Introduction to RTMP to HLS Live Streaming

In the dynamic world of digital broadcasting, the transition from Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) to HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) represents a significant evolution in how content is delivered to audiences. This article delves into the process and technology behind RTMP to HLS live streaming, exploring its benefits, challenges, and practical applications in modern media environments.

Understanding RTMP and HLS

RTMP has been the standard for live streaming for years, known for its low-latency communication capabilities which make it ideal for interactive applications such as live sports, concerts, and gaming. However, RTMP’s reliance on Flash player for playback on browsers has become a limitation due to the declining support for Flash.

HLS, on the other hand, was developed by Apple as a part of its iPhone software package and has gained immense popularity. It works by breaking the live stream into a sequence of small HTTP-based file downloads, each containing one short chunk of an overall potentially unbounded transport stream. As a result, HLS is highly compatible with a wide range of devices including desktops, mobile phones, and smart TVs.

Why Migrate from RTMP to HLS?

**1. Compatibility and Reach: HLS is universally supported across all modern browsers and devices without the need for additional plugins or players, unlike RTMP which requires Flash.

**2. Adaptive Bitrate Streaming: HLS supports adaptive bitrate streaming, which adjusts the video quality in real-time based on the viewer’s bandwidth, ensuring a smooth viewing experience.

**3. Improved Security: HLS provides enhanced security features, such as tokenized access and encryption, which protect the stream from unauthorized access and piracy.

**4. Better Buffering: HLS streams are less prone to buffering issues, making them more resilient over fluctuating network conditions.

How to Convert RTMP to HLS

Converting RTMP streams to HLS involves a process called transcoding, which can be implemented using various software solutions and services. Here’s a general overview:

1. Capture and Send: The live video feed is captured from the source and sent to a media server using RTMP.

2. Transcode: The media server transcodes the RTMP stream into HLS format. This involves re-encoding the video to fit HLS specifications and splitting it into short, downloadable segments.

3. Distribute: The HLS segments are then made available on a web server where they can be requested over HTTP by an HLS-compatible player.

4. Play: The end-user’s device requests these segments from the server, and the player reassembles the segments to play the stream almost in real time.

Tools and Technologies for RTMP to HLS Conversion

Several technologies facilitate the RTMP to HLS conversion, including:

Media Servers: Solutions like Wowza Streaming Engine, Red5 Pro, and Nimble Streamer can ingest RTMP feeds and convert them to HLS for delivery.
Cloud Services: Cloud-based platforms such as AWS MediaLive offer managed services to handle live stream transcoding from RTMP to HLS seamlessly.
Software Encoders: Software like OBS Studio can be configured to output HLS directly, although it might still require a server to manage the playlist and segment files.

Challenges and Considerations

While converting RTMP to HLS offers numerous benefits, it comes with its own set of challenges:

Latency: HLS inherently has higher latency than RTMP, which might be an issue for ultra-low-latency applications.
Resource Intensity: Transcoding from RTMP to HLS is computationally intensive and requires robust server capabilities, especially for high-resolution streams.
Cost: Running media servers or using cloud services for transcoding can lead to higher operational costs.

Conclusion

The transition from RTMP to HLS is an essential move for broadcasters aiming to reach a broader audience with enhanced viewing experiences. Although there are challenges in adapting to this new standard, the long-term benefits in terms of compatibility, user experience, and scalability make HLS an indispensable format in today’s streaming landscape. By understanding the technologies and strategies involved in this conversion, content providers can ensure they are well-equipped to meet the demands of modern viewers.

December 24, 2021

OnDemand Video Streaming on our RTMP Server control panel

After you order on-demand streaming you will receive an email with the RTMP Server control panel URL, your username (your email), and a password. Log in to the control panel and click on to go to the overview of your server:

Click on the image to see the full picture

your server overview will look like the image below.

There are a number of links on the right menu, configure, restart, stop, reporting, Build Playlist, File manager, and player links.

