Enhanced RTMP to deliver HEVC and AV1

Recently, Veovera Software Organization has released a new Enhanced RTMP spec.

This spec extends the capabilities of RTMP to deliver the content encoded with H.265/HEVC and AV1 codecs.

Some finally, the new generation of codecs can be delivered using this proven technology. Considering lower bandwidth needed to throughput AV1 and HEVC, this can tremendously reduce the costs of delivery and ownership in general.

 

HEVC was supported in our products for a long time using other protocols, while AV1 was available only for VOD via DASH. Now our team has implemented this new RTMP spec across our products to help our customers improve their infrastructure.

Let's see what we can do for you.

Nimble Streamer software media server

RTMP feature set works the same way as before while being able to carry new codecs:

• Receive RTMP as both published and pulled stream
• Re-package HEVC content into into other output live protocol such as HLS, DASH, SRT, MPEGTS etc
• Record DVR and play it.
• Re-publish the stream via RTMP.
• Provide RTMP stream for pulling by other solutions.

So whatever use cases you have with RTMP, the new HEVC and AV1 codecs will go in smoothly.

This brings some new interesting combinations.

Generating live MPEG-DASH with AV1 content is one of therm. DASH is supported by a large number of players on various platforms, as well as AV1 decoding, so you can make live AV1 streaming for end users now. The setup is the same, so if you have it in place, you don't need to change anything.

AV1 support is currently limited to MPEG-DASH re-packaging but we plan extending it to other use cases soon.

This also opens ability to re-publish HEVC stream to YouTube from Nimble, it works as any other republishing. See also Larix description below for details of this use case.

Notice that previous non-standard RTMP spec extension is still supported via a respective parameter.

Larix Broadcaster mobile apps

Larix supports HEVC as part of Larix Premium in-app subscription. It could be previously delivered via SRT, RIST and RTSP.

Now, RTMP can carry HEVC as well. So is your destination supports RTMP HEVC, Larix will deliver it properly.

This significantly decreases the required bandwidth so your users may stream better quality streams with the same device and network.

Notice that YouTube supports the new spec, which means that you can publish RTMP with HEVC to YouTube Live platform with all the benefits mentioned above. The setup is the same as before, just enter your YouTube streaming parameters as described here, subscribe for Larix Premium and enjoy streaming!

And of course, you can also stream HEVC with RTMP into Nimble Streamer. If you notice any other software that supports new spec, let us know so we could test it and describe here.

Get Larix Broadcaster on your mobile device:

• Google Play
• Apple AppStore

Notice that previous non-standard RTMP spec extension can still be enabled via Connections / settings menu.

We'll write more about related use cases in upcoming articles, stay tuned for updates in this blog and in our social networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Telegram, Reddit

Introducing Larix Premium subscription

Our team started Larix Broadcaster development back in 2015.

At first, it was a proof-of-concept project to follow the demand of our Nimble Streamer customers for an easy-to-use live streaming app.

Over the years Larix turned into a very useful application for streamers with break-though and sometimes unique features like SRT streaming, WebRTC streaming, multiple simultaneous connections and many more. Larix Broadcaster is considered as the best live streaming application on the market by many customers and streaming services. It was and is used in a wide variety of cases from IRL enthusiasts to newsrooms and NFL's 2020 virtual draft.

Larix apps brought a huge added value for our users, and all that was for free, without asking for money.

What's current status?

We were developing Larix on our own expense for years while having occasional sales of SDK to support our mobile engineers. But now the SDK sales are in decline after peak pandemic years.

However, the application is still being developed by a team of professionals. We all want to get paid for our work and we want our engineers be able to feed their families.

At this point we have to move to a subscription model to sustain further development, otherwise we'll have to suspend any further improvements of Larix family of products.

We believe that adding some minor monetization for top-notch capabilities will let us support our engineers and innovate even further by adding new capabilities. For years we could drive in this race of steady development of this world-class product, and and we need further fuel to keep going.

Larix Premium

This month we introduced in-app subscription called Larix Premium and put some existing features under it.

