GB is an abbreviation for gigabytes, this is a measure of data generally used to specific storage space on a platform or as a level of traffic for bandwidth, and is equal to roughly one billion bytes, or 1,073,741,824 bytes to be exact. Another measure for a gigabyte is that it is traditionally equal to 1,024 megabytes (MB). Dacast does a simpler metric where a GB is equal to 1000 MB, and similarly, a TB is equal to 1000 GB.

In terms of how this relates to Dacast, there are two ways. The first is from bandwidth, which refers to the amount of traffic caused by streaming (higher audience and higher bitrate translate into more bandwidth being consumed). The second is from the amount of storage given to accounts, which is measured in terms of GB.

Two possible scenarios:

1. You can setup overage protection, where you put a credit card on file and in the instance that you go over your monthly bandwidth or Event Plan bandwidth, it will re-buy automatically to keep you going.

Check out our Overage Protection walkthrough for more details.

2. You can also just let the bandwidth run out, although this will cause your streams to shut off when you burn through the bandwidth on your account.

Please note that their is a two hour delay on analytic reporting, so it might take awhile for the system to detect you are out of bandwidth. Your stream will not shut off, though, until the detection is made. This means in some scenarios you might find yourself in the negative if enough streaming happens within a two hour window.

Bandwidth is a rate of data transfer, generally a metric of how much data can be sent in a given time period that is mandated by the stress and traffic caused on a server.

For Dacast, this refers to the amount of traffic caused from streaming (higher audience and higher bitrate translate into more bandwidth being consumed).

If you are unfamiliar with bandwidth and streaming, please use the calculator of our pricing page.

As our main payment sources, Dacast supports both credit cards (all major credit cards accepted) and PayPal.

If you wish to purchase an event plan or an annual plan you can also pay by check or wire transfer. For wire transfer information please contact one of our sales representatives.

For the “event plan” or any other Dacast plan, the bandwidth expires 12 months (1 year) after being purchased.

Short answer: no, you do not.

When you buy a Dacast Streaming Plan, you are buying access to a range of DaCast platform features and services for a period of time and with a certain level of usage (bandwidth) included. This includes the player, broadcast manager software, content management, access to support, and more.

DaCast is unique from most other existing services in the way that we allow unused bandwidth to roll over from month-to-month for up to 12 months.

If you only used half of your Starter plan bandwidth, the remaining 50% would roll over into the next month. However, this bandwidth only remains available for the life of the plan.

Therefore, an account can not continue to be used, or unused bandwidth reserved for later when the service is canceled or suspended.

In march 2019, Dacast acquired the professional video hosting platform vzaar. This allows us to offer you more advanced video hosting features. Until we consolidate all our video hosting and live streaming solutions into one unique online video platform, we offer an additional video hosting platform. If you have high-end video hosting needs for your business, we recommend that you contact us to get more info on how to access this advanced video hosting platform.

Advanced Video Hosting gives you access to a large scale VOD hosting platform that allows you to store more VOD assets through a more powerful CMS, to stream in China, get a better control of the encoding video, advertise, and much more.

With the Advanced VOD add-on enabled, you can switch between the Live and VOD platforms with a single click.

To try out the advanced video hosting platform, you need to have a Dacast account. If not, just sign up for our 30 days free trial.

Then, you can just contact our 24/7 customer support team who will set up your account to make sure you can try all the features of the advanced video hosting platform such as China VOD delivery, AES encryption,

It is super simple! Once your account is set up with the Advanced Video Hosting Platform, you will automatically be redirect to this platform when clicking on the VOD section of your DaCast account.

Once you are in the Advanced Video Hosting Platform, you can easily go back to your regular DaCast account by clicking on the Live section of the Advanced Video Hosting Platform.

No, Advanced Video Hosting is an add-on available for Premium or an Enterprise plans.

A starter plan, for example, cannot purchase Advanced Video Hosting.

