Stream live video to browser (with low latency) [closed]

Question

I want to stream live video to a browser with low latency.

As far as I understood, there are two clients:

• HTML5 video tag
• Flash video player

There are multiple ways to send the stream:

• TCP/IP using HTTP, using progressive downloads (and html5 range-request)
• UDP (which uses Flash)

And there are multiple solutions to broadcast the stream:

• Using Apple's HTTP Live Stream (which provides a m3u-playlist of small file segments)
• ...?

and there is the issue of publishing and distributing the stream over the internet.

What I need is

• sync video content with javascript
• low latency accros the country / the world for many viewers
• media server: (custom) desktop app (or browser solution) to upload webcam stream

• other existing software solutions to serving media?

  1. Will HTTP Live Stream cause a high latency, because the stream needs to be segmented and uploaded into small files? (Ruling out html5-solutions?)
  2. What does the Flash player need for input (i.e. web-adress, file on the server?)
  3. What does the Flash player need for a server? (also, to distribute it for many viewers?)
  4. How do I upload a video stream to flash? (i.e. existing software solutions / is it possible to write a custom app that uploads the webcam stream?)

Thank you very much for answering this elaborate question!!

Blubberhead

Hey Mark, are you there?Did you have any solutions yet? – Higinbotham

@RoboLover, It generally doesn't matter if you use Flash, of HttpStreaming, or anything else. You basically need a good video-streaming-host. Most of them offer many different output formats. I ended up using Flash - since you can also access the webcam which was a nice bonus. Flash requires a specific server, such as FMS or Wowza (for live streams, at least -- I think you could use ordinary .flv files for VOD (Video On Demand)). For the HttpLiveStreaming, I don't know (but I would guess the same, especially if you need to convert too, which lots of servers can do for you) – Blubberhead

thank you for the good answer, I handled the issue with using Wowza Media Server and Flash Builder. – Higinbotham

Answer 1

3 years later, in 2014, WebRTC is gaining more and more adoption and popularity. Although it is limited to modern browsers only, its benefits in quality and performance far outweigh outdated Flash or limited HTML5-only solutions.

Google Hangouts uses WebRTC technology, and there are third-party services that provide the libaries and servers needed to stream, broadcast and connect video.

Blubberhead