BBB Live Streaming

Streams a given BBB Meeting to an RTMP Server.

License: GNU GPL v3 or later

Getting Started

Prerequisites

All you need is Docker running on your machine and a media server to stream to.

Configuration

You need to set some environment variables to run the container.

Required settings

• BBB_URL - URL to BBB including http/https e.g. https://your_BigBlueButton_server/bigbluebutton/api
• BBB_MEETING_ID - ID of the BBB Meeting (You can get the ID via an API call: https://your_bbb_server/bigbluebutton/api/getMeetings?checksum=)
• BBB_SECRET - Secret of your BBB installation (You can get the secret with: bbb-conf --secret)
• BBB_STREAM_URL - URL of your streaming server including rtmp. Leave out to disable streaming. (e.g. rtmp://media_server_url/stream/stream_key)

Optional settings

• BBB_START_MEETING - start meeting
• BBB_ATTENDEE_PASSWORD - attendee password (optional - has to be set to the attendee password of moodle/greenlight or any other frontend to allow joining via their links)
• BBB_MODERATOR_PASSWORD - moderator password (optional - has to be set to the moderator password of moodle/greenlight or any other frontend to allow joining via their links)
• BBB_MEETING_TITLE - meeting title (optional - only works if the meeting is started by the liveStreaming)
• BBB_DOWNLOAD_MEETING= - download / save BigBlueButton meeting in lossless mkv format
• BBB_INTRO= - play intro file (can be a local file in videodata folder e.g. /video/intro.mp4 or a url of a mediastream e.g. https://my.intro.stream)
• BBB_BEGIN_INTRO_AT=04:40 - begin the intro at position (optional, e.g. 00:00:05)
• BBB_END_INTRO_AT= - end intro after (optional, e.g. 01:00:00 - after one hour)
• BBB_USER_NAME - the username to join the meeting. (Default: Live)
• BBB_SHOW_CHAT - shows the chat on the left side of the window (Default: false)
• BBB_RESOLUTION - the streamed/downloaded resolution (Default: 1920x1080)
• BBB_CHAT_MESSAGE - prefix for the message that would be posted to BBB chat, while joining a conference (Default: "This meeting is streamed to")
• BBB_HIDE_MEETING_TITLE - hide the meeting title in the top bar (Default: false)
• BBB_HIDE_WHO_TALKS - hide the annotation who is currently talking (Default: false)
• BBB_BACKGROUND_COLOR - override background color by a CSS color, e.g., "black" or "#ffffff"
• BBB_LOGO_URL - add a logo to the video, passed as an image URL (Default: none/disabled)
• BBB_LOGO_POS - corner where to place the logo: "top/left", "top/right", "bottom/left" or "bottom/right" (Default "top/right")
• TZ - Timezone (Default: Europe/Vienna)

Chat settings

• BBB_ENABLE_CHAT - Enable Chat feedback channel
• BBB_REDIS_HOST - Set REDIS host (Default: redis)
• BBB_REDIS_CHANNEL - Set REDIS channel (Default: chat)
• BBB_CHAT_NAME - the username to join the meeting for chatting. (Default: Chat)
• BBB_CHAT_STREAM_URL - The URL of the stream that should be displayed in the chat (Default: rtmp:// destination)

Debug

• DEBUG - settings this to non-empty value will result in more verbose output

Advanced Usage

• FFMPEG_STREAM_THREADS - number of threads for ffmpeg during streaming (Default: 0 (auto))
• FFMPEG_STREAM_VIDEO_BITRATE - video bitrate (in k) (Default: 4000)
• FFMPEG_INPUT_THREAD_QUEUE_SIZE - thread_queue_size option to be passed to ffmpeg (Default: 1024)
• FFMPEG_STREAM_OPTIONS - ffmpeg options to use when streaming (bitrate/codec/...), see stream.py for default value
• FFMPEG_DOWNLOAD_OPTIONS - ffmpeg options to use when downloading, see stream.py for default value
• BROWSER_DISABLE_DEV_SHM_USAGE - whether to disable /dev/shm usage of the browser (default: false), for use cases where available /dev/shm is very limited, note that setting this to true can result in disk trashing

Starting liveStreaming

• wget -O docker-compose.yml https://github.com/Leepian/BigBlueButton-liveStreaming/blob/master/examples/docker-compose.yml.example
• (change configuration)
• docker-compose up -d
• docker-compose down

Chat feedback

to use the user feedback via chat injection you will have to setup a website wehre the user can write comments and send them to your meeting. In the examples folder, there are two files you can use as starting point:

• player_and_chat.php place this in a public webpage or create a similar webform that will be send to the processing php file sendChatMessage.php

• sendChatMessage.php this file must be reachable by the webform and has to have access to the redis database you configured in your docker-compose file.

Known Limitations

• the streamer does not reconnect, if the connection to BigBlueButton gets lost
• when using breakoutrooms, the streamer will show the popup of the invitation and not be able to get back to the conference

License

BigBlueButton-liveStreaming is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

BigBlueButton-liveStreaming is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with BigBlueButton-liveStreaming. If not, see GNU website