It is an add-on to existing plans rather than a plan in itself. For Premium plans it is $85 and for Enterprise plans it is $110, billed monthly or annually according to your plan.

Contact Dacast support at any time and ask about Advanced VOD. They will grant you access so you can evaluate it and purchase the add-on by clicking Upgrade my plan in the top right of your account.

Premium plans get an extra 800GB storage and Enterprise plans get an extra 1,500GB storage.

Both plans have access to the full set of VOD features:

No, the data in your plan can be used on both the Live and VOD platforms:

• Premium plans can use up to 2 TB bandwidth per month
• Enterprise plans can use up to 5 TB bandwidth per month

No, just like bandwidth, your storage allowance can be used on both the Live and VOD platforms.

In addition, the Advanced Vod Hosting gives you extra storage according to your plan:

• Premium plans get 800 GB extra storage
• Enterprise plans get 1,500 GB extra storage

Once you have the Advanced VOD add-on, click Video on demand in the main menu to access the VOD platform. Once there, you can click Live in the main menu to go back.

No, you won’t need another set of credentials to access both platforms. You can login to dacast.com using your existing DaCast/vzaar credentials.

Unfortunately, you cannot use the API with the Advanced VOD platform.

The Advanced VOD Platform is really easy-to-use and comes pre-configured to meet most requirements. Learn how to use the video management features or browse VOD help guides to learn more.

If you already have VOD assets in the Live platform then you will no longer be able to access them once the VOD add-on has been enabled.

They will not be deleted and can be easily recovered, they will just be hidden while the Advanced VOD add-on is enabled.

No but if you decide to purchase the VOD add-on then we can discuss migrating your library into the VOD platform so you can take advantage of the full set of features for your existing assets.

Yes, the live stream recording feature will continue to work and the content will appear in the VOD platform as expected.

No, Advanced VOD is not meant for partner accounts and cannot be granted to sub-accounts.

You’re using our API and are having issues with it?

Step 1: have you double check the API documentation?

• Our documentation is automatically updated each time we improve our API.
• You can test each API call directly in the documentation. To do so, please enter your broadcaster ID (BID) and your API key using the following format: broadcaster ID_API key 
  Those information are available in your API section under your PREFERENCES section

Step 2: Did you know we had published 2 SDKs to help you using our API?

• SDK for javascript available here, documentation included: https://github.com/dacast/api-nodejs
• SDK for php available here, documentation included: https://github.com/dacast/api-php

Step 3: If you are still having issues after investigating on our available tools and documentation, then we suggest you to write an email to api@dacast.com including:

• “API issues” in the object of the email
• your API key
• the API call you made including the time when you tried it
• any response or error message you received

For faster response, please be advised not to include non-API related issues in this email.
Thank you.

Closed captions refer to the visual display of the audio in a program, such as a TV broadcast.
The standards widely used for online video are:
– CEA-608, also known as Line 21
– CEA-708, the latest standard for digital television.

Live captioning with 608 and 708 is possible with Dacast’s latest default player.
Note that broadcasters need to have their own infrastructure to insert closed captions to their live streams.

Yes, Dacast supports almost all encoders which can output in RTMP or HLS.
This includes, but is not limited to, hardware devices such as:

TriCaster from NewTek
TouchStream from Digital Rapids
Cube from Teradek

This also includes software solutions as well, such as:

OBS Studio
Wirecast from Telestream
Discover Video
VidBlaster from CombiTech

Our HLS direct low latency streaming solution works with any HLS compatible encoder.

The advantage of using our own HLS compatible software encoder based on OBS Studio is the cost (free for everyone) and the super-fast set-up with preset encoding settings.  However, you are more than welcome to use your own HLS encoder if you do have one.

Below is an example of the settings we used with a Haivision HLS compatible encoder to stream on a Dacast low latency channel:

Note: For a minimal latency you might want to use :
segment duration: 2000 ms
segment count: 3

If you have tips and suggestions, please contact us or post it in the community section.

