December 30, 2019

2019 summary

As the the year of 2019 is over, we want to recap the most significant products and features which we introduced during past 12 months.

We'd like to remind you that you can track all of our latest Softvelum changes via our TwitterFacebookLinkedIn posts and even YouTube channel news podcasts.

Qosifire web service


This year we released a new product called Qosifire. It's a streaming quality monitoring web service which allows tracking live HLS, RTMP and Icecast streams. Qosifire checks for stream correctness from protocol integrity and general content consistency viewpoints. Qosifire agent software checks streams 24/7 using your own server, then our web service console collects data to analyse and sends alerts via email and mobile push notifications.

Read more about why you may need Qosifire for your streaming infrastructure and how you can get started with Qosifire. In addition, read a Qosifire review article by Jan Ozer and find more information in Qosifire knowledge base.

You can also run a free 30-seconds checkup for your live stream without a sign-up.

Nimble Streamer bundle updates


As we explained in January, Flash has been continuously removed in all browsers which caused the decline of RTMP playback. This affects primarily live low latency streaming, this is why we've been working on low latency improvements in our products.

SLDP. First of all, SLDP ABR capabilities ignited a wide adoption among our customers. They use Nimble Streamer for their delivery edges and play their content via HTML, Android and iOS players to have nearly a latency of just about a second long.

Apple introduced Low Latency HLS earlier and released it for developers community.
Now Apple Low Latency HLS is supported in Nimble Streamer with MPEGTS, audio-only and fMP4 containers. Read this introduction article which describes Nimble Streamer setup and LL-HLS usage. As of iOS 13.3, Apple hasn't released LL-HLS from beta stage yet, so we don't have player app available. But our iOS SLDP Player SDK is able to provide this for our subscribers.
BTW, LL-HLS is working on top of HTTP/2 implementation available in Nimble Streamer. You can use it for HLS and MPEG-DASH live streaming delivery.

SRT. Another outstanding technology which we improved over this year was SRT reliable delivery over UDP. Being a member of SRT Alliance we contributed to the community and kept improving user experience allowing to tune latency and maxbw to improve reliability. Our products always have the latest stable versions of SRT library to make sure they have all the latest improvements.

Icecast. Speaking of other improvements, we added more features related to Icecast metadata as described on our Icecast feature page.

SSL. For those of our customers who use Certbot with Let's Encrypt, we made a detailed description for using this duo with Nimble Streamer.


Live Transcoder has been improved in several ways as well. First, take a look at Transcoder overview screencast and Transcoder documentation reference page to see what we got.

We've added SVT-HEVC software library for H.265/HEVC encoding in Live Transcoder for Nimble Streamer.
This feature utilizes the latest improvement, the ability to run encoder out-of-process which allows securing the main Nimble Streamer process in case if some encoder library causes crashes.

The HEVC in general has been on the rise this year. To meet customers' demands we've released an experimental support of H.265/HEVC over RTMP in Nimble Streamer and Larix Broadcaster apps.

As for encoder libraries, QuickSync hardware acceleration is now available on Ubuntu which makes it easier to install.

Nimble Advertizer was improved through this year to handle SCTE-35 markers:
Read Advertizer spec to full details.

Reference pages. Last but not least, we added a couple of useful digest pages:


Mobile solutions


Our mobile solutions were improved over this year.

One of the most significant improvements is adding SRT playback into SLDP Player for Android and iOS. You can also take a look at our SRT digest page to find out more about product support for this technology.

As was mentioned earlier, our iOS SLDP Player SDK is able to provide Low Latency HLS playback capabilities for those who would like to try this new technology. Feel free to subscribe to iOS SLDP Player in order to obtain the latest version and build your own app with LL-HLS.

We also released Larix Screencaster for iOS - a highly anticipated great addition to our mobile apps bundle.

Larix Broadcaster is now able to produce RTMPS and RTSPS, which means RTMP and RTSP can be delivered via SSL. It's a great advantage for those who would like to secure their live streams in un-secure environments like mobile networks or public WiFi.
Larix also has ABR support for outgoing streams which means it can lower bitrate and framerate according to network conditions.

Softvelum website now has Larix documentation reference which has links to all articles and pages related to mobile streaming with our products.

You can read SDKs release notes to find out more about our updates and releases.




Softvelum team wishes you a Happy New Year and looks forward to bringing you more features and improvements!



Follow us via TwitterFacebookLinkedIn and YouTube to get updates on time.

December 29, 2019

The State of Streaming Protocols - 2019 Q4

Softvelum team keeps tracking the state of streaming protocols. It's based on stats from WMSPanel reporting service which handles data from Wowza Streaming Engine and Nimble Streamer servers. This quarter WMSPanel collected data about more than 17.8 billion views. Total view time for our server products is 2.25 billion hours this quarter, or 24+ million view hours per day.

The State of Streaming Protocols - Q4 2019

You can compare these numbers with metrics from Q3 2019:

The State of Streaming Protocols - Q3 2019

Most protocols state kept the same share with HLS controlling the most of delivery landscape.


We'll keep analyzing protocols to see the dynamics. Check our updates at FacebookTwitter and LinkedIn.

If you'd like to use these stats, please refer to this article by original name and URL.

