Nimble Streamer has extensive DRM support for live and VOD streams. It covers all DRM systems - Widevine, Playready and FairPlay - and multiple DRM management platforms.
Traditionally, HLS streams could only be protected using Apple FairPlay and could only be played on Apple devices.
With recent updates, HLS can now be protected using Google Widevine in addition to FairPlay.
This means that you may have just a single multi-key multi-DRM HLS stream and play it on the devices that support either FairPlay or Widevine. This practically means that this single multi-key HLS stream is protected on any modern streaming device like PC, Mac, Android, iPhone/iPad and more.
This also applies to Low Latency HLS DRM protection, no special setup is needed for that.
You don't need to have a separate MPEG-DASH stream specifically for Widevine protection now.
In addition, you need to add this parameter to your app setting section in drm.conf file:
widevine_hls_enabled = true
Like this:
drm { application = live_ezdrm type = ezdrm widevine_hls_enabled = true user = user@yourcompany.com password = 12yourpassword34&*@# }
We have EZDRM here enabled for all streams within "live_ezdrm" application. This can be any other DRM management solution.
Notice: Google Widevine Cloud License Service could not be used for encrypting HLS due to technical discrepancies.
Once you save the config file and re-start Nimble, the stream will be protected right away. You may also apply drm.conf changes by using native API call without Nimble re-start.
You may use Shaka Player to play this stream, it fully supports this kind of Widevine-encrypted HLS. Other commercial players have that support, please refer to their documentation.
You may try playing our sample stream above using our players page. Here's an example of Widevine playback:
We are glad to announce that we added new features to our Nimble Streamer software media server to support WebVTT subtitles. WebVTT is one of the popular formats for displaying timed text tracks in VOD or live streams. Based on the feedback from our customers, we were working on adding WebVTT support for Live Streams.
First, you can produce a live stream with WebVTT subtitles from VOD files via Nimble Playout. However, there is a limitation that only one subtitle file can be used for one VOD file. Please find more details in respective section of the Playout documentation.
Apple has released a new version of its HTTP Live Streaming Tools, a package of command-line tools for creating and testing HLS solutions. There’s a delightful surprise for developers, as the recent release is also available as Centos 7 package.
This brings a lot of convenience to global developers' community!
The HTTP Live Streaming Tools package includes five tools for CentOS Linux 7: Media File Segmenter, Media Subtitle Segmenter, Media Stream Segmenter (Low Latency HLS mode included), Variant Playlist Creator and Media Stream Validator. These tools help developers segment, validate, and optimize their HLS streams using almost any web server infrastructure for streaming to iOS, macOS, and tvOS.
The latest release adds a new feature: the ability to segment spatial video content for delivery to Apple Vision Pro, a device that enables immersive viewing experiences. Spatial video technology allows capturing the full 360-degree environment around the camera.
The HTTP Live Streaming Tools are available for download from the Apple Developer website. Users need to have a valid Apple Developer account to access the tools. We commend Apple for making these tools available for Linux developers, as it shows their commitment to supporting the open-source community and the web standards.
Nimble Streamer team is continuously working on improving the stability and robustness of our media server, including the underlying libraries and components.
OpenSSL 3 issue
A new behavior was introduced in OpenSSL 3, causing SSL library to return EOF-related errors during SSL shutdown sequence. The following pages for more technical details: OpenSSL issue 11381, commit for corresponding fix.
As we found Nimble could also receive such errors unexpectedly during SSL send operations which could lead to unexpected connection interruptions when streaming over any protocol that use TLS/SSL, such as HLS, MPEG-DASH, SLDP, Icecast as well as RTMPS in all modes.
Nimble 4.1.0-5 contains a fix for this behavior setting SSL_OP_IGNORE_UNEXPECTED_EOF flag for compatibility with OpenSSL 3.