First, there is no limit of live channels in your Dacast account.

However, by default, note that you cannot create more than 20 live channels (of all types) in your Dacast account without contacting us.

If you do need more than 20 live channels in your account, please contact us and we will make it happen.

How can you contact us?
– via our 24/7 live chat (directly in your Dacast account)
– via email (support@dacast.com)
– via phone (+1 855 896 9300).”

Found under DESCRIPTION, you can set a VOD file, live stream, package or playlist to off like so:

Doing so will make the video inaccessible and, if the content was monetized, will disable the paywall preventing future people from buying the content.

To make it clear, in the case of live channels, the stream will not automatically turn back on again once you start to stream though the encoder. You will have to go back into DESCRIPTION and manually turn it on again before this will happen. If you stream often and have a free stream, it’s recommended just to leave the channel on to make it easy to begin streaming again during your event or programming.

CDN is short for content delivery network. This is a network of servers that deliver a web page or web content, such as video, to a user. A CDN copies the web content to a network of servers that are dispersed at geographically different locations. When a user requests content that is part of a CDN, the CDN will redirect the request from the originating site’s server to a server in the CDN that is closest to the user and deliver the cached content. The closer the CDN server is to the user geographically, the faster the content will be delivered.

So using a CDN is ideal for streaming video, especially to a geographically diverse group of viewers.

Dacast uses Akamai, which has one of the largest network of servers in the world, ensuring scalable and high quality live streaming.

Under PUBLISH SETTINGS, there is a field called referrer.

This option talks about the ability to add website referral restrictions to your content. For example, if you own the website www.test.com, you can setup a referrer to block sites that aren’t test.com from trying to grab and reuse your embed code.

Here is a video to better explain how to set this feature up.

An encoder is software or hardware that converts from one format or code to another. It is integral in doing live streaming.

Over Dacast, you can use any encoder that outputs into RTMP or HLS. If you have never used an encoder before or are unfamiliar with what this is, we recommend starting with our customized version of our OBS Studio. This software is free and will allow you to start streaming in few clicks.

Progressive Download is a technique wherein video, or audio content can be watched while downloading to a computer or device. This process differs from streaming in that the file is saved to your computer during the process, although sometimes without the user knowing it and sometimes only temporarily.

Dacast uses a strictly streaming approach that does not support progressive download. This is due to the large volume of content behind paywalls for which a progressive download approach would be prohibited and allow people to take paid content and redistribute it to others easily.

Depending on which type of channel you have, there will be a different amount of latency in the live stream.

For HTML5 live channel, due to taking the RTMP feed and making it compatible over mobile devices, there is a delay of 30-45 seconds.
Latency might be longer if your upload connection is “”slow”” or computer is using too many resources to push through the encoder signal.

To get a low latency live channel, please contact us as we are offering a low latency solution for our premium plans and above (average latency of 12-15seconds).

Dacast recommends against using VP9.

In particular, if you plan to do All Device (HTML5) live streaming it is recommended to use the H.264 video codec instead.

Live streaming can be done with VP9, but has known playback issues over certain environments. Use it at your own risk.

For more information on VP9, it’s a proprietary compression format that was developed by On2Technologies in May 2003. It is also called the TrueMotion video codec. It is a ‘lossy’ video compression format. It is often used by JavaFX, Adobe Flash and Flash Video Files.

Many encoders will get out of sync, in terms of the video and audio feeds, if the CPU of the machine running the encoder is being taxed.

Adobe, for the Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder, states the following:

• Ensure that the CPU usage of the encoding computer and the subscriber computer is not more than 75%.

If you are running into this problem, please try to close other programs (including possibly your virus scanner) to see if it improves performance and sync.

This also applies for the resulting file archive these encoders might be saving to your computer. For more tips on how to diagnose broadcasting issues, check out our guide on how to troubleshoot your live streams.