I suggest you don’t make any changes to the configuration, the important buttons are “File Manager” where you upload your video files, and “Build Playlist” where you create a playlist and access the 2 players we offering, a flash player and an HTML player.

Reporting will give you information on the videos seen, traffic, connections, and so on. On the top menu, there are some links that provide information on how many viewers you have online which countries and bandwidth used.

Click on File Manager to upload or drag your videos to the server. Videos must be in flv or mp4 format. You can use a FTP software to upload the videos, but the but click on the video and dragging it to the server is probably easier.

Now go back to the server overview and click on “Build Playlist”

Click on create a playlist,

enter your playlist name, ex. playlist1 and click “continue”

click on the videos and with the mouse move your available Media from the right to the left which will be your playlist.

When adding the videos you will see on the left the videos uploaded “Available Media” and you need to move the ones you want to the right “Build Your Playlist” some videos may have an exclamation mark, which means the bitrate on the video is higher than the allowed on your package, you better delete these videos from the server and convert them again with the correct bitrate.

Save the playlist and now you can click on the player links, you have 2 options, Flash Player and HTML Player, I suggest you use the HTML Player, nicer and it works on mobile devices also.

Html Player has 2 options, static and dynamic, static every time you add or change your playlist you will have to grab the code and paste it again on your site. the Dynamic player any changes you make on the playlist will show immediately on your site player.

and the flash player:

For further instructions on how to use our wowza control panel check the links below:

1- Live streaming

2- TV Station

3- Ondemand Streaming

4- IP Camera Re-Streaming

September 4, 2019

RTMP Server in the era of HTTP video streaming

Given the growing popularity and support of HTTP video streaming, it may be tempting to consider Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) streaming obsolete. But in many cases, working with RTMP server is still very meaningful. As soon as Macromedia first pronounced RTMP with Flash Player 6 in 2002, the brand new Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX (FCS) required to stream the evolving Flash Video (FLV) format, stream was live or VOD.

However, for FCS, licensing costs were high (up to $5,000 per server), and as a result, CDN costs were high than other proprietary streaming formats. Some manufacturers in the industry have called RTMP streaming costs a “Flash tax”. But Flash Player has been a ubiquitous introduction to desktop browsers for well over a decade, much larger than other plug-ins. Though, streaming server technology has traditionally been harder for web developers to implement, and simpler HTTP delivery has mostly been easier and more cost-effective. In 2003, Macromedia enabled Flash Player 7 to support HTTP delivery of FLV files, allowing integrators to use standard web server technology to deploy online video.

So in many ways, RTMP as a VOD transport delivery has not been a requirement for web video for more than a decade. As a video solution architect, I think of business requirements as the leader in most audio video decisions. And still, in 2014, RTMP is the de facto standard for the following use cases:

Publishing live streams from software/hardware encoders: Almost all streaming devices support RTMP to publish to CDN providers and streaming servers. Some native mobile applications also use RTMP libraries to publish live video from their mobile camera.

Near-instant search/playback: One of the benefits of RTMP streaming is its enhanced search capability. With real-time streaming, the player can search anywhere in the video with less buffering than HTTP delivery. However, to enjoy this feature, you need a Flash Player on your desktop and as such, it is not possible in mobile browsers. HTML5 browsers use HTTP domain requests to facilitate faster searching of VOD files.

Content Protection: RTMP Server can facilitate different levels of content protection, from obfuscation to true DRM. RTMP streams are not stored for playback on a desktop browser.

Adaptive Streaming: One of the preferred uses of RTMP is adaptive streaming playback, where we provide the video player with more bitrates and content resolutions, providing the best resolution at the current network speed. Some HTTP adaptive streaming technologies, such as HLS and MPEG-DASH, allow similar delivery, but RTMP may be more responsive to switching one bitrate to another. Unfortunately, there is no standard for HTTP adaptive streaming between HTML5 video-enabled browsers. As such, the Flash-based display of adaptive streaming is still a requirement for adaptive streaming.

