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Amazon EC2 MediaWiki Wowza Media Server

Amazon EC2 instance start, status and stop batch files

I currently use these batch files to start a Wowza server EC2 instance on Vista 32 bit edition. I have created shortcuts to the batch files using the following syntax so that the command prompts stay open after a user double clicks the shortcut.

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k c:\ec2\start.bat

Start

The following batch file will start an Amazon instance and automatically assign your elastic (static) IP address to it after the instance ID is assigned by Amazon. Just replace any environment or instance preferences and change to your own elastic IP. The most tricky part of this is the for command which first launches the instance and then extracts the instance id from line 2 (line 1 is skipped), field (token) 2 and assigns the elastic IP address to it.

@echo off
set JAVA_HOME="c:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6"
set EC2_HOME=c:\ec2
set PATH=%PATH%;%EC2_HOME%\bin
set EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=c:\ec2\keys\private.pem
set EC2_CERT=c:\ec2\keys\509.pem

echo to check status run status.bat (startup usually take a couple of minutes)

for /f "skip=1 tokens=2" %%i in ('c:\ec2\bin\ec2-run-instances ami-413fd828 -k wowza-keypair -t m1.small -f c:\ec2\includes\live.zip') do c:\ec2\bin\ec2-associate-address -i %%i 123.123.123.123

Status

This batch file simply checks the current instance status.

@echo off
set JAVA_HOME="c:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6"
set EC2_HOME=c:\ec2
set PATH=%PATH%;%EC2_HOME%\bin
set EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=c:\ec2\keys\private.pem
set EC2_CERT=c:\ec2\keys\509.pem

echo The instance id is i-something

c:\ec2\bin\ec2-describe-instances

Stop

This one finds the instance ID and then stops that instance. If you have multiple instances running it will stop each of them one by one (it will also generate some errors, but worked when I tested it).

@echo off
set JAVA_HOME="c:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6"
set EC2_HOME=c:\ec2
set PATH=%PATH%;%EC2_HOME%\bin
set EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=c:\ec2\keys\private.pem
set EC2_CERT=c:\ec2\keys\509.pem

echo After you stop the server verify that the status shows terminated with the status.bat command

for /f "skip=1 tokens=2" %%i in ('c:\ec2\bin\ec2-describe-instances') do c:\ec2\bin\ec2-terminate-instances %%i

MediaWiki Tips & Tricks

Enable word wrap for pre tags on MediaWiki

Add these lines to skins/monobook/main.css in the section which defines the formatting for the pre tags (search for pre):

        white-space: pre-wrap;       /* css-3 */
        white-space: -moz-pre-wrap;  /* Mozilla, since 1999 */
        white-space: -pre-wrap;      /* Opera 4-6 */
        white-space: -o-pre-wrap;    /* Opera 7 */
        word-wrap: break-word;       /* Internet Explorer 5.5+ */

Disable anonymous editing and new user registrations in MediaWiki

# Disable anonymous editing
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;

# Prevent new user registrations except by sysops
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;

How to Create Livesets in VT5

The most helpful explanation I came across on this topic was [this forum post]. I opted to install the Aura plugin and the included tutorial is extremely helpful for getting started.

Create a simple picture in picture using Aura

Here are the quick steps for creating an angled picture in picture view with blurred edges (from memory, may not be exactly right):

1. Open a new project in Aura
2. Name the first layer Input
3. Open the liveset brush creator (Filters>LiveSet>LiveSet Brush Creator)
4. Click on the Full Screen Layer button
5. Create a new layer and name it FX
6. In the brush generator set the size to what you want for your picture in picture window and then click Create Brush
7. Optionally if you want to crop the brush follow this steps first
   1. Change the view to only show 1 layer (= sign)
   2. Stamp the brush onto the blank layer
   3. Press the b key to enable the rectangle select tool
   4. Select the new cropped brush space you want to use
   5. Type shift-k to clear the layer
8. Open Filters>Motion>KeyFramer
9. Check the Preview box
10. Adjust parameters as needed (in this case the H A is changed to 45 degrees)
11. Click Apply Filter
12. Open the blur filter (Blut>Blur)
13. Configure the blur amount (2 in this case)
14. Click Apply Filter
15. Open the LiveSet Generator (Filters>LiveSet>LiveSet Generator
16. Set the Effects Warp Type to Complex (this is required to render the angled video I believe)
17. Name the scene and the shot
18. Click on Create LiveSet
19. Open VT5 and you will now be able to select the LiveSet and shot (the effects bus will display within the pip window