VP8 and VP9 support in SLDP HTML5 player

Our customers keep adding our new real-time low latency protocol SLDP into their streaming workflows as it allows sub-second delay for live streaming delivery. Some basic usage of SLDP protocol is described in this article which describes typical usage scenarios.

People ask us about adding new capabilities into SLDP technology. One of them is adding VP8 and VP9 codecs - those are open and royalty free video coding formats developed by Google. Nimble Streamer Live Transcoder now supports these protocols transcoding in addition to already supported VP8/VP9 transmuxing feature set.

SLDP is codec-agnostic protocol so in order to have full support for VP8/VP9 from source to the viewer,  we only needed to add it into our HTML5 player.

So today we'd like to announce that VP8 and VP9 support was added into SLDP HTML5 web player. This type of playback fully depends on platform support, so it can be currently played in Chrome, Firefox and Opera and possibly in Microsoft browsers over time.

You can use SLDP for streaming in various bitrate modes. First you can stream single-bitrate VP8/VP9 if you know your target audience can play it.

Another option is to create ABR group to include streams encoded with both H.264 and VP8/VP9. In this case our SLDP HTML5 player will choose stream with H.264 codec if target browser or platform doesn't support VP8/VP9 playback. That would give you capabilities for flexible delivery of your content to multiple platforms.

We'll be adding other codecs support per our customers' requests so please contact us to get help or suggest new features.

Related documentation

SLDP low latency streaming, SLDP FAQ, Nimble Streamer codecs support, Mobile solutions, Live Streaming via Nimble Streamer, Live Transcoder for Nimble Streamer, Reliable Low Latency Delivery with SRT+SLDP

Publishing stream to Periscope

RTMP republishing is widely used by Nimble Streamer users to deliver live streams to various types of destinations, including other media servers, CDNs, YouTube or Twitch.

Periscope live streaming platform also takes RTMP streams as input so our customers use that as a target too. As Periscope requires some additional stream setup, we've created a dialog in our UI to cover that use case.

As a source for your stream you can use any delivery method supported by Nimble Streamer.

• Published RTMP
• Pulled RTMP
• Pulled HLS
• Pulled and published RTSP
• MPEG-TS via UDP and HTTP
• SRT via Pull and Listen
• Icecast/SHOUTcast

Once the input stream is taken by Nimble, you can perform a setup for publishing it to Periscope.

Transcoding VP8 and VP9 in Nimble Streamer

VP8 and VP9 are open and royalty free video coding formats developed by Google. Nimble Streamer Live Transcoder now supports these protocols transcoding in addition to already supported VP8/VP9 transmuxing feature set.

Live Transcoder allows performing both decoding and encoding.

To receive VP8 and VP9 for transcoding, Nimble Streamer allows processing RTSP from published and pulled sources. The result stream can be delivered using RTSP and SLDP protocols.

Vote for Softvelum

The Streaming Media European Readers' Choice Awards 2017 voting has been started to get industry opinions on the best solutions on the market. Last year we were selected as the finalist for best streaming innovation for Nimble Streamer. Let's see what we get this year.

Our company is presented in 4 nominations and we hope to get your votes. Here's a brief instruction how to proceed.

1. Find and vote

Go to voting page here, enter your name and contacts to see the full list of nominees.

Find Softvelum products in the following nominations:

1. Best Streaming Innovation: Nimble Live Transcoder
2. Mobile Video App or Solution: Larix Broadcaster
3. Server Hardware/Software: Nimble Streamer
4. Transcoding Solution: Nimble Live Transcoder

We hope you enjoy our products and will choose them in the list.

2. Confirm your vote

Voting closes on August 1st, and at that point, all voters will receive an email asking them to to confirm their votes; only these confirmed votes will be counted.

The finalists will be announced on 15 August, and the winners will be announced in the Autumn issue of the European edition of Streaming Media magazine.


Thanks for being our loyal customers, looking forward to getting your votes.

Setting SRT in Nimble Streamer

Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) is a transport technology that optimizes streaming performance across unpredictable networks. It's applied to contribution and distribution endpoints as part of a video stream workflow to deliver the best quality and lowest latency video at all times.

As audio/video packets are streamed from a source to a destination device, SRT detects and adapts to the real-time network conditions between the two endpoints. SRT helps compensate for jitter and bandwidth fluctuations due to congestion over noisy networks, such as the Internet. Its error recovery mechanism minimizes the packet loss typical of Internet connections. AES 128/256 bit encryption is also supported for end-to-end security, keeping your streams safe from prying eyes.