Live Streaming Playback: While live streams do not need to be adaptive, compressed video segments apply the same principle to all live streaming playback. For desktop playback within the browser, virtually every live streaming event requires a video player that supports Flash-based rendering and RTMP playback. Apple Safari on iOS natively supports HLS, and luckily, all modern streaming servers, including the Wowza Streaming Engine, support RTMP and HLS compression.

The requirement for a Live Streaming Flash Player will only change if MPEG-DASH appears everywhere as Flash currently. If Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 support is required to install live streaming, then RTMP streaming is still required. Also, if you need a delay close to zero in a live stream, then HTTP streaming will almost certainly not meet your needs while RTMP is capable; HTTP mechanisms require that multiple packets be collected on the server before being sent to the video player.

In summary, if your video workflow involves live streaming or any kind of packaged video installation, RTMP is the key to a successful video experience. HTTP delivery has already replaced most Flash VOD installs on video, but HTTP video can’t handle all RTMP video use cases.

Another important setup on Red5 Server is the Python Hosting offered to all hosting customers, with python cpanel hosting the advantage is cheaper and easier to install and run python scripts on a normal hosting. With Python Hosting and rtmp server the customer can really start a webmasters and increase a number of usages to host python scripts or even video chat or live streaming.

As my university professor used to say the computers language for the next 50 years will be python, fast, easier with multiple modules which allow any developer to start an application running python is a few short hours.

August 23, 2019

Ethiopia Hosting

Web design is a web development process that creates a website that has a good layout, graphic design, typography, user interface, etc to make it appealing to users and easy to use. Starting a business requires the implementation of the business plan but sustaining and maintaining requires tremendous efforts because at this stage the effectiveness and proficiency of the business plan and strategies in achieving the desired goal are put to test. Livin in a digital world, web design is an important part of the online marketing platforms and strategies that must be properly utilized to skyrocket your business to achieve your business goal. The importance of good web design to your business include

It provides easy accessibility of information on product and services at customer convenient time.
It brands business and creates awareness for goods and services than other forms of advertisement if properly optimized for users and search engines.
It represents your business in the online community.
It makes your business more credible and reliable because of the opportunity to make an inquiry.
It creates a good impression in the mind of your potential customers.
It helps to thrive in your competitive niche and increase sales.
It is best adaptable in solving customers problems in buying services.

Website is essential for sustainable growth of business but when poorly designed will not yield the desired result thus choosing an expert in web designing must be done with care to maximize utilization of time and money and prevent damage to your business because web design services vary in quality depending on the competency and experience of the expert hired. In need of high-quality web design at an affordable price, prove your seriousness by patronizing and buying the unprecedented and transcendent services of Ethiopia Web Hosting and Design company where customers expectations metamorphose into fruition.

About Ethiopia Web Designing and Hosting Company

Ethiopia Web hosting and Design is a premier Web design company of notable standard that specializes in web design and hosting. We have twelve years of experience with magnificent achievement and remarkable success in web design and hosting. We have built an appreciable reputation for the creation of positive return on investment for our clients which we are not willing to stanch and relinquish. We have our first class servers in the USA and we partner with Hosting Marketers Inc, one of the main web hosts in the United States of America. Ethiopia web hosting is the leading provider of shared web hosting in Ethiopia. We have our main data center located in Chicago board of trading Building which is one of the world largest institutions equipped with infrastructures to provide:

redundant and precision power supply.
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Air conditioning and HVAC.
24×7×365 datacenter staff to provide assistance for customers.
Network assets

Our infrastructures are the state of the art to provide you with the best hosting services.

