8 ms·

Scalable Live Video Streaming Using NGINX and MPEG-DASH/HLS

140 points by slederer 10y ago

mountaineer22 10y ago
How does this compare to Wowza?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- benwilber0 10y ago
  basically the same. I find nginx + ffmpeg to be easier and simpler than deploying Wowza. As well as free-er.
- bcryptd 10y ago
  It's not running on Java so it should be faster with the same hardware.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    There may be a lot to complain about with Java but it is insanely efficient when it comes to serving data out a network port. Wowza will scale well beyond most companies' needs, I've used their stuff for years and it is the one program that convinced me that Java actually can be very efficient for applications like these.
aleksanb 10y ago
The setup seems rather similar to https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module which I've used in the past. Perhaps they've bundled it with Nginx Plus without crediting the original authors? The project has a bit too permissive license for my taste.
- rch 10y ago
  > Both NGINX and NGINX Plus support the features we’re discussing
- benwilber0 10y ago
  Roman Arutyunyan is (or was previously) an engineer at nginx when he developed nginx-rtmp. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1boJWioxsWc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1boJWioxsWc
  - gshulegaard 10y ago
    I work at Nginx, although not on the core development team, and to the best of my knowledge Roman Arutyunyan is still an engineer with us.
- schellkenig 10y ago
  But the nginx-rtmp-module does not support DASH with ABR to the best of my knowledge. Seems to be still an open issue https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module/issues/480 https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module/issues/480
alexcroox 10y ago
I wish there was a decent HTML5 low latency (< 2s) solution. Nothing comes close to RTMP + Flash still.
- benwilber0 10y ago
  HD RTMP to the client is extremely difficult to scale without an enormous investment in infrastructure. AFAIK BAM/MLB.TV are the only ones doing it.
- dmm 10y ago
  The scalability of DASH/HLS comes from the fact that the video segments are just static files sitting on a http server so they can be cached and distributed with the many techniques for serving static files over http. If you don't need the scalability of DASH/HLS you can use the WebRTC apis for low latency streaming, usually <1s. WebRTC can be used for client-server applications just as easily as peer-to-peer using a gateway like Janus[1]. [1] https://janus.conf.meetecho.com/ https://janus.conf.meetecho.com/
  - alexcroox 10y ago
    Yer I've looked into WebRTC before but the browser support isn't good enough yet :(
    - dmm 10y ago
      What browser doesn't support WebRTC but does support flash/RTMP ?
      - alexcroox 10y ago
        Internet Explorer 9, 10, 11...
- bcryptd 10y ago
  It can be done http://www.gpac-licensing.com/2014/07/09/lowering-dash-live-latency-240ms/ http://www.gpac-licensing.com/2014/07/09/lowering-dash-live-...
excalibur 10y ago
I thought this project was shut down. http://www.coderag.com/hooli-lays-off-hundreds-of-employees-dissolves-entire-nucleus-division/ http://www.coderag.com/hooli-lays-off-hundreds-of-employees-...
callmeed 10y ago
This looks cool. I'm very interested in live video but can someone enlighten me on the creation side of this equation? How do I create an RTMP stream in the first place? What camera can/should I use? Can I use webcam? Is there an iOS app that can do it? What hardware/software is needed to create this RTMP stream that I'll be pushing to nginx?
- dylz 10y ago
  ffmpeg, vlc, OBS Studio (this one is probably easiest; you can just add an image or add a webcam source etc then configure a rtmp url to push to)
  - ericcholis 10y ago
    Wirecast from Telestream is a good paid option as well.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      Wowza is another one. It scales very well.
- benwilber0 10y ago
  Streamers typically use something like [1] OBS, or [2] FMLE to stream their desktop or webcam to an RTMP ingest server like Twitch, Youtube, Streamup, Streamboat.tv, etc. Can even just use ffmpeg. [1] https://obsproject.com/ https://obsproject.com/ [2] http://www.adobe.com/products/flash-media-encoder.html http://www.adobe.com/products/flash-media-encoder.html
NEDM64 10y ago
Is there a way to mux subtitles written on the fly? For example, I want to mux a subtitle stream, with the real time clock in it, into a video stream.
- kalimoxto 10y ago
