experience for both you and your audience, including:

• Adding cues to mark specific moments or section the video
• Adding a text overlay
• Adjusting volume settings for all channels
• Exporting your video

Add cues to a video from your decoder

Cues are timestamped markers you can use to mark a specific time in a video when an event happens or to section the video. You can easily access different events quickly and easily for your viewers. For example, if you started your encoder early and want to start the playback at a specific moment for your viewers, create a cue at that moment and go to that cue before you begin playback. Or, if you want to section a video for exporting as an MP4 to a USB drive, you can add cues to section the video so only that part gets exported. 

We recommend using your decoder interface to add cues with more precision than through Studio. By using the Seek Amt. bar, you can scrub through the video in milliseconds to find the exact points you’re looking for to create the cues.  

1. Navigate to the Cues tab.
2. Using the scrub bar, find the location in the video you want to add a cue.
3. Give your cue a description and if you don’t want to share the cue, uncheck Share new cues with others.
4. Click Add Cue.
5. Your cue will now show in your decoder. 

To create more precise cues, set the Seek Amt. bar to anywhere from 50 milliseconds to 5 minutes and find the exact location you want to set the cue. 

1. Set the Seek Amt. bar to the time you want to skip forward or backward from the current location.
2. Use the Rewind or Forward arrow keys to move backward or forward through the event. Each time you click, you will scrub once the amount of time in the Seek Amt. bar. For example, if you set it to 1 second, when you click Forward once, it will scrub 1 second forward.
3. Once you find exactly where you want to set the cue, follow the steps from Add Cues to a Video From Your Decoder above to create a new cue.

To learn more about adding, editing, and managing cues see Add Cues to a Video.

Add text overlay 

You can add short messages in text to your video in the Overlay tab.

1. Type the message you want to display in the Text to Display box.
2. Click Update Text and it will show in your video.
3. Align it vertically and horizontally where you want it to be on the screen.
4. Choose your font details.
5. Your text overlay is now set and will show to your viewers. If at any point you want to hide it from view, click Hide.

Video and audio output 

Make sure your video output is set to the channel your HDMI/SDI cables are plugged into in the back of the decoder or you may not see the video. To change the video output channel:

1. Navigate to Settings > Audio & Video.
2. Under Output format, make sure the Output Device is set to the channel you’ve got your output cables plugged into.

   

You can also adjust the audio volume for your viewers.

1. Navigate to Settings > Audio & Video.
2. Under Audio Output Volume, use the Volume slider to adjust the audio volume for your viewers.

At audio output higher than 80%, you may notice artificial gain.

Export videos to MP4

You can also export videos from your decoder interface. You’ll need a FAT32-formatted USB drive to export and store the content. 

1. Insert the USB drive into the decoder
2. Navigate to the Events tab > Export Event.
3. Click Export.
4. Select start and end cues, which will section the video how you want it. 
5. Give the video a name.
6. Double click on a USB drive when the modal pops up asking you where you want to save the video. 

Decoder hotkeys

See the table below for hotkeys to help navigate your decoder interface quickly and easily.