Ethiopia web design service

Web design is multi-facet discipline involving web graphic design, user interface design, typography, and standard code and Search Engine Optimization. We have competent and savvy personnel who tangle as a team to create a website that has these following features:

Effective measures in meeting the target market and also made appropriate and suitable for the identified trend of the audience.
Optimal balance between aesthetics and clarity.
Required layout, instruction, and labeling to make it user-friendly to enhance usefulness and versatility to users.
Mobile Optimization for high ranking in Search engine result page (Serp) by using responsive web design in order to increase traffic and conversion rate.
Search engine optimization strategies rightly implemented.
Web browsers supporting typography.
Motion graphics and infographics to make the presentation easier without depleting the target market.
Catching and friendly domain name that matches the business name with a popular top-level domain (.com, .net, .org, .info) to create a good and lasting impression in visitors mind at a reasonable price of 500 birrs per year. Deal with us and experience our outstanding creativity and connection. The minimum price for our web design service is 2000 birr.

Ethiopia Web Hosting service

Ethiopia web hosting provides individuals and organizations websites internet access via the world wide web. Our quality hosting services provide personal website creator, small businesses, developers and large institutions customers with various hosting services to meet their target market at competitive prices. The hosting packages have been carefully and well-formulated to provide web spaces, bandwidth, domain name, email addresses, file transfer protocol, techies support, server-side script, frontpage extensions, etc that are users goal replenishing, enhancing and supporting. The availability of website and downtime stated in our Service Level Agreement is duly comply to. We provide the buyer of hosting services with 24 hours a day 365 days a year of customer support desk – a staff to provide the solution to complains made not, thus accounting for our reputation as not just packs of huge bandwidth limit and webspace. The detail description of our hosting packages are as follow :

Hosting one for 1500 birr / 51 dollar per year

Cpanel/softaculous, 5GB web space, file transfer 500GB, unlimited domains/emails/databases, cloudflare directly on Cpanel, PHP version selector, and free SSL certificate.

Hosting two for 3200 birr / 108.8 dollar per year

Cpanel/softaculous, 10GB webspace, file transfer 1000GB, unlimited domains/emails/databases, CloudFlare directly on Cpanel, PHP version selector and free SSL certificate.

Hosting three for 5200 birr/176.8 dollars per year

Cpanel/softaculous, 20 GB webspace, file transfer 2000GB, unlimited domains/emails/databases, CloudFlare directly on Cpanel, PHP version selector and free SSL certificate.

Reseller one for 4800 birr/163.2 dollars per year

WHM/Cpanel/softaculous, unlimited Cpanel account, 10 GB webspace, file transfer 250 GB, unlimited domains/emails/databases, CloudFlare directly on Cpanel, PHP version selector and free SSL certificate for all your account.

Reseller two for 9000 birr/306 dollars per year

WHM/Cpanel/softaculous, unlimited Cpanel account, 20 GB webspace, file transfer 500 GB, unlimited domains/emails/databases, CloudFlare directly on Cpanel, PHP version selector and free SSL certificate for all your account.

Reseller three for 14500 birr/483 dollars per year

WHM/Cpanel/softaculous, unlimited Cpanel account, 30 GB webspace, file transfer 750 GB, unlimited domains/emails/databases, CloudFlare directly on Cpanel, PHP version selector and free SSL certificate for all your account.

Server one for 2500 birr/85 dollar per month

Dual Quad-Core Xeon E5520, 200 GB hard disk, 8 GB RAM, 10 TB transfer ( 1 Gbps uplink), Cpanel/whm, 5 usable IP addresses, fully managed

Server two for 5200 birr/176.8 dollars per month

Intel Xeon 4 Core, 2×500 GB hard disk, 16 GB RAM, 20 TB transfer ( 1 Gbps uplink), Cpanel/whm, 5 usable IP addresses, fully managed

Server three for 7500 birr/255 dollars per month

Quad-core Xeon 5410, 2×120 GB SSD hard disk, 48 GB RAM, 30 TB transfer ( 1 Gbps uplink), Cpanel/whm, 5 usable IP addresses, fully managed

May 31, 2019

RTMP TO HLS Live Streaming

RTMP is ideal if you require low latency, though in recent years it has become outdated and as it is based on Flash, it may lack support within some browsers and devices.