Larix Premium costs 9.99 USD per month and includes features like:

• HEVC encoding
• Enhanced RTMP spec which allows publishing HEVC into YouTube and Nimble Streamer
• SEI NTP metadata insertion
• Advanced Connectivity settings menu
• Three or more simultaneous connections and six or more pre-defined connections
• Larix Talkback
• WebRTC streaming for more than 5 minutes
• Dolby HDR on supported Apple devices
• Android Background streaming

In the upcoming releases, Premium will also absorb the following:

• Time limit for free streaming over significant amount of time per week.
• Android OTG USB support with additional fixes and improvements.

Streaming providers and services

If you're a streaming platform or a service provider and you want your customers to use Larix Broadcaster for free, please let us know about it so we could provide you with various options to support us.

If you're an active streamer, you may get in touch with your platform and ask them to help you make Larix available for you for free.

Streaming world figured out the way to make money: platforms get ads and subscribers, while streamers make profits with all kinds of monetization. Our team is an important part of this ecosystems and we believe our efforts are worth the subscription that we introduce.

Multiple devices under same account

Notice that if you use the same account on multiple devices, you can use the one subscription to unlock Premium on each of them.

So if you use the same Apple ID on several iPhones in your production setup, you will pay for only one subscription and use it on each of those devices. The same applies to your Google account and Android phones.

Other subscriptions

In addition for Premium, we have a separate subscription for NDI mobile streaming support that costs 19.99 USD per month. It's a proprietary protocol and we have to monetize it separately.

Also, Larix Player for Android and iOS now has its subscription that covers a brand new Videowall functionality that allows watching multiple streams on the same screen. It costs 9.99 USD per month.

The mentioned prices are for the United States, the final price may vary depending on country of purchase and local taxes.

As we describe above, adding monetization helps us develop the project further and helps all of our users to keep using the best mobile streaming application on the market.

Please let us know if you have any thoughts on this monetization or other forms of supporting our mobile development team.

Dante audio support in Nimble Streamer

Nimble Streamer is now powered by Dante audio technology.

Nimble supports two scenarios of processing Dante audio.

• Receiving Dante audio from local live production environment and using it for further content transformation. The resulting audio can be used for further live streaming via conventional protocols like HLS, MPEG-DASH, SRT. Icecast and any other. You may combine it with any available live video input like NDI and produce full-featured live video output.
• Generating Dante by getting live streams via any available protocol (SRT, RTMP, NDI etc) and providing Dante audio output into your local production environment.

Thus you can process Dante audio and integrate it into your live production environment seamlessly with low cost of ownership.

This article will be updated with latest links and more use cases and related features, stay tuned for updates in our social networks.

Let's see how you can set up Dante and add it into your workflow.

Nimble pre-requisites

At the moment, Dante technology is only available in Nimble Streamer for Windows. The minimum version of Nimble Streamer is 4.0.1-1. Dante is processed by Live Transcoder for Nimble Streamer so you'll need to obtain a respective license. Also, you have to purchase Dante license to make Nimble work with it.

Here are the steps you need to follow in order to start processing Dante with Nimble on your Windows machine.

1. Sign up for WMSPanel account.
2. Install latest Nimble Streamer on Windows and subscribe for it.
3. Install Live Transcoder package on Windows and active its license.
4. Set up transcoder scenario to receive or send Dante streams.
5. Purchase and activate a respective Dante license.

We assume you will pass steps 1-3 easily within a few minutes using our instruction, so we'll focus on setting up Dante in Nimble Streamer and activating a license.

Receiving Dante

To receive Dante, you need to set up Nimble Live Transcoder to obtain the audio and transform it into other codecs suitable for your use cases.

Click on Transcoder top menu, you'll see transcoder scenarios page.

Click on Create new scenario to see a blank scenario where you can add video and audio inputs, add transformation filters if needed and then set up encoders to produce the output.

To have Nimble receive Dante, drag and drop new audio source and choose Dante in the respective dialog.

Enter Dante name which will be used in your Dante scenarios, such as license activation and routing with other Dante-powered devices.

Then add audio encoder element and link it to your Dante input. Nimble provides various audio codecs, and in order to test the scenario you can choose AAC audio with default settings.

Once you save scenario and it's synced to Nimble instance, you'll be able to connect to audio stream using any supported audio protocol.

To define the protocols you can go to Nimble Streamer top menu / Live streams settings to open the respective page.

Here you may set up either global server setup for output protocols or define specific application setting. In our case we define live application with Icecast, audio-only HLS and SLDP.

