How to set up a service for HLS workflows with Castr

Learn how to pair SyncWords' state of the art caption and translation services with Castrs' powerful network to deliver live streams using an embeddable player that contains captions, subtitles, and audio translations in a few simple steps.

Step 1 - Create a Service in SyncWords

To Create a Service, go to Services and click "Create Service".

Give your Service a name and click the "Create Service" button.

Step 2 - Set up your stream on Castr

In Castr, click on Livestreams on the left and then the Create New button. 

Give your stream a name, select the region closest to your broadcast and then click Create All in One Stream to create your livestream.

You can change the region set up in your livestream at any time by clicking on Source Setup under the preview window on the right and then selecting the new region.

Next, in the livestream, go to Settings > Player Functions > Turn on Enable Caption Support.

From the Playback tab, under Normal, grab the HLS URL (M3U8 link) to paste into the HLS URL field under “Input Media” on SyncWords Live.

Step 3 - Provide Input Media

From the Stream Type drop-down, select HLS. Then select “HLS Pull” and enter the M3U8 link you copied from your livestream in Castr in step 2. Replace the domain portion of the URL with https://sync-cas771.castr.io/edge.

Click the "Save" button.

Step 4 - Set up Transcription

Now that we have set up the incoming stream, we need to set up the Transcript section to create the captions. Use the available dropdowns to set the "Source Language" of the event, the "Speech Engine" you would like to use, and optionally, add or select an existing dictionary.

 

Step 5 - Set up Translations

To add real time AI translations to your live stream, go down to the Translations section and click the "Add Translation" button and select the language you want to add from the dropdown. Repeat to add as many languages as necessary.

Once you have added all your languages, you can configure each one by selecting the translation engine you want to use for each language. You can also optionally add or select an existing glossary. If you turn on Audio for the translation, you will get additional options including selecting a Dialect (not all languages have dialect options), Gender and different voices.

Read our article on How to Setup Audio Translations for more details.

Step 6 - Set up the Output

The last step is to set up the output that will go back out to your Castr HLS stream with the captions, text and audio translations included. Click the "Create Output" button and select HLS from the drop-down.

Select "S3 Bucket" from the "Destination Type" drop-down and enter castr-sync in the “S3 Bucket Name” field.

The “Path” will come from your Castr livestream HLS URL. Copy the segment between the domain and the index.m3u8 in your Castr HLS URL. Make sure you do not include the / at the start or end of the path.

For example, if the URL is as follows, copy only the segment that is in bold and paste it into the “Path” field - https://stream-hls.castr-cdn.com/xxxxx/live_xxxxx/index.m3u8 (do not include the / at the start or end of the path).

The “AWS Region” must be set to US East (N. Virginia) us-east-1. Enable Custom Main Manifest Filename options and enter index.fmp4.m3u8 in the field that appears. Set the buffer to 30 seconds and click the "Save" button.

You are now ready to stream.

 

Step 7 - Get the player from Castr

Go back to your livestream you set up in Castr and copy one of the two options in the Playback tab. You can select between an iFrame embed code or the Direct Player Link with the HLS player. Add ?syncwords=true to the end of CASTR’s player link URL or the iFrame URL to enable the Captions and Dubs in the player.

Add the player where your attendees will be viewing, and once you start your stream and the SyncWords Service, let them experience synchronized captions, subtitles and audio translations in real-time.