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What is the record feature

Record is a feature that allows you to record your live streams and store them in the Streaming storage. You can automatically record entire streams or manually record only desired fragments. Recording and live transcoding are separate, independent workflows. Recording saves the incoming stream for later processing and export, while the live transcoder builds the live playback session from the source metadata read once when the encoder connects.

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How to record a live stream

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How to record your live stream via the customer portal

To record a live stream manually: 1. Start a live stream in your encoder. 2. Open the settings of the desired live stream in the Gcore Customer Portal. 3. Press the Start record button.
Start record button
After 5–10 seconds, the recording will start. You will see the timer and the Stop record button.
recording
In cases of accidentally interrupting the live stream (bad internet connection, broken cable, etc.), recording will be continued when the live stream resumes. The recording will be saved as one video if the interruption is less than one minute. The recording will be divided into several videos if the interruptions are more than one minute. 4. If you want to record not the whole live stream, but a certain fragment of it, press the Stop record button at the desired moment. The fragment will be saved. Please note: it must be 10 seconds or longer. If you want to record the whole live stream, don’t press the Stop button. The recording will stop automatically. Please note: recordings longer than 4 hours will be divided into fragments of 4 hours each—this is the optimal fragment size for video processing. After stopping and processing, the recording will be saved in the Streaming Storage.

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How to record your live stream via API

When creating or editing the stream via API, to enable auto recording, change the parameter in the API request in the following way: 
auto_record: true
The recording will be saved in the Streaming Storage. Details about additional recording options are available in the following guides:

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Where the records are kept

After you record a stream, the recording is saved on the Live Streaming page. To view the recorded stream: 1. In the Gcore Customer Portal, navigate to Streaming > Live Streaming.
Videos tab
2. Click the stream name to open its settings. 3. Navigate to the Links for the export section. Here you can copy the iFrame code to embed the recording on your website and download the recording of the quality you want.
Export tab

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How recording interacts with live transcoding

Because of this, a saved recording may still look correct even if the live stream session started with degraded source FPS or unstable source timestamps. Recording also preserves technical changes that happen later inside the incoming live stream. If the source stream changes pixel format, color range, codec parameters, or similar properties during the broadcast, the recording may still be saved, but later VOD processing of that recording can fail because the recorded file now contains inconsistent source parameters. 
Simplified MP4 timeline:

time ------------------------------------------------------------------------------>

| MP4 headers + metadata | stable video samples | parameter change | later samples |
| ftyp | moov            | mdat: yuv420p        | yuv420p->yuvj420p| mdat: changed |

                        OK for decoder/transcoder
                                              ^
                                              |
                         from this point, later video data may decode incorrectly,
                         show artifacts, fail validation, or stop transcoding
In a simplified MP4 view, the file begins with container headers and stream description metadata, for example ftyp and moov, while the encoded video/audio payload is stored in mdat. Inside moov, MP4 stores the track description and sample tables that tell downstream tools how to interpret the later samples. In practice this includes boxes such as trak, mdia, stbl, stsd, and timing/index tables like stts, ctts, stss, stsc, stsz, and stco/co64. If the live source changes parameters in the middle of the recording, the later samples inside mdat may no longer match the stream description assumed at the beginning of the file, or may require a mid-file sample-description change that the workflow does not support. Starting from that change point, decoders and transcoders may see corrupted frames, reject the file, or fail during later processing.
If this has already happened in a saved recording, in many cases there may be no complete corrective action available afterward. If the recording is business-critical, contact the Support Team as soon as possible while source-side artifacts or temporary raw data may still be available for investigation. In some cases, our engineers may be able to recover part of the file or prepare a trimmed/restored version, but this is always best-effort work and cannot be guaranteed.
If your live playback is unexpectedly running at 10-12 fps while the recording looks smooth, this usually means the live transcoder read low source FPS metadata at the beginning of the live session. This FPS value is not re-read later, and Gcore does not upscale live frame rate dynamically during the session. After fixing the encoder settings, the customer must reconnect the live stream from the encoder side to start a new session with the correct source metadata. 
LIVE ENCODER
  first part of stream: stable parameters
  example: yuv420p
            |
            +----------------------> LIVE TRANSCODER
            |                         uses live session rules
            |
            +----------------------> RECORDING WORKFLOW
                                      stores source as received

... later during the same broadcast ...

LIVE ENCODER
  source parameters change mid-stream
  example: yuv420p -> yuvj420p
            |
            +----------------------> LIVE TRANSCODER
            |                         may continue, degrade, or fail
            |                         depending on the type of change
            |
            +----------------------> RECORDING WORKFLOW
                                      stores the changed segment too

RECORDED FILE RESULT
  beginning: yuv420p
  ending:    yuvj420p
            |
            v
LATER VOD PROCESSING / EXPORT OF RECORDING
  sees mixed source parameters inside one file
  may fail, enter Error status, or require trimming
  of the broken segment before reprocessing