Nimble Streamer DRM: Widevine, Playready, FairPlay, BuyDRM, EZDRM, Verimatrix VCAS

Nimble Streamer DRM

Digital Rights Management with Widevine, Playready, FairPlay, BuyDRM, EZDRM, PallyCon, Verimatrix

Nimble Streamer supports DRM CENC encryption for MPEG-DASH and HLS with fMP4 container in the following use cases:

Google Widevine™ support to protect MPEG-DASH.
Microsoft Playready™ support to protect MPEG-DASH.
Apple FairPlay™ support to protect HLS.
Widevine Cloud Service support with key rotation.
BuyDRM KeyOS support for Widevine, FairPlay and Playready.
EZDRM DRM-as-a-Service support for Widevine, FairPlay and Playready. Read the introduction blog post.
PallyCon support for Widevine, FairPlay and Playready. Read introduction blog post about our collaboration.
Verimatrix VCAS CPIX multi-DRM support for Widevine, FairPlay and Playready.

Nimble supports DRM in the following scenarios:

Live streaming output.
DVR encryption for playback of recorded streams.
VOD content encryption during playback.

Verimatrix™ VCAS CEI key management is supported to protect live HLS streams with AES encryption.
It's not supported for DVR and VOD use cases.

Follow these easy steps to start using the DRM feature set:

Set up Nimble Streamer and register Addenda license.
Configure DRM using simple drm.conf file on Nimble Streamer server side.
Test protected streams in your players.

1. Set up Nimble Streamer

1.1 Prerequisites: you need to have the following items to be completed before proceeding with DRM setup.

You have a proper DRM-enabled player set up and tested so you could test the encrypted streams.
You signed up for WMSPanel account.
Latest version of Nimble Streamer was installed and is running.
SSL is properly set up and tested.

1.2 Set up streaming: create and test your streaming scenario without any encryption first.

For live streaming, refer to live streaming digest page to find proper setup instructions.
For DVR, refer to DVR feature digest and DVR setup article to make it work for your live stream.
For VOD scenario, refer to VOD features digest. You can try HLS VOD setup and MPEG-DASH VOD setup articles as examples.
You need to explicitly forbid access to VOD files via progressive download as described in this article.
When a viewer connects to streams via MPEG-DASH or fMP4 HLS within an application protected by the DRM, its output will be encrypted with respective DRM engine.
If you play fMP4 HLS, make sure you use fMP4 playback URL which has fmp4 suffix, e.g. https://servername/stream/name/playlist_fmp4.m3u8

Overall you need to make sure you have a separate working test output stream which you'll try to encrypt.
Once you set up DRM as described below, you'll be able to apply it to your production environment.

Watch Nimble Streamer setup for live, DVR and VOD with EZDRM.

2. Subscribe and license

2.1 WMSPanel subscription.
You need to be subscribed for WMSPanel account, at least for basic minimum subscription. So once you made sure Nimble Streamer works with non-encrypted use cases you can follow subscription instructions on your profile page.

2.2 Addenda license.
Nimble Streamer DRM is part of Nimble Streamer Addenda premium package.
You need to subscribe for Addenda package license for each Nimble Streamer server instance where you want to enable DRM.
Use instruction from Addenda page to obtain and register the license.

3. Configure DRM settings

All DRM settings are stored in drm.conf file located at the same location as nimble.conf. E.g. on Linux, you need to create /etc/nimble/drm.conf file.

Just add a few lines, re-start Nimble Streamer and you're all set. You may also apply drm.conf changes by using native API call without Nimble re-start.

3.a General parameters

The config consist of a set of drm{} blocks, each of them contains settings for specified applications.
Show setup details

Mandatory parameters must be included in every block, they are as follows.

application defines space-separated list of names of applications where settings will be applied.
type parameter defines the type of a key provider server.
keyserver parameter defines the URL of a key server for specific key provider.

Optional parameters may be used in case when they are needed in specific cases.
By default Nimble Streamer generates unique content IDs itself, but if you need to override them you can use these parameters.

content_id defines content ID for applications covered by current "drm" block.
stream_name_to_content_id = truesets content ID to be generated based on individual stream names.

content_ids defines the set of exact content IDs for each stream.
Here's an example.

content_ids {
    stream1 = Se52m_stream1_id_0mVQ==
    stream2 = Se52m_stream2_id_0mVQ==
    stream3 = Se52m_stream3_id_0mVQ==
}

Other parameters are specific to the key provider, they'll be described in each section.

