Larix Broadcaster mobile streaming from iOS to Nimble Streamer

Do you want to broadcast live video from mobile device to your own audience all over the world? The viewers might be your clients, colleagues, friends, family or everybody else you want to show the current moment of your live. Sure, that should be simple. Just point your mobile device and push the button.

In this article we are going to show how to create video streaming from iOS mobile device via Larix Broadcaster. Larix Broadcaster is a free mobile application which can stream live video and/or audio to media server via RTSP protocol. In this example, we'll use Nimble Streamer because it's a freeware powerful media server with rich feature set.

You can visit Larix Broadcaster web page for full Larix feature set description.
Please also visit Larix documentation reference to see more articles about app setup.

To launch the live steaming from a mobile device via Larix Broadcaster you need to perform several steps:

1. Install Larix Broadcaster on your mobile device;
2. Install Nimble Streamer and make necessary settings;
3. Specify published URL in Larix Broadcaster;
4. Open output stream from the media server and check that everything works fine.

1. Install Larix Broadcaster application

Open AppStore in your mobile device, search for Larix Broadcaster and proceed with installing it. Or just use this direct link.

When you launch Larix Broadcaster you will see preview window with "Settings" gear icon and and other buttons.

2. Install and set up Nimble Streamer

Nimble Streamer can be installed on all popular Linux distributions and Windows. For more details about Nimble Streamer installation please see this page. You need to sign up WMSPanel account before starting the installation.

Go to wmspanel.com and press the "Sign Up" link in the top right corner.

Specify your e-mail address in the appeared dialog and then press "Sign Up" button. Follow the instructions from the received e-mail message to complete the registration.

Go to https://wmspanel.com/nimble/install web page and follow installation and registration instructions.

Now let's proceed to Nimble Streamer setup.

Log in to WMSPanel and go to "Nimble Streamer" -> "Live stream settings" menu. Check the HLS and RTMP checkboxes in "General" tab and then press the "Save" button. You may specify Push login and Push password to protect you connection with mobile device. This login and password will be used in Larix Broadcaster settings.

Go to "Interfaces" tab and press "Add RTSP interface" button.

Specify the port number in appeared dialog. Also, this port number will be used in Larix Broadcaster settings. Select your Nimble Streamer instance and press the "Save" button.

In order to make your outgoing stream be available for RTMP playback, add RTMP port as well. That is usually 1935.

If you'd like to avoid publishing from un-authorized sources, you need to set up login and password which you may then use in this app. Go to Global tab to set up server-wide credentials or create application-specific credentials. Refer to this article for basic workflow setup.

So the basic Nimble Streamer configuration to work with Larix Broadcaster is completed. Proceed to configure mobile application.

3. Configure Larix Broadcaster app

For more information about streaming setup, visit Larix documentation reference hich includes video tuutorials.

Specify the IP-address of your media server, Port and Path. If you have specified Push login and Push password then RTSP URL should look like

rtsp://192.168.5.5:1937/live/stream

For RTMP it will be

rtmp://192.168.5.5:1937/live/stream

I user and password fields, enter push_login and push_password

Now return to mobile application preview screen. Make sure that your mobile device has network connection and press "Broadcast" big red button.

4. Check the streaming

Now get back to WMSPanel. Go to "Nimble Streamer" -> "Live streams" menu and click on the number under the "Outgoing streams" column.

Then click on the Question sign in the stream name row.

The video playback from mobile device starts automatically in the appeared dialog. By default the most popular streaming protocol (HLS) is used for video playback. HLS is supported by the most modern mobile devices. If you need to playback video with minimum possible latency, you may use RTMP protocol. To configure minimum latency please read the "Nimble Streamer performance tuning" article.

Also you can play streaming URL with system player (e.g. VLC).

You can now broadcast live video and/or audio from your iPhone and iPad via Larix Broadcaster to your web page, YouTube live or any other CDN.

Larix premium SDK

If you'd like to create similar iOS app capable of media streaming, you can use our mobile broadcasting library and SDK which is the core of Larix Broadcaster. You will get Larix source code and a library for further UI customization.

Some frequent questions regarding Larix Broadcaster ap and SDK are answered in our FAQ.

Visit our documentation reference page for more Larix setup information.

Also, take a look at our Mobile to mobile snapshot which shows the example of using Softvelum products for building mobile streaming and playback network.

Please contact us if you have any questions.

Related documentation

Larix Library and SDK, Installing Nimble Streamer,

Transmux RTSP to HLS, RTMP, DASH and more via Nimble Streamer