  ffmpeg can do that fairly easily. To adjust the command in the example, you need to to take the srt file and pass it as a second -i input file. There's some helpful guides on how to do that if you search around. e.g. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FFMPEG_An_Intermediate_Guide/subtitle_options https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FFMPEG_An_Intermediate_Guide/s...
  - NEDM64 10y ago
    But I don't have a subtitles file. I would need it to read from a stream, not a static file.
    - nitrogen 10y ago
      Try having it read from a fifo instead.
      - NEDM64 10y ago
        But how? I've searched the documentation.
bcryptd 10y ago
The one thing I've always wanted from nginx-rtmp was the ability to pull from a source input instead of running a separate process with ffmpeg to push the stream over. If they could get that working my life would become less complicated quickly.
- jc4p 10y ago
  yeah I use nginx-rtmp for local video capturing (basically the functionality of a mirror) and the lag that needing to re-encode + chunk + starting off at the beginning of the chunks in the playlist introduces is meh. I think I'm going to transition my project over to WebRTC though, since the mobile device I'm using to display the video can handle that now.
  - rawnlq 10y ago
    iOS still doesn't support webrtc...
    - jc4p 10y ago
      Neither does a lot of Android! Luckily the product I'm using uses https://crosswalk-project.org/ https://crosswalk-project.org/ -- that sounded like an ad!
- nickysielicki 10y ago
  > [I'd prefer] the ability to pull from a source input instead of running a separate process with ffmpeg to push the stream over. Could you elaborate on this? I don't understand what you mean by 'push' and 'pull' in this context.
  - bcryptd 10y ago
    Currently to get the stream from ffmpeg into nginx you have to do the following: ffmpeg -re -i input_file -c copy -f flv rtmp://nginx_server_url:1935/app It would be nice to have the ability to set up an app block that looked kind of like this application source1 { exec fffmpeg -f decklink -i 'DeckLink Quad (1)@8' -f flv rtmp://localhost/app/$name } ffmpeg is still pushing the stream to nginx, but nginx is in charge of starting that process.
jordanbaucke 10y ago
Anyone have any insight on RTMP + HLS / MPEG-DASH -> WebRTC? Ala www.beam.pro (what they call FTL)?
vhiremath4 10y ago
"but for ease of reading we refer to NGINX Plus throughout" Uhuh. Suuuure. :p
- bcryptd 10y ago
  I also would hesitate to call it "Live" without showing how to adjust for GOP sizes, key frames, B and I frames, etc.
smashthesystems 10y ago
Using Representations[1] in MPEG-DASH is a more native way within the manifest to scale the quality / bandwidth requirements. There is some preliminary work and an issue open on one of the module forks which seems to get a little more tlc (imho) - https://github.com/sergey-dryabzhinsky/nginx-rtmp-module/issues/55 https://github.com/sergey-dryabzhinsky/nginx-rtmp-module/iss... [1] https://www.brendanlong.com/the-structure-of-an-mpeg-dash-mpd.html https://www.brendanlong.com/the-structure-of-an-mpeg-dash-mp...
nickysielicki 10y ago
Lots of people in here commenting about nginx plus, but can anyone recommend a free alternative to BITMOVIN?
- hayksaakian 10y ago
  video.js with the HLS plugin is fine if you don't need dash (there may be flash) but obviously that's very bare bones. It seems like there's things like ad support among other features you get with the suggested player.
- corobo 10y ago
  I had the same wonder and through some digging found videojs-contrib-dash[1] which uses dash.js, referenced on the bitmovin site[2]. I'm going to give this a go and see what does and doesn't work. [1] https://github.com/videojs/videojs-contrib-dash https://github.com/videojs/videojs-contrib-dash [2] https://bitmovin.com/mpeg-dash-open-source-player-tools/ https://bitmovin.com/mpeg-dash-open-source-player-tools/
newman314 10y ago
FYI. The rtmp module broke recently with the recent nginx 1.11.0 release.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
kasparsklavins 10y ago
Working on a similar product but using peer to peer live video streaming. Since the data does not touch the server, there are no scaling problems.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  One-to-many or one-to-one?
  - kasparsklavins 10y ago
    one to many
- slederer 10y ago
  There are a couple of cool P2P companies out there like http://www.streamroot.io/ http://www.streamroot.io/ or https://www.peer5.com/ https://www.peer5.com/
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- corobo 10y ago
  Who's the target market? I think I'm a bit jaded as my first thought was this would open up the streamer to get DDoSed every time they try to stream