3.b Widevine Cloud Service

Nimble can encrypt content with Google Widevine and use key rotation.
Show setup details

drm {
  application = live_wv1 live_wv2 live_wv3
  keyserver = https://license.uat.widevine.com/cenc/getcontentkey/widevine_test
  type = widevine
  widevine_signer = widevine_test
  widevine_aes_signing_key = 1ae8ccd0e7985cc0b6203a55855a1034afc252980e970ca90e5202689f947ab9
  widevine_aes_signing_iv = d58ce954203b7c9a9a9d467f59839249
}

Mandatory parameters define Widevine-specific behavior:

widevine_signer, widevine_aes_signing_key, widevine_aes_signing_iv

Optional parameters describe key rotation:

key_rotation_interval parameter defines the interval for rotating keys where it's applicable. If it's set to "0", then keys will not be rotated.
key_count parameter defines how many keys will be taken from a key server at once for further rotation.

3.c EZDRM

Nimble can encrypt content with Google Widevine, Apple FairPlay and Microsoft Playready using EZDRM key servers.
Watch step-by-step tutorial showing the setup of Nimble Streamer with EZDRM Widevine for live, DVR and VOD.
Notice that EZDRM resource ID can be specified using content_id parameter.
Show setup details

drm {
  application = live_ezdrm
  type = ezdrm
  user = user@yourcompany.com
  password = 12yourpassword34&*@#
}

Mandatory parameters define EZDRM access credentials:

user is user name in EZDRM
password is that user's password

3.d BuyDRM KeyOS

Nimble can encrypt content with Google Widevine, Apple FairPlay and Microsoft Playready using BuyDRM KeyOS.
Show setup details

drm {
  application = live_keyos
  type = keyos
  keyos_user_certificate_file = /home/user/keyos/conf/keyos_user.crt
  keyos_user_key_file = /home/user/keyos/conf/keyos_user.key
}

Mandatory parameters define KeyOS access credentials:

keyos_user_certificate_file is an end user's public certificate file
keyos_user_key_file is an end user's private key file

Optional content IDs. You may set content_id and content_ids parameters like in other cases but they must be set in UUID format, e.g.
content_id = 2193eb5b-544b-1234-abcd-1e94b0f778b8

3.e PallyCon

Nimble can encrypt content with Google Widevine, Apple FairPlay and Microsoft Playready using PallyCon key servers.
Show setup details

drm {
  application = live_pally
  type = pallycon
  pallycon_kms_token = yourtoken
}

Mandatory parameter define access token:

pallycon_kms_token is a token for acessing PallyCon

3.f Verimatrix VCAS CPIX

Nimble can encrypt content using Verimatrix multi-DRM with Widevine, Playready and FairPlay.
Show setup details

drm {
  application = live_vcas
  keyserver = http://key_server_ip:8058
  type = vcas_cpix
}

Optional parameters may be used in case when they are needed in specific cases.

key_id defines key ID for applications covered by current "drm" block.

key_ids defines the set of exact key IDs for each stream.
Here's an example.

key_id = 54f7d90a-bc2f-bc9b-08d4-bbeac4ccf08b
key_ids {
  stream1 = 7dfb3eb6-677e-11eb-a5a9-b754f57205c9
  stream2 = 82ea16f4-677e-11eb-81e0-6f945b12648a
}

3.g Verimatrix VCAS CEI

Nimble can encrypt HLS content with AES encryption using Verimatrix VCAS key servers.
Show setup details

drm {
  application = live_vcas
  keyserver = http://key_server_ip:8058
  type = vcas_cei
}

Verimatrix allows using key rotation, it's optional:

key_rotation_interval parameter defines the interval for rotating keys where it's applicable. If it's set to "0", then keys will not be rotated.
key_count parameter defines how many keys will be taken from a key server at once for further rotation.

Verimatrix has other optional parameters like this one:

vcas_encoder_token parameter defines the token for certain cloud scenarios.

4. Test encrypted streams and troubleshoot

Once you re-start Nimble Streamer, you may use your player to test the encrypted live stream to make sure the setup is correct.
Make sure you use SSL for your streams' playback.
You may also apply drm.conf changes by using this Nimble native API call.

If the stream doesn't play then disable corresponding DRM section in drm.conf and re-start Nimble Streamer instance. This will let you determine if the DRM setup is the root cause of the problem.

If you still have issues after making fixes to configuration, contact our support. We'll need your drm.conf file, a live stream to test, and a web page with that stream and DRM-enabled player.