OpenSSL 3 is used on Ubuntu 22.04, so if you're using 22.04 we'd strongly recommend to upgrade to Nimble 4.1.0-5 or later to avoid potential streaming issues.
Upgrade instructions
To upgrade Nimble Streamer to the latest version, please go to Nimble Streamer installation page, select your operating system and scroll down to "Operating, upgrading, uninstalling" section.
If you have any questions or issues please send them to our helpdesk.
Larix Broadcaster provides a wide variety of features for IRL streamers, from advanced connectivity options to web overlays.
To add more capabilities for IRL, we introduce GPS data support for HTML overlays. It allows showing current spatial position and other parameters.
The following parameters are supported:
Current date and time
Current GPS coordinates (latitude and longitude)
Instantaneous speed of the device
Altitude, i.e. height above the sea level
Device's azimuth relative to true or magnetic north
Current location name (e.g. as shown on Apple maps)
You can learn more about GPS overlays setup on GPS params page.
This feature is available as part of Larix Premium in-app subscription. By subscribing to Premium you support our engineering team and allow us to move forward with new features.
Nimble Streamer team is continuously improving low latency streaming features to provide our customers with the best set of options they can choose from.
Now it's time to take the next step and give our customers low latency playback. Our team has always preferred to rely on open standards so we chose the best option available.
WebRTC WHEP (WebRTC HTTP Egress Protocol) provides easy communication between a server and a client, while being interoperable with other solutions that support WHEP signaling. This is a result of industry cooperation, thanks to Sergio Murillo and Cheng Chen who developed it into an IETF standard draft.
Nimble Streamer uses Pion implementation of WebRTC API. This framework not only gives the flexible API but also provides high-performance and low resource usage which completely correlates with our own approach to creating sustainable and cost-effective software.
We'd like to thank Sean DuBois and all Pion contributors for maintaining such a great framework.
1. WHEP support overview
Nimble Streamer generates WHEP playback output with the following codecs:
You can refer to supported codecs page to see how you can deliver the pre-encoded content and re-package it without additional action. For instance, you can ingest VP8 video and Opus audio using WebRTC WHIP and generate WHEP playback as is, with no additional overhead.
If your source has different codecs then you can transcode the content. E.g. if you get RTMP with H.264 video and AAC audio from your source, you use Live Transcoder to transcode AAC into Opus and then to pass through H.264 with no need for decoding and encoding.
You can read more about various scenarios in Further Usage section below.
The stream can be played in any browser using WHEP player. Please refer to Player setup and usage section below for more details.
Notice that WHEP AV1 playback is currently working only in Chrome. We're looking forward to other browsers and platforms to support it via WebRTC.
Our team likes to contribute back to the open source that use use. In order to handle AV1 WebRTC playback, we've made a code contribution into the Pion framework to add proper AV1 support.
2. Server setup process
Follow these steps to get WHEP working in your Nimble Streamer instance.
We assume you already have a paid WMSPanel account. If you don't, please sign up and subscribe.
Also, watch at this video tutorial which illustrates the setup process.
First, make sure you've installed the latest Nimble Streamer or upgraded it to the latest version.
Second, WHEP implementation has some dependencies on Nimble Live Transcoder so you need to install it first, then subscribe for a license and register it on your server. Please refer to Transcoder installation page for details.
2.2 Set up SSL for Nimble
The next step is to enable SSL for your Nimble instance for further playback.
You can set up your SSL certificate using this general instruction. You may obtain CertBot Let's Encrypt free certificate as we've described here. For testing purposes you may create your own self-signed certificate but in order for it to work, you'll need first to open any https:// page like https://yourhost.com:port/ and accept security risk. For production purposes in general, you need to have a valid SSL certificate. Also, your server must be assigned for the domain of this certificate.
Once you've set up SSL for Nimble, you need to test it. Open https://yourhost.com in your browser, where yourhost.com is the host of your Nimble. If you get error 404 and have no warnings from your browsers then your SSL was set up is properly and is working.
