Http Live Streaming for beginners

Question

I'm new to live streaming and it's quite hard to find good information for beginners. Could anyone recommend resources to HLS besides Apple's documentation?

I'm trying to make an app similar to LiveStream where videos can be broadcasted to multiple users in real-time.

I've run into some services like encoding.com, heywatchencoding.com, and wowza, but I'm having difficulties with what each platform provides as the documentations for each seem to be for more intermediate/experienced users.

By any chance, do anyone of you guys know if I can use wowza with Parse.com services?

Thanks

Answer 1

I would suggest you research a bit further and then refine your question. To me it seems that there is a bit of confusion in terms of the software components needed for creating a livestream. First you need to have a software component that acquires a live video from some device. This video needs to be encoded. Once it is encoded it can be streamed by a streaming server. There are a lot of softwares or software as service, that can do that. Also you should figure out what streaming protocol you want to use (rtmp, rtsp?) and how many concurrent streams you need to have.

Some pointers to check out:

Monaserver https://github.com/MonaSolutions/MonaServer

Ffmpeg streaming guide https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/StreamingGuide

Nginx rtmp streaming https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module/wiki/Getting-started-with-nginx-rtmp

Answer 2

Yes, I too think you need to refine your question. What platform are you steaming to? YouTube and Facebook Live are free and popular. Wirecast software can push to those endpoints with the sleekness of a Mac OS interface. In terms of hardware needed to recognize/encode HD feeds (e.g. HDMI or SDI) you need something as simple as a Black Magic mini recorder (or any BM device for that matter) for a single or premixed feed. The rest is is up to the power of the computer CPU and Internet bandwidth.

Hope I helped.