At this time, you receive notifications in the Back Office when your live recording has ended and your recorded file is being integrated.

There are currently no event handlers or callbacks to directly notify you elsewhere when the recorded file has been created and is ready to be played.

If you are pricing in multiple currencies, you must individually define the price in each currency.

EXAMPLE: If you want to set a price in EUR and USD, you will have to individually define each price. This website can guide you through the conversions.

Dacast does not provide customer support for the viewers, but only to its customers.

If you are interested in live customer support for your viewers, this may be possible at an extra cost via our professional services. Contact us from within your Dacast account directly if you are interested. 

The promo code limits apply to uses, not users. In other words, a promo code set to a limit of 1 can only be used once.

This is true even if the same user that used it the first time attempts to apply it a second time.

You do not need to worry about that. Our new secure paywall prevent multiple logins at the same time. This means that several viewers cannot share the same login following a single purchase and watch the content simultaneously. If you still have questions about it, please feel free to reach out to us 24/7.

1. Your viewers pay the PPV or subscription in whatever currency pricing you set up in your Dacast account.
2. Dacast collects the money and converts the amount in USD – The conversion rate is applied in real-time by Stripe and Paypal. Dacast can retrieve the conversion rate for each transaction.
3. Dacast takes its fee (9.9%, plus $0.40 on each viewer purchase.)
4. Dacast pays you back the net revenue in USD when you request your payment.

You can create an infinite number of prices per content.

Dacast will give you back your paywall revenue in USD.

Your viewers will be refunded in the currency of their initial purchase.

It is not possible to watch simultaneously a video content with the same login. So even if a viewer shares his login, no one will be able to access the video content at the same time.

In general, a subscription is a viewer paying to access something as much as they want over a fixed amount of time. Pay Per View, on the other hand, is someone paying directly to access something. For example, someone can set up an annual subscription where viewers can watch uploaded content as much as they like over that year. While someone else can set up a pay-per-view for a 2 hours program where someone gets to watch only 2 hours of content and nothing more.

Dacast supports both models.

Credit card and Paypal can be used when purchasing a PPV or a subscription. Please note that with Paypal, your viewers will have access to less currency options compared to credit card.

However, if you need a specific currency that you do not see in your paywall, please contact us. 

Monetization describes the process of generating revenue from online content using a variety of means, such as advertising or subscription services.

Dacast supports the following monetization methods:

• Pay Per View 
• Subscription 
• Ads insertion.

helpdesk@inplayer.com

Your viewers will need to contact helpdesk@inplayer.com.

Your viewers can also contact this same email address if they are facing an issue such as:

• resolving username and password problems
• payment processing assistance and problem resolution
• assistance with navigating around application menus
• account and subscription management
• voucher code usage assistance

We will pay you in USD, and so if your bank or PayPal charges a conversion fee then yes. However, if you were a user of the previous DaCast paywall and had a balance in EUR that was converted, we will pay that balance to you in EUR with no additional fees charged.

This column acts as a detailed Q&A for how storage works over the DaCast system. Please Feel free to comment to see topics addressed here.

How much storage is included with my account?

This depends on your plan level. Please log into your DaCast account and click MY ACCOUNT and then STORAGE at the top to see how much included storage you have. If you are considering buying a plan, and not sure which to go with, please consult our pricing page.

How much is storage if I go over?

The answer to this varies. Monthly Plans and Event Plans are charged $0.15 a month for each GB of storage they go over their limit.

How often is extra storage billed?

If you are over your storage limit, extra storage is billed monthly. Event Plans, however, have to pre-buy their storage amount which will then be added to their plan.

What is the minimum charge for extra storage?

For monthly plans, there is no minimum and the charge for extra storage occurs on the same day as your plan rebill date. For Event Plans, you have to purchase extra storage in advance (i.e. 10 GB, 20 GB etc.) which then adds to your storage total for an amount of time you select.