2.3 Add parameters into config
The next step is to enable the feature set in Nimble config file. On Linux, it's located at /etc/nimble/nimble.conf. Please check parameters reference page for more details about operating with the config.
Here are the parameters you need to have in the config
If you use WHIP ingest, you're familiar with some of those as we described in respective article. So you just need to put webrtc_whep_support there in addition.
Once you've added the parameters, don't forget to re-start Nimble as described here.
2.4 Enable WHEP for streaming application
Now you need to enable WHEP for the output applications that you will provide for your users.
Log into your WMSPanel account, go to Nimble Streamer top menu and click on Live streams settings item.
Here you can enable WHEP either globally on server level, or for a specific application.
Once you enable the checkbox and save settings, you won't need to re-start Nimble, it will be applied automatically within a few seconds.
3. WHEP adaptive bitrate support
Nimble Streamer allows setting up and using adaptive bitrate (ABR) for WHEP playback using bandwidth estimation and other techniques.
Read WebRTC adaptive bitrate for WHEP article for setup details once you get familiar with current single-bitrate WHEP playback setup.
Now lets see how you can play the WHEP low latency stream generated by Nimble Streamer.
4.1 WHEP Player
Softvelum WHEP Player is available in our github account for cloning and further usage.
We forked WebRTC player by Eyevinn as we consider it the best open source player for this purpose. Besides the fork, we contributed back the code for handling audio-only WHEP streams, we'll show this use case below.
Please refer to Getting started section in our repo to see how you can set up and customize the player for your own website, e.g. enabled audio-only playback.
Try now: you may also try our WHEP player at Stream test page where we provide several most popular players to check your streams. You'll find webrtc-player as the first option in the list.
4.2 Playback URL
WHEP uses HTTP for establishing connection so the URL for playback will look familiar:
https://127.0.0.1:8443/live/whip/whep.stream
You can see HTTPS protocol and port 8443 for streaming via SSL.
Please also notice "whep.stream" element after the stream name. This is how Nimble Streamer will handle it as a request for WHEP playback.
App and stream name is defined based on your input and output streams setup, please refer to respective protocol setup instruction.
You can use that URL for further playback in our WHEP Player or any other WHEP-enabled player.
If Nimble server instance runs on a host with public IP address then additional configuration is not needed.
If a server instance runs on Amazon EC2 then you'll need to create an additional config file at /etc/nimble/whep_config.json and add the following JSON there:
where "a.b.c.d" is a public address assigned to AWS server instance. If it has multiple IP addresses, just add them in the same parameters separating by comma like this:
JSON format requires this kind of syntax and if you add them in different blocks or have no commas between parameters, Nimble will not process the config.
6. Further Usage
WHEP Playback is a great addition to the existing set of output protocols. This means that you can create new combinations of input with output as well as use proven existing feature sets on top of WHEP playback to add more power to it.
6.1 Live transmuxing and transcoding
The number of use cases for combining WHEP with other streaming protocols is huge, here are some of them.
Combine WHIP input and WHEP output. You can take WHIP ingest into Nimble instance and then re-package it into WHEP playback. It's a very light-weight operation, so ultra-low latency WebRTC ingest from your browser or mobile app will flow seamlessly into low latency playback in other browsers. Use this article to set up WHIP ingest and use the setting above to complete the WHEP part.
Convert RTMP into to WHEP. You use your favorite RTMP-powered media source to deliver H.264 video with AAC audio into Nimble Streamer. Then you set up Nimble Live Transcoder scenario which passes through the H.264 content without decoding/encoding, decodes AAC and encodes it into the Opus output. With this H.264/Opus combination you then create WHEP output just like we described above. This will not require too much resources because audio transcoding is a cheap operation.