You may also re-stream this output via RTMP republishing or SRT publication, please refer to the respective docs for details.

Sending Dante

If you have any live stream input in your Nimble Streamer instance, you can use it as a sourse for Dante output. You may use any protocol like RTMP, SRT, NDI, WebRTC, Icecast or any other from the list of supported technologies.

In our case we have a live stream available, this page can se accessed via Nimble Streamer top menu / Live Streams.

Active live stream input

Now we need to set up a transcoder scenario. To generate Dante output. As mentioned in previous case, click on Transcoder top menu, you'll see transcoder scenarios page. Then click on Create new scenario to see a blank scenario.

In this new scenario, first add an Audio source to decode your audio source stream. There you need to use the name of your input stream. In our case it's /live/stream/ (see picture below).

Transcoder scenario for Dante output

Then you need to drag and drop Audio output. There you choose Dante in the respective dialog.

Dante output settings

Use Dante name field to define the name which will later be used for device activation and routing.

Once you have your Dante stream set in Nimble Streamer, you need to purchase and activate a respective license as well as set up device routing for your audio stream.

Activating Dante license and mapping devices

Those of our customers who use Dante, know the licensing procedure very well, so we'll show basic steps and device mapping.

First, the Dante stream at Nimble instance will become visible as a new unlicensed device.

Start Dante Activator to start the license purchase process.

Choose the number of channels you'd like cover and proceed with the purchase.

Now the license is activated and our new device can be used properly.

After that you can route your audio to other devices. In our case we route Nimble's Dante output into a  Dante-powered speaker.

You can contact Audinate support team for more information about activating Dante license.

Further steps

Once you have Dante being active and mapped, your device will be able to receive or send data, becoming part of your live streaming production and content delivery infrastructure.

We'll be improving this feature set and will provide with more use cases so you could use Dante with better return of investments.

Let us know of your experience of using Dante.

Related documentation

Nimble Streamer, Live Transcoder, NDI support in Nimble Streamer, 

NDI HX2 support in Larix Broadcaster

Larix Broadcaster now has NDI®|HX2 support!

You can turn your mobile device into NDI source:

• Output streaming via NDI®|HX2
• Preview stream support
• Discovery Server and connection metadata
• Handle zoom from NDI Studio Monitor

It's based on NDI SDK 2023-04-10 r134150 v5.5.4

You can install it now and subscribe for just $19.99 per month in-app.

Download on the AppStore

Get it on Google Play

Let us know of your suggestions and feedback regarding this feature set.

Price adjustment for Nimble Streamer

Since the first release of the first Nimble Streamer server in April of 2012, our team has always been focused on the quality, performance and availability of the product. As for the monetization aspect, we tried to stay low cost in order to be an affordable solution. The price per core instance was gradual up until 2017 and never exceeded 10 USD. In 2017 we set it precisely to 10 USD to make things simple. We kept these low prices despite the increasing costs of development and maintenance as well as overall pricing trends of our streaming media industry.

Now, a decade after our server introduction, we are increasing the price for Nimble Streamer server.

The new price is 50 USD per month per server instance.
Other prices, such as licenses for Transcoder and Addenda as well as WMSPanel features and stats, remain the same.

All trial accounts have this new price for their subscriptions effective March 23rd.

We appreciate all of our current subscribed customers so we give some additional time to adopt the new costs.
All existing subscriptions will be upgraded accordingly.

In addition to that, the number of servers per billing cycle is now calculated by peak value. So if you add and remove servers, the charged amount will reflect the maximum number of simultaneous servers within the billing cycle.

Our team will keep improving and maintaining Nimble Streamer along with adding new outstanding cutting-edge features. We want to thank all of our customers who supported us through the past decade and we are confident that we'll move forward together in our endeavor.

If you have any questions, please let us know.

WebRTC ingest support in Larix Broadcaster

Larix Broadcaster mobile apps for Android and iOS have become very popular among live streaming community in the last several years and they are widely used in all sorts of scenarios and setups.

It has one-of-a-kind set of connectivity features which includes the support for SRT, RTMP, RTSP and RIST, allowing for multiple simultaneous connections to several destinations. It also supports Talkback, pause and stand-by modes, audio-only streaming and more.