Our company, Softvelum LLC, became a member of SRT Alliance which is a group dedicated to managing and supporting the open source implementation of SRT. This alliance is accelerating interoperability of video streaming solutions and fostering collaboration with industry leaders to achieve lower latency Internet video transport. Softvelum is actively contributing to the community to improve the protocol and its ecosystem.

Nimble Streamer has full support for SRT:

• Both Push and Listen delivery modes are supported.
• Both Listen and Pull receive modes can be used to get SRT streams for further processing.
• Rendezvous mode for sending and receiving is supported.
• Custom "latency" and "maxbw" parameters are supported for fine tuning.
• Multiple streams can be sent via single SRT channel.
• Multiple Pull-mode clients can be supported when working in "Listen" mode, see section "Set up sending via SRT" section for details.
• Mux rate can be set correctly - Nimble Streamer has 100% PCR accuracy, 0ns PCR drift and PCR interval <20 ms according to StreamGuru. This is typically used for precise testing of channel throughput.
• AES 128 bit encryption provides stream security.

Using Nimble Streamer transmuxing engine, you may create any supported live protocol output from SRT, as well as receive any of them  to create SRT.

Let's see how SRT can be enabled and used in Nimble Streamer.

2017Q2 news

Second quarter of 2017 is over so it's time to see what our company has been doing. As you can see below, we've released some new products that might be interesting for you.

Before getting to the updates, here are a couple of announcements you'd like you to take a look at.

First, check our team's opinion on the business competition in our industry. It's an answer to a frequently asked questions so please read it and make your own opinion.

If you plan attending IBC 2017, keep in mind that our team representatives will be visiting the trade show. So if you'd like to meet us, just drop us a note.

As always, take a look at The State of Streaming Protocols for 2017Q2. You'll see a couple of interesting points there.


Also, if you find our products useful, please find some time to vote for Softvelum solutions in European Readers' Choice Awards 2017.

SLDP

Softvelum Low Delay Protocol is a new technology for reducing the latency for last-mile delivery for end-users. It's based on WebSockets for better accessibility. The core features are

• Sub-second delay between origin and player.
• Codec-agnostic
• ABR support
• HTTP and HTTPS on top of TCP
• Buffer offset support

Take a look at SLDP usage description and also most frequent questions that show the protocol best practices.
In addition to low latency, SLDP provides great level of live streams protection, read this article for more details.

Server side is support is available in Nimble Streamer while client side is covered by SLDP Players. Web player is working in any MSE-enabled web browsers on desktop and connected devices. Android native player is coming soon, while iOS player and SDK are already available and is described below.

Mobile solutions

We've released playback SDK for iOS. You can use RTMP and SLDP playback in your iOS apps. Use this page to subscribe for obtain SDK and get upcoming updates.

SLDP Player sample app is also available in AppStore, you can use it for playing any RTMP and SLDP links. Its sources are also available in iOS SDK.

Larix streaming SDK also has several updates.

First, take a look at mobile SDK FAQ to see answers you might be looking for. It's being updated so if you miss anything - just let us know. 

Limelight has released a how-to about using Larix Broadcaster with its delivery network.

Android and iOS streaming SDKs have several important updates.

iOS got the following

• Bluetooth support
• afreeca.tv publish fixed. It requires max bitrate as 2000 Kbps according to service requirements.
• Connectivity improvements

Android has the same set of updates and features.

You can check all releases' description in these release notes and proceed with subscription here.

Nimble Streamer and Transcoder

Before exposing big updates, here's a feature you were waiting for: HLS input for processing. So now you can pull HLS stream to transmux it to other protocols like RTMP or even use it for further transcoding.

Here are a few big updates.

HEVC transcoding is now available in Live Trasncoder in addition to HEVC transmuxing.

• You can decode HEVC using NVENC and QuickSync as well as software decoder.
• Encoding can be done with NVENC and QuickSync.

Read more about NVENC encoding and QuickSync encoder parameters. Also, QuickSync setup description was updated with Media Server Studio 2017.

Speaking of new codecs, Live Transcoder now can encode audio to MP3. So now it's possible to transcode your live audio from AAC, MP3, Speex, PCM and MP2 into MP3.

Read more about codecs support in Nimble Streamer and its Live Transcoder

Other major update for transcoder is streams' hot swap with Live Transcoder. It now allows using the following opposite scenarios:

• Streams failover hot swap where main stream is backed up by secondary stream in case of publication fail.
• Emergency swap where main stream is replaced with some replacement stream when it becomes available. This is used in cases like US Emergency Alert System (EAS).

The streams are swapped without streams interruption so user playback will not be affected.

Last but not least: we've added new capabilities to give granulated control to end-users. We've separated control features and you can give access to particular capability. Read this article for details.

Stay tuned for more features - follow us at Facebook, Twitter or Google+ to get latest news and updates of our products and services.