Use SRT HEVC source for WHEP output. You use some HEVC-powered encoder or media server which is able to deliver it via SRT stream. Once you route it to Nimble instance, you can then use Live Transcoder to transcoder HEVC video into H.264 or VP9, and also transcode AAC into Opus. This resulting content is then easily delivered via WHEP into viewers' browsers for convenient playback.
These are just few possible option, but the general idea is that you may juggle transmuxing and transcoding features of Nimble Streamer to achieve the best combination of codecs and protocols to provide the best user experience. And all that comes at the low cost of ownership.
Notice on transcoding scenarios for Opus output.
Once you create a scenario and put audio encoder element, please use FFmpeg as encoder and libopus as codec name as shown below.
6.2 Audio-only low latency playback
Nimble Streamer is used extensively for audio-only scenarios, like online radios. This includes a huge Icecast feature set, audio-only HLS and audio only SLDP.
With WHEP in board, you can add one more element to this kind of cases. Audio processing is a light-weight operation that will enable you to give more playback options to your listeners.
Most obvious case is when you ingest Icecast, transcode audio from MP3 or AAC into Opus, and then just generate WHEP output for browser playback.
In addition, you can use traditional sources like RTMP or SRT to pick up audio track from it, transcode into Opus and make audio-only output via WHEP. It works the same way as for Icecast transformation.
MPEGTS input can carry multiple tracks, including several audio channels for different languages or additional comments. You can pick up each track and generate Opus output.
Audio mode is something that we wanted to take care of, knowing the interest from our online radio customers to it. As was mentioned above, we even made a contribution into Eyevinn's player to to handle this case.
6.3 NDI to WHEP
NDI ingest can also be a good source for WHEP output. If you're running a live production based on that technology, you can get NDI into Nimble Streamer and transcode it into WHEP live stream. This will give you a seamless ultra-low latency bridge between your internal production environment and the Internet viewers in their browsers. It's a unique use case to any existing solution so if you use NDI, you should definitely try it. Just set up the NDI input and the procedure above to generate WHEP.
Nimble Streamer Playout, or as we often call it server playlist, is also able to generate WHEP output. With Playout way you may combine live streams with pre-recorded videos. This allows creating your own TV or radio station with just one Nimble Streamer instance.
So now your viewers can watch Playout output in the browser with the WHEP Player, just like they do with other protocols.
Notice that you will still need to transcode the Playout output into supported video codecs and Opus audio, unless your original content is already encoded with them. Once you set up Playout config, just add the Transcoder scenario to make the proper output.
6.5 Paywall and authorization features
Nimble Streamer Paywall feature set fully covers WHEP playback just like it does for other protocols
Aliasing allows mapping multiple names to single media stream in order to add some flexibility into streaming process. It's good for cases when you have some media stream and you need to provide it under different names. For example, you are a content provider and want to give your stream to multiple partner websites and services. Aliased streams can use different security and monetization approaches as well.
So full aliase-based flexibility is now available for WHEP as well.
6.7 Playback statistics
Last but not least, WMSPanel web service provide wide and rich feature set for reporting the viewers' statistics which now include WHEP views. Any stats and metrics our customers have been using for more than a decade, now cover low latency playback as well:
Daily stats with geo-location and devices report
Deep stats with per-stream daily stats
Unique viewers
High-precision reporting
WHEP playback is handled like any other HTTP-based protocol so it has the same proven reliability.
As WebRTC allows tracking lost packets, the daily stats have Lost column which indicated the lost traffic in addition to overall bytes sent and received.
7. Performance tuning
If you serve your live streams to dozens of thousands of viewers, you may need to tune up the perfomarnce of Nimble Streamer for that. There are a couple of a parameters that you can put into /etc/nimble/nimble.conf. file.
webrtc_whep_worker_threads - this parameter sets the number of working threads for WHEP sessions processing. It's "1" by default.
webrtc_whep_max_viewers - in some high load cases the number of simultaneous WHEP connections can be significant. By default Nimble processes 2500 simultaneous connections per each WHEP working thread, but you can increase/decrease this value with this parameter.
