Nebula Broadcast
Nebula Broadcast is available in the NetActuate Marketplace as a one-click, open-source appliance you can deploy into any NetActuate PoP. Self-hosted broadcast automation and media asset management on your own VM. It is grouped under the Media & Streaming category.
What It Does
Nebula is an open-source broadcast automation and media asset management (MAM) system used by real television and radio operations. Ingest media through watchfolders, extract technical and descriptive metadata, generate low-res preview proxies, browse and edit your asset library, and drive linear playout, all from a React web UI on a server you control.
Key features
- Media asset management: assets, folders, views, full-text search and metadata editing
- Watchfolder ingest with automatic asset creation and metadata extraction
- Automatic low-res proxy transcoding (ffmpeg) for fast preview
- Linear playout scheduling and a Conti playout server for HLS output (tutorial workflow)
- Job queue and worker services (broker, watch, meta, conv, play)
- Co-located PostgreSQL and Redis bundled inside the appliance, no external services to run
Use cases
- Broadcasters and channels wanting a self-hosted playout + MAM stack
- Media teams centralizing ingest, proxies and metadata on their own infrastructure
- Evaluation and lab environments for the Nebula 6 platform
Why run it on the NetActuate edge Running Nebula in a PoP close to your ingest sources and operators shortens upload and preview round-trips, and keeps your media library, metadata and playout under your control.
Deployed from the NetActuate marketplace, Nebula boots pre-configured from your seeded values: the server runs its setup (database schema and default settings) on first start, the built-in admin account is rotated off the upstream default to your seeded/generated password, and that credential is verified before the web UI is exposed. Sign in at http://<instance-ip>/ with the admin user and the password from your secret list. Public delivery and federation of playout output need a real domain and TLS termination in front of the appliance (a documented follow-up); the single-VM appliance serves the full web UI over HTTP on the instance IP out of the box.
Vendor and Project
Nebula Broadcast is an open-source project, offered here under the Open Source listing with best-effort community support.
- Project home: nebulabroadcast.com
NetActuate supports the underlying infrastructure. Application-level support follows the listing SLA class (open-source, best effort).
Sizing
| vCPU | RAM | Disk | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | 2 | 4 GB | 40 GB |
| Recommended | 4 | 8 GB | 80 GB |
No VPU (hardware acceleration) is required for this appliance. Choose a size at deploy based on your expected load.
Configuration Fields
When you deploy, you provide these fields. They are written into the appliance at first boot.
| Field | Required | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Admin password | No | generated | Password for the web admin account. Generated for you and stored in your secret list if not provided; never echoed back. Any printable password of 8 to 128 characters is accepted. Stored write-only in your account secret list |
| Admin username | No | admin | Username for the admin account (default admin). |
| Admin email | No | admin@example.com | Email address for the admin account (default admin@example.com). |
Using the Appliance
Deploy in minutes
- Open the web UI. Browse to http://YOUR_VM_IP/ and sign in with username admin and the admin password from your secret list. The upstream default password is rotated away at first boot, so only your seeded password works.
- Add media. Drop files into the watchfolders under the storage volume; Nebula creates assets, extracts metadata and builds preview proxies automatically.
- Browse and schedule. Use the Editor and Preview pages to manage assets; linear playout runs via the bundled worker services.
Exposure posture: the appliance serves plain HTTP on port 80. Put a TLS-terminating proxy (or a real hostname with a certificate) in front before exposing it publicly.
FAQ
Is there a software license fee? No. Nebula Broadcast is open source and free to run. You pay only for the NetActuate infrastructure and bandwidth.
Which port does the appliance serve on?
The primary service is published on port 80 by default; see the configuration fields for any adjustable ports.
Who supports it? NetActuate operates the underlying infrastructure. The application itself is community-supported open source (best-effort SLA class).
Version and Changelog
| Version | Status | Released |
|---|---|---|
| 6.1.3 | Current (default) | 2026-07-13 |
Deploy
- Deploy in the portal: Deploy Nebula Broadcast
- View the listing: portal.netactuate.com/platform/marketplace/l/nebula-broadcast
- Public listing: netactuate.com/marketplace/nebula-broadcast
Need Help?
Contact support@netactuate.com or open a support ticket from the portal.