140 points by slederer 10y ago

mountaineer22 10y ago

How does this compare to Wowza?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
benwilber0 10y ago
basically the same. I find nginx + ffmpeg to be easier and simpler than deploying Wowza. As well as free-er.
bcryptd 10y ago
It's not running on Java so it should be faster with the same hardware.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  There may be a lot to complain about with Java but it is insanely efficient when it comes to serving data out a network port. Wowza will scale well beyond most companies' needs, I've used their stuff for years and it is the one program that convinced me that Java actually can be very efficient for applications like these.

aleksanb 10y ago

The setup seems rather similar to https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module which I've used in the past. Perhaps they've bundled it with Nginx Plus without crediting the original authors? The project has a bit too permissive license for my taste.

rch 10y ago
> Both NGINX and NGINX Plus support the features we’re discussing
benwilber0 10y ago
Roman Arutyunyan is (or was previously) an engineer at nginx when he developed nginx-rtmp. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1boJWioxsWc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1boJWioxsWc
- gshulegaard 10y ago
  I work at Nginx, although not on the core development team, and to the best of my knowledge Roman Arutyunyan is still an engineer with us.
schellkenig 10y ago
But the nginx-rtmp-module does not support DASH with ABR to the best of my knowledge. Seems to be still an open issue https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module/issues/480 https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module/issues/480

alexcroox 10y ago

I wish there was a decent HTML5 low latency (< 2s) solution. Nothing comes close to RTMP + Flash still.

benwilber0 10y ago
HD RTMP to the client is extremely difficult to scale without an enormous investment in infrastructure. AFAIK BAM/MLB.TV are the only ones doing it.
dmm 10y ago
The scalability of DASH/HLS comes from the fact that the video segments are just static files sitting on a http server so they can be cached and distributed with the many techniques for serving static files over http. If you don't need the scalability of DASH/HLS you can use the WebRTC apis for low latency streaming, usually <1s. WebRTC can be used for client-server applications just as easily as peer-to-peer using a gateway like Janus[1]. [1] https://janus.conf.meetecho.com/ https://janus.conf.meetecho.com/
- alexcroox 10y ago
  Yer I've looked into WebRTC before but the browser support isn't good enough yet :(
  - dmm 10y ago
    What browser doesn't support WebRTC but does support flash/RTMP ?
    - alexcroox 10y ago
      Internet Explorer 9, 10, 11...
bcryptd 10y ago
It can be done http://www.gpac-licensing.com/2014/07/09/lowering-dash-live-latency-240ms/ http://www.gpac-licensing.com/2014/07/09/lowering-dash-live-...

excalibur 10y ago

I thought this project was shut down. http://www.coderag.com/hooli-lays-off-hundreds-of-employees-dissolves-entire-nucleus-division/ http://www.coderag.com/hooli-lays-off-hundreds-of-employees-...

callmeed 10y ago

This looks cool. I'm very interested in live video but can someone enlighten me on the creation side of this equation? How do I create an RTMP stream in the first place? What camera can/should I use? Can I use webcam? Is there an iOS app that can do it? What hardware/software is needed to create this RTMP stream that I'll be pushing to nginx?

dylz 10y ago
ffmpeg, vlc, OBS Studio (this one is probably easiest; you can just add an image or add a webcam source etc then configure a rtmp url to push to)
- ericcholis 10y ago
  Wirecast from Telestream is a good paid option as well.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Wowza is another one. It scales very well.
benwilber0 10y ago
Streamers typically use something like [1] OBS, or [2] FMLE to stream their desktop or webcam to an RTMP ingest server like Twitch, Youtube, Streamup, Streamboat.tv, etc. Can even just use ffmpeg. [1] https://obsproject.com/ https://obsproject.com/ [2] http://www.adobe.com/products/flash-media-encoder.html http://www.adobe.com/products/flash-media-encoder.html

NEDM64 10y ago

Is there a way to mux subtitles written on the fly? For example, I want to mux a subtitle stream, with the real time clock in it, into a video stream.

