video & live streaming

How To Start Live Streaming?

Due to the evolution of digital advancement, video is projected to account for 82%of total internet traffic by 2022. Live video broadcast and live streaming is a growing share of it. Improved video quality, the rise in content delivery networks (CDN), technological advancement and secured connectivity makes live video broadcast more accessible than ever. Video streaming services are not employed only by media giants or by big enterprises anymore.  Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, IoT, video surveillance, music and gaming industry all are using broadcast streaming. Therefore, if you’re looking for how to start live streaming, this article will guide you the basics, from the equipment to the software, tools, and connections to make it all work together for you.

What is Live Streaming?

Live streaming is a  transmission of media (e.g. video, audio or any associated data) that is broadcast in real-time over the Internet. This is an effective method of video content delivery and communication in real-time. Live streaming is nothing but real-time video streaming over the internet. It is the easiest way to reach and interact with the audience in real time.

Live Streaming types

Basically, live streaming is a form of network communication for real-time interaction between network hosts and audiences. From this consideration, it can be classified into two types:

  1. Non-interactive
  2. Interactive

Non-interactive Live streaming captures Live Sports, Live TV shows, Live events, etc. For Non-interactive Live Streaming latency is not critical. Higher capture-display delay (more than 20-30 seconds) is acceptable in non – interactive live streaming.

On the other hand, video Conferencing System, Surveillance System, Remote Rendering System, Interactive Remote Laboratories etc. are the area of Interactive Live Streaming application. For these cases, latency is critical. Users need to view, listen and react to each other in near real-time. Here real-time video streaming is critical.

Why is it so popular?

Live video streaming has become so popular due to its huge user base and growing popularity. It is one of the most powerful ways to reach and interact with the audience. Moreover, there are reasons for such fast growth of this industry.

Firstly, with the development of information technology and the popularization of network and mobile devices enable people to become a host of live video streaming with a networked computer or a networked smart phone. Just after an easy process of registration in a live video streaming service, to live video broadcast anytime and anywhere, which significantly lowers the threshold for live broadcasting.

Secondly, The production and broadcasting of live video streaming are no longer the same as that of traditional media which require a unified standard, heavy censorship before broadcasting, etc. Therefore, live streamed content can be produced much faster and likewise has lower production quality afforded by its format.

Thirdly, it allows for instant feedback, with viewers even more likely to comment and engage if there’s a chance the creator might also respond or say their name in real time video streaming.

How to start live streaming?

In live streaming, viewer or listeners consume content as soon as it is created. It is just the opposite of video on Video-on-Demand (VOD) and podcasts, where the content is stored for the viewer to consume on their own chosen time. The process of Live Streaming may vary from platform to platform. However, the general process can be explained following way.

Live Streaming Process

A live streaming starts by capturing video and audio signal through a source (USB/Firewire camera, SDI/HDMI camera, audio interface, screen capture software, etc.). It is important to have a quality video and audio source for capturing quality stream.

The Encoders are devices that convert the feed from the camera to streamable data. They can be hardware, software or any third party cloud video encoding service. Encoding occurs in real time. The raw data from the capturing device is tightly compressed into digital format by the encoder and sent to the assigned platform.

The platform (a web service that hosts the live stream) then processes the streamed content for live video broadcast. Connectivity is very important for processing the stream for broadcasting. The quality of the stream will be affected by the amount of bandwidth available to the streaming source and platform. That is why most of the professional grade live stream provider has integrated Internet Bonding Solution to their service to ensure good connectivity for the quality stream.

This content is then delivered for the viewership via the platform.

Technological Nuances

The sequences to establish live stream after capturing audio and video data are given below

The audio stream is compressed to an audio coding format like mp3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus, etc. Similarly, the video stream is compressed to video coding format such as H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9, etc.

Then these encoded audio and video streams are assembled in a media container (Bitstream) such as FLV, mp4, etc. to send it to the Streaming platform.

The bitstream then delivered from a streaming server to a streaming client using a transport protocol such as Adobe’s RTMP or RTP. There are some more alternatives to using proprietary transport protocols like Apple’s HLS, Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming, Adobe’s HDS and non-proprietary formats such as MPEG-DASH. All these are HTTP-based adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol. Often, a streaming transport protocol is used to send video from an event venue to a cloud transcoding service and CDN, which then uses HTTP-based transport protocols to distribute the video to individual homes and users.

The streaming client (the end user) may interact with the streaming server using a control protocol, such as MMS or RTSP.

However, anyone can deliver high-quality video from anywhere now. By adjusting bitrate, latency, and other video parameters – uninterrupted streaming is possible even from the rural area. For your streaming needs, we have developed our proprietary hardware and software solutions. So, start with Synopi live and be a part of streaming trends in 2019.