When are Event Plan accounts billed for storage?

Event Plan accounts are billed manually, meaning you have to pay in advance for a set amount of time that can be 1 month, 3 months, 6 months or 12 months.

How do I purchase additional storage if I’m on an Event Plan account?

First, click STORAGE at the top and then click . This will bring you to the following screen:

Here you can select how much storage you want to buy and for how long. For example, you can buy 10 GB of storage for three months. This will cost you $4.5 (10 GB x 3 months x $0.15) and will increase your storage for those three months to 12 GB, 10 GB above the normal 2 GB of storage on Event Plans.

How is storage cost calculated?
Storage cost is calculated from the peak storage used each month for monthly plan. So deleting all videos just before the billing date, for example, will not bring the cost to 0.

Can I use PayPal to purchase additional storage?
No, only accounts with a credit card on file can purchase additional storage. If you have purchased an Event Plan or a Monthly Plan with PayPal, your account will be blocked from uploading video files that would take you over your storage limit. Furthermore, you will be presented with the following screen that you can use to change your purchase method to credit card if you want to qualify for additional storage:

 How does multi-bitrate work with storage?

All bitrates are added up and factored into the storage amount:

Do inactive files count toward my storage total?

Yes, all files on your account (up until they are deleted), regardless of if they are turned ON or OFF, count toward your storage total. If you are unclear what your total storage might be, please click STORAGE at the top of the screen after logging into your account.

If I cancel my monthly plan, what happens to my stored files?

If you cancel a monthly plan, and don’t purchase any “”Event Plan”” bandwidth, your files will be removed from your account.”

Found under DESCRIPTION, you can set a VOD file, live stream, package or playlist to off like so:

Doing so will make the video inaccessible and, if the content was monetized, will disable the paywall preventing future people from buying the content.

To make it clear, in the case of live channels, the stream will not automatically turn back on again once you start to stream though the encoder. You will have to go back into DESCRIPTION and manually turn it on again before this will happen. If you stream often and have a free stream, it’s recommended just to leave the channel on to make it easy to begin streaming again during your event or programming.

CDN is short for content delivery network. This is a network of servers that deliver a web page or web content, such as video, to a user. A CDN copies the web content to a network of servers that are dispersed at geographically different locations. When a user requests content that is part of a CDN, the CDN will redirect the request from the originating site’s server to a server in the CDN that is closest to the user and deliver the cached content. The closer the CDN server is to the user geographically, the faster the content will be delivered.

So using a CDN is ideal for streaming video, especially to a geographically diverse group of viewers.

Dacast uses Akamai, which has one of the largest network of servers in the world, ensuring scalable and high quality live streaming.

Under PUBLISH SETTINGS, there is a field called referrer.

This option talks about the ability to add website referral restrictions to your content. For example, if you own the website www.test.com, you can setup a referrer to block sites that aren’t test.com from trying to grab and reuse your embed code.

Here is a video to better explain how to set this feature up.

It stands for File Transfer Protocol, and deals with FTP clients like Filezilla as a way to upload content to your account. FTP clients are external programs which allow you to connect to a web service, like Dacast, using login details that include a:

server
username
password

This is the suggested method for uploading files around or over 1.5 GB in size. If you need help on using this feature over Dacast, please refer to this video tutorial.

Dacast recommends against using VP9.

In particular, if you plan to do All Device (HTML5) live streaming it is recommended to use the H.264 video codec instead.

Live streaming can be done with VP9, but has known playback issues over certain environments. Use it at your own risk.

For more information on VP9, it’s a proprietary compression format that was developed by On2Technologies in May 2003. It is also called the TrueMotion video codec. It is a ‘lossy’ video compression format. It is often used by JavaFX, Adobe Flash and Flash Video Files.

VOD stands for Video On Demand content. This is different from live streaming as its previously recorded audio and video. These are uploaded video files to the Dacast system that can then be used from our video player.