Now we introduce WebRTC support via WHIP signaling in Larix Broadcaster.

You may ingest WebRTC into any software capable of processing it via WHIP. This includes the following names:

• Nimble Streamer software media server. Watch this video tutorial showing the ingest example.
• Dolby.io platform. Read Broadcasting Mobile Native WebRTC Streams with the Larix Broadcaster article for setup example
• CloudFlare Stream platform.

Feel free to install Larix Broadcaster and try it now:

• AppStore
• Google Play

Please contact us if you've also tested Larix WebRTC with your server or service. WHIP signaling becomes one of the industry standards, so we all need to make sure of full interoperability between solutions.

If you'd like to integrate WebRTC ingest in your streaming app, check our mobile SDKs:

• Larix Broadcaster SDK for Android
• Larix Broadcaster SDK for iOS

and subscribe in case you want to try.

Larix Broadcaster uses Pion implementation of WebRTC API.
Softvelum extends a special thanks to Sean DuBois and all Pion contributors.

Follow us in social media to get updates about our new features and products: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Telegram

Introducing changes to Nimble Streamer licensing

TLDR: Each instance of Nimble Streamer starting version 4 must be registered in WMSPanel

Our team started the development of Nimble Streamer in December of 2012 and released it in early 2013. We started this product to respond to the needs of the streaming industry. People needed an affordable tool which could help them solve their basic streaming tasks at a low cost. So, we responded by creating a basic smart caching streaming server which we called Nimble Streamer. And we put it out as a freeware: people could use the server for free and pay only for extra web service for setup and stats.

Now, a decade later, Nimble Streamer is a multi-functional software media server which is used by thousands of organizations across the globe in all kinds of verticals. It’s one of the few software products on the market capable of building full-featured streaming infrastructure.

Over the years the cost model has always remained the same: it was a freeware and people paid us for Nimble instances only if they needed the web UI of WMSPanel or add-ons like Transcoder and Addenda. The users without WMSPanel paid nothing while getting all updates, features and bug fixes via publicly available repositories. This zero-cost model persisted despite the fact that Nimble was continuously evolving into a much bigger product which required more people to develop, maintain and improve the quality.

It's time to make change.

We’ve been reluctant to change the freeware licensing for the past decade, however, it’s time to move forward.

1. Starting from version 4, any Nimble Streamer instance must be registered in an active account of WMSPanel.
2. All new features, improvements and bug fixes will be added only in Nimble version 4.x.
3. If the WMSPanel account has been removed due to the end of trial period or subscription deactivation, then Nimble Streamer must be uninstalled or downgraded to version 3.

What about active WMSPanel customers with paid accounts?

Nothing changes for our existing subscribed customers. If you have an active WMSPanel subscription, this will not affect you. We want people to use Nimble Streamer instances with WMSPanel, so if you do, you’re all set. You may use any version of Nimble Streamer with your WMSPanel account.

What about existing standalone Nimble instances of version 3.x or older?

A lot of people use Nimble Streamer versions 3.x without WMSPanel because it just works fine for them. That’s good, so keep using version 3, it will remain fully operable.

We want to make sure that your existing workflow doesn’t break just because our licensing has changed in the background, however, if your server auto-upgrades to 4.x please downgrade it back to any 3.x version.

The 3.x branch will still be available for download and usage. And if you occasionally upgrade to version 4, you can always downgrade back to 3.x branch.

If you want to run the latest supported version or want our team’s support, please register a WMSPanel account and subscribe with whatever instances you have in your fleet.

What if my Nimble instance cannot be registered in the WMSPanel?

Contact us to see if we can provide you with some activation options for that case. 

When will these changes be applied?

Version 4 of Nimble Streamer will be released in early March of 2023.

Any other questions?

Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns about this new licensing model.

License API and deferred payments for Transcoder and Addenda

Nimble Streamer has premium add-ons which require additional licenses to operate. Those are Live Transcoder for content transformation and Addenda for various features like DRM, Advertizer or SRT PASSet.

You can create those licenses at the time of your first subscription or later on whenever you need them at any moment of your billing period. You also need to make payment in order to activate - either during your first subscription or any time during billing period once you need them.

This is not convenient in many cases especially when you create some automation process where you cannot log into WMSPanel every time you make a license.