We're excited to introduce the latest innovation in Nimble Streamer: the Out-of-Process Mode for Live Transcoder scenarios. Designed to tackle stability challenges, this feature takes streaming technology to new heights.
The Out-of-Process Mode isolates the transcoding process from Nimble Streamer's core. This allows Nimble to restart transcoding scenarios without disrupting the entire system. It helps in cases like these:
Some encoder, decoder or filter libraries crash due to internal faults and cause server to crash.
The library or process in use is hanging up and hangs the server.
Some process is leaking the memory and it affects the entire server RAM usage.
When NVENC GPUs are used in different scenarios, some of those GPUs may fail which may lead to hanging multiple scenarios.
As a result, with this feature now you can avoid any un-expectected issues. For example, you may upgrade to a new NVENC driver and not be afraid that it will crash the entire server.
So this flexibility translates to uninterrupted streaming operations and efficient streams troubleshooting.
First, make sure the latest version of Nimble Streamer and Transcoder is running. Upgrade them as described in our OS-specific documentation.
Enabling out-of-process transcoding
Navigate to a list of Transcoder’s scenarios, and click on "pencil" edit icon. Click the "Out-of-process" checkbox in the appearing dialog box and then click OK button. Alternatively, you may set this checkbox while editing a Transcoder’s scenario, via the same edit icon.
At this moment, Nimble initiates a separate process called nimble_scenario_transcoder, in which the scenario will be running. It's completely detached from Nimble Streamer, and can be shut down or restarted without interruption of any other input or output streams. The re-instating occurs automatically, as Nimble is monitoring the flow of incoming and outgoing frames on the Encoder. If these frames cease to appear in the output, the scenario is automatically restarted.
In conclusion, Nimble Streamer's Out-of-Process Transcoder Mode marks a huge step towards bolstering stability in streaming scenarios. We invite you to experience it firsthand. As we continue to innovate, we highly value your feedback to further refine and enhance our offerings.
AOMedia Video 1 codec, or AV1, is a free codec that is being widely adopted by the streaming media industry. Its support is now provided by various hardware and software products.
Currently the conventional live streaming protocol to deliver AV1 is RTMP. Using Enhanced RTMP spec, it's possible to deliver AV1 as well as HEVC content.
However, since it's not standardized yet in MPEGTS transport, this is available only for the sources powered by Nimble Streamer (see output section below).
AV1 Output
Having AV1 taken into the Nimble Streamer instance, you may generate various output options.
You may generate MPEG-DASH live streams that your customer are able to play on various platforms.
Softvelum team is excited to announce that we have added Zixi protocol support to our Larix Broadcaster app for iOS. This is a great feature that will help you stream high-quality video over the internet with more reliability.
Zixi protocol is a software-based platform that enables reliable transmission of broadcast-quality HD video over unmanaged Internet connections and private IP networks. Zixi uses advanced error correction techniques to manage jitter, packet loss, and latency, ensuring error-free video delivery. With Zixi protocol support, you can stream to Zixi-enabled destinations, such as Zixi cloud services, Zixi Broadcaster servers, or Zixi Player. This opens up new possibilities for high-quality and low-latency live streaming from anywhere in the world.
Larix provides full range of Zixi streaming in addition to other protocols like NDI, SRT or RTMP. Both AVC/H.264 and HEVC/H.265 video codecs are supported. Zixi is also supported in Larix Grove, a technology that uses QR codes to generate connections within Larix Broadcaster. So you can distribute connection details to remote contributors by either sending a QR code or a URL via email or messenger.
Zixi support is part of Larix Premium in-app subscription for just $9.99 per month. Without Premium, you can stream for up to 5 minutes via Zixi.
Larix Broadcaster is developed by Softvelum, a company that provides innovative solutions for live streaming and media delivery. Learn more about Larix Broadcaster and other Softvelum products.
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