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Core concepts

The Live API is built around a small set of ideas that appear in every resource you create. If you’d rather start hands-on, the live event walkthrough covers the same concepts in the context of a working example, and links back here wherever more depth is useful.

Guides

Resource types and lifecycle

The four resource types, billing models, the desired state model, and sites.

Inputs

Connecting a live resource to a stream: sourceName, contentName, flowName, refiners, and transform pins.

Outputs

Where encoded output goes: destinations, internal outputs, and the archive asset.

Templates

How encoding templates connect to live resources, and the configValues/configOverrides model.

Resource states

spec.state vs. status.state, and what the 13 reported values mean.

What the Live API depends on

The Live API references two other APIs by name but doesn’t manage them directly:

  • Media API: sources, content, destinations, and assets. See Content, sources, and destinations.

  • Templates API: the encoding and composition templates referenced from your live resources. See Build with the Templates API.

What comes next

  • Live event walkthrough: a complete end-to-end example.

  • Manage live channels and events: create and operate liveChannels and liveEvents.

  • Multiview: compose multiple live inputs into a single output.