So we made two big adjustments for those of our long-time trusted customers who want to utilize more licenses:

1. You can defer first-time license payments to your next billing date.
2. You can create Transcoder and Addenda licenses via API.

Let's see what you can do now.

Defer your payments

In order to start working with a new Transcoder server you need to create a license for it and activate it.

Usually you activate the license by making one-time payment proportional to the cost of monthly license (50 USD) and to a number days left until the expiration date of current license (basically days left until WMSPanel monthly payment).

Now eligible customers may request the alleviation of this policy. If you're a long-time customer with active usage of Transcoder, you may request us to defer these payments. Some existing customers have already been enabled this feature.

Addenda is already available for deferred payments for all subscribed customers.

This deferment works like this:

1. When you create a license you may choose to defer payment by clicking on "Activate and pay later".
2. The license is then activated and you can use it right after that.
3. The deferred payment amount is put into your account billing.
4. At the next payment date, that amount will be charged along with other expenses for the next billing period.
5. Those expenses will include license' regular price of 50 USD unless you cancel it.

This way, you will not need to pull out your credit card each time you need to create a license.

Contact us to see if your account is eligible and to enable this capability.

API for licenses 

With the deferred payment enabled, you can make another step and create your licenses using our WMSPanel API as described in these calls' descriptions.

So what you need to do is 

1. make an API call which creates a license,
2. get this license ID in response,
3. register this new license for your server.

That's it, you can now either manually create a new scenario for this new server, or use API to operate Transcoder scenarios on that server.

This allows automating a lot of processes related to Nimble Streamer functionality.

Contact our team if you have any questions about this approach and if you'd like to enable it for your account.

AV1 support for VOD MPEG-DASH streaming via Nimble Streamer

Nimble Streamer has extensive VOD feature set. It allows dynamically re-package static files into VOD HLS and MPEG-DASH streams. MPEG-DASH protocol has been fully supported by Nimble for a long time, allowing to reach wide range of devices with various codecs on board.

AV1 codec has been introduced to the public a few years ago and has grown into a mature technology with help of industry leads. It's supported in all major browsers which makes it pervasive across the web.

Now, following the requests of our customers Nimble Streamer team has implemented AV1 VOD transmuxing into the product. Having MP4 files containing AV1 content, you can set up Nimble to process these files and generate MPEG-DASH output.

Follow MPEG-DASH VOD transmuxing setup article to set up Nimble Streamer to generate AV1-powered VOD streams.

Other VOD-related standard features  of Nimble Streamer applicable for DASH are supported as well.

Remote HTTP storage support allows to effectively stream files, those size exceeds available file system capacity. An AV1 files can be processed via remote storage as well. You may also make adaptive bitrate VOD streams using SMIL files. The generated streams can then be protected with Paywall feature set, including pay-per-view framework, hotlink protection, geo-lock and more.

In addition to Paywall, you can encrypt AV1 content with Widevine using Nimble DRM. You may use any DRM management solution supported by Nimble to protect your streams.

Live AV1 support: with Enhanced RTMP spec, Nimble Streamer now supports HEVC/H.265 and AV1 processing for live re-packaging.

Feel free to let us know of your experience with AV1 and share your thoughts on its usage with Nimble and beyond.

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Related documentation

VOD streaming in Nimble Streamer, MPEG-DASH support in Nimble Streamer, MPEG-DASH VOD transmuxing setup, Nimble DRM

CEA-608/708 subtitles support in SLDP

CEA-608/708 closed captions are now supported in SLDP low latency playback protocol by Softvelum, in both Nimble Streamer and SLDP HTML5 Player.

The pipeline works as follows:

1. Closed captions are delivered in NAL units of your content via any live streaming protocol supported by Nimble Streamer, including SRT, RTMP, MPEGTS and others.
2. Nimble Streamer delivers the content via SLDP as usual.
3. SLDP HTML5 Player recognizes subtitles in the stream.
4. End user may enable subtitles display and watch video with closed captioning.

Notice that subtitles processing works only with SLDP Player SDK which is available as a premium product. Learn more about HTML5 Player SDK here. You can subscribe to SDK in order to generate the package for your domains and get our team's support going forward.

You can try this feature with our players testing free page before purchasing the SDK.

Let us know if you have any questions about closed captioning in Softvelum products.

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