December 24, 2019

Introducing Apple Low Latency HLS in Softvelum products

The HLS of RFC8216 is currently a de-facto standard for live and VOD delivery. Playlists and chunks delivered over HTTP/1.1 provide the simplicity of implementation, wide platforms availability, adaptive bitrate support and scalability. These advantages allowed it to get the biggest share of customer base. However it has some disadvantages for live streaming, primarily because chunks delivery means many seconds of delay at the start of a live stream. The industry has been making some improvements on top of HLS, and then Apple released its spec update to address existing issues.

Low Latency HLS


Low Latency HLS (LL-HLS) is the next generation of Apple's HTTP Live Streaming protocol introduced in early 2019.
Several key features improve it over regular HLS for live delivery:
  • Partial segments (parts) can be accessed before full chunks of content are available.
  • Holding playlist requests for obtaining latest parts as soon as they appear.
Softvelum team added LL-HLS into the bundle. We provide customers with playback capabilities using Larix Player for iOS, and Nimble Streamer allows generating LL-HLS for all supported containers such as fMP4, audio-only and MPEGTS.

1. Larix Player to play LL-HLS


Apple still has LL-HLS in beta stage as of iOS 13.3 at the end of December of 2019, so there are a number of shortcomings in its implementation. The main concern is the fact that iOS native player implementation cannot be published into AppStore yet. Lack of browsers' and other platforms' availability is also a big blocker so far. So the only way to try the playback for development purposes is to build your own app for that.

Larix Player SDK for iOS allows having full-featured Low Latency HLS playback on iOS devices. It covers live streams from any source capable of LL-HLS like Wowza Streaming Engine and Nimble Streamer, and it also supports regular HLS from any available source.

If you'd like to build your own low latency playback app, you can get player SDK from our team for further test and integration. Once the LL-HLS technology goes from Apple beta to production (in early 2020 as per Apple), you'll be able to have full-featured app and publish it under your brand.

2. Nimble Streamer for LL-HLS transmuxing


Nimble Streamer software media server allows taking any supported live input streams and re-packaging them into Low Latency HLS.


We've created a separate article describing Apple Low Latency HLS setup in Nimble Streamer.

Also watch this video for brief setup description:



Feel free to try Nimble Streamer with Low Latency HLS and buy Larix Player SDK to get your hands on the iOS playback.

Let us know if you have any questions.

December 17, 2019

December 12, 2019

SVT-HEVC H.265 encoding setup in Nimble Streamer Transcoder

Nimble Streamer Live Transcoder has support for various codecs using a number of encoding libraries. H.265 (HEVC) encoding has been supported only via NVENC and QuickSync hardware acceleration so we were looking for the best ways to provide software alternative to that.

Now Live Transcoder can use SVT-HEVC for software encoding. The Scalable Video Technology for HEVC Encoder by Intel® is an HEVC-compliant encoder library core highly optimized for Intel Xeon™ Scalable Processor and Xeon™ D processors. However it can also be used on other hardware supported by Live Transcoder.


The output can be delivered by Nimble Streamer via any protocol which supports HEVC delivery.

The library is delivered with Nimble Live Transcoder and can be used like any other software encoder. The setup process is described below.

Install Live Transcoder


Live Transcoder is a premium add-on for Nimble Streamer freeware media server. You'll need to subscribe for its license in order to start using it.

You need to follow these installation instructions in order to set it up for further usage.

Create transcoding scenario


Live streams transcoding is set up using transcoding scenarios. Each scenario is a graphical representation of content transformation for video and audio ingredients. It has decoding elements to specify how the stream is decoded, filter elements to define the content transformation and encoder elements to put the content into the right codec.

You can refer to Documentation reference for setup details, including video tutorials.

The next section explains how to use encoder element to setup HEVC encoding with SVT-HEVC.

SVT-HEVC encoder settings


Once you've set up the designated transcoding scenario, add encoder element for your output and choose libsvthevc from the list of Encoder field values.


You'll be able to specify Key frame alignment from the list of supported values similar to those used in libx264 setup. The profile values can vary between "main" and "main10". In addition to that you can define other parameters specific to SVT-HEVC.

Live Transcoder supports a subset of SVT-HEVC encoder parameters, you can read their respective description on project page:

  • asm
  • base-layer-switch-mode
  • brr
  • constrd-intra
  • deblock
  • encMode
  • fps-denom
  • fps-num
  • hierarchical-levels
  • hme
  • hrd
  • interlaced-video
  • intra-period
  • irefresh-type
  • lad
  • level
  • lp
  • max-qp
  • min-qp
  • pred-struct
  • profile
  • q
  • rc
  • rt
  • sao
  • scd
  • search-h
  • search-w
  • sharp
  • speed-ctrl
  • ss
  • tbr
  • threads
  • tier
  • tile_col_cnt
  • tile_row_cnt
  • tile_slice_mode
  • umv
  • use-default-me-hme
  • vbv-bufsize
  • vbv-init
  • vbv-maxrate


Also notice the SVT-HEVC is running in out-of-process mode by default, you can read about it in this article.


If you have any questions related to transcoding, feel free to contact us.

Related documentation

Live Transcoder, Transcoder documentation reference,
.