kalimoxto 10y ago
ffmpeg can do that fairly easily. To adjust the command in the example, you need to to take the srt file and pass it as a second -i input file. There's some helpful guides on how to do that if you search around. e.g. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FFMPEG_An_Intermediate_Guide/subtitle_options https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FFMPEG_An_Intermediate_Guide/s...
- NEDM64 10y ago
  But I don't have a subtitles file. I would need it to read from a stream, not a static file.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    Try having it read from a fifo instead.
    - NEDM64 10y ago
      But how? I've searched the documentation.

bcryptd 10y ago

The one thing I've always wanted from nginx-rtmp was the ability to pull from a source input instead of running a separate process with ffmpeg to push the stream over. If they could get that working my life would become less complicated quickly.

jc4p 10y ago
yeah I use nginx-rtmp for local video capturing (basically the functionality of a mirror) and the lag that needing to re-encode + chunk + starting off at the beginning of the chunks in the playlist introduces is meh. I think I'm going to transition my project over to WebRTC though, since the mobile device I'm using to display the video can handle that now.
- rawnlq 10y ago
  iOS still doesn't support webrtc...
  - jc4p 10y ago
    Neither does a lot of Android! Luckily the product I'm using uses https://crosswalk-project.org/ https://crosswalk-project.org/ -- that sounded like an ad!
nickysielicki 10y ago
> [I'd prefer] the ability to pull from a source input instead of running a separate process with ffmpeg to push the stream over. Could you elaborate on this? I don't understand what you mean by 'push' and 'pull' in this context.
- bcryptd 10y ago
  Currently to get the stream from ffmpeg into nginx you have to do the following: ffmpeg -re -i input_file -c copy -f flv rtmp://nginx_server_url:1935/app It would be nice to have the ability to set up an app block that looked kind of like this application source1 { exec fffmpeg -f decklink -i 'DeckLink Quad (1)@8' -f flv rtmp://localhost/app/$name } ffmpeg is still pushing the stream to nginx, but nginx is in charge of starting that process.

jordanbaucke 10y ago

Anyone have any insight on RTMP + HLS / MPEG-DASH -> WebRTC? Ala www.beam.pro (what they call FTL)?

vhiremath4 10y ago

"but for ease of reading we refer to NGINX Plus throughout" Uhuh. Suuuure. :p

bcryptd 10y ago
I also would hesitate to call it "Live" without showing how to adjust for GOP sizes, key frames, B and I frames, etc.

smashthesystems 10y ago

Using Representations[1] in MPEG-DASH is a more native way within the manifest to scale the quality / bandwidth requirements. There is some preliminary work and an issue open on one of the module forks which seems to get a little more tlc (imho) - https://github.com/sergey-dryabzhinsky/nginx-rtmp-module/issues/55 https://github.com/sergey-dryabzhinsky/nginx-rtmp-module/iss... [1] https://www.brendanlong.com/the-structure-of-an-mpeg-dash-mpd.html https://www.brendanlong.com/the-structure-of-an-mpeg-dash-mp...

nickysielicki 10y ago

Lots of people in here commenting about nginx plus, but can anyone recommend a free alternative to BITMOVIN?

hayksaakian 10y ago
video.js with the HLS plugin is fine if you don't need dash (there may be flash) but obviously that's very bare bones. It seems like there's things like ad support among other features you get with the suggested player.
corobo 10y ago
I had the same wonder and through some digging found videojs-contrib-dash[1] which uses dash.js, referenced on the bitmovin site[2]. I'm going to give this a go and see what does and doesn't work. [1] https://github.com/videojs/videojs-contrib-dash https://github.com/videojs/videojs-contrib-dash [2] https://bitmovin.com/mpeg-dash-open-source-player-tools/ https://bitmovin.com/mpeg-dash-open-source-player-tools/

newman314 10y ago

FYI. The rtmp module broke recently with the recent nginx 1.11.0 release.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

kasparsklavins 10y ago

Working on a similar product but using peer to peer live video streaming. Since the data does not touch the server, there are no scaling problems.

jacquesm 10y ago
One-to-many or one-to-one?
- kasparsklavins 10y ago
  one to many
slederer 10y ago
There are a couple of cool P2P companies out there like http://www.streamroot.io/ http://www.streamroot.io/ or https://www.peer5.com/ https://www.peer5.com/
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
corobo 10y ago
Who's the target market? I think I'm a bit jaded as my first thought was this would open up the streamer to get DDoSed every time they try to stream