Despite these disadvantages it is ideal to use RTMP as a transport stream, it can be transcoded into other formats such as HLS which can be distributed more easily.

HLS, originally developed by Apple is a very scalable and flexible protocol compared to RTMP. It is supported by a wide range of devices and browsers and it is fully compatible with our CDN, which can distribute it worldwide at a good latency.

HLS is supported on desktop browsers, smart TVs, and both Android and iOS mobile devices. HTML5 video players also natively support HLS, in comparison with HDS and RTMP. The HLS is the safest protocol today for scaling live streaming to larger audience.

Coming to the features, the HLS standard also supports adaptive bitrate streaming. The one major drawback is with the latency. The latency can be relatively high. But, there are methods for reducing HLS latency.

RTMP used to be the de facto standard for live streaming. Many CDNs offer delivery that scales to the masses. RTMP Server, however, does not take into consideration that broadcaster and viewers might have internet connections that aren’t always up to the task of transferring the stream at full speed. Smartphones and web browsers are also unable to play back RTMP natively; Browsers used to depend on a flash plugin for playback, which has been phased out over the last couple of years.

RTMP Pros:

1. The actual installation process of a Flash Media Server is simple, effective and appears to be trustworthy since the protocol was established 10 years back.

2. RTMP has an exceptional feature where it provides low latency while transmitting live broadcasts.

3. The protocol has the potentiality to transmit audio and video on any formats and rendition.

4. It also supported universally due to its effectiveness in implementing for live streaming.

RTMP Cons:

1. It does not have native support in iOS.

2. RTMP does not work in HTML5, it differs from the HTTP Protocol.

3. The security of delivering video is minimal.

HTTP Pros:

1. HLS is a pocket-friendly protocol which is Compatible on all the platforms and supports HTML5 video player.

2. Helps to stream to reach more viewers and also the safest protocol to scale up the content to a massive base audience.

3. The biggest advantage of HLS to RTMP is that it has the potentiality to deliver adaptive bitrate streaming where the quality of the content to be expected at a high pixel-rate.

May 22, 2018May 22, 2018

Web Site Management

Hosting Marketers is offering new services to their customers,

Web Site Management

Realizing the difficulty of hiring trusted web developers, Hosting Marketers is now offering in-house site installation, script upgrades and if anything goes wrong sites fixes.

They also offering web design at very affordable prices, starting at $60 for a 5 page wordpress site.

They offering also SEO expertize starting at $50 for On-page Analysis.

Please visit https://hosting-marketers.com/hosting-marketers-services/ for more information.

January 12, 2016

red5 news and red5 servers

Red5 is a media server created with Java language. It is a free open source software but recently a new version Red5 Pro came out developed by the same people, this new version supports streaming to mobiles, Android or iOS, which red5 does not. The Red5 Pro is commercial product and costs $55 per server.

A media server allows Flash based applications connect to it using Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP). The server can send and receive data to and from the connected users who have a flash player installed. The server also allows users to receive and publish streams. This permits video chat applications, live streaming and even ondemand video streaming.

Most common Video chat software’s are:
1- Avchat
2- Videowhisper
3- Prochatrooms
4- Gchats

For live streaming the necessary tool if you already have a server with red5 installed is an encoder, an encoder is the software that will connect your computer to the red5 server using the RTMP, which your server provider will give you.
1- FMLE, it is an free Adobe product and does a good job.
2- Wirecast, it is an expensive commercial product of very high quality, absolutely necessary if you starting a TV station.

Although red5 is a free product many people prefer to use Wowza Streaming Engine or Adobe Flash Media Server which are commercial software’s and can be quite expensive, the FMS costs $4500 per server. The reason is that the developers of red5 although have created a wonderful system did not spend much time with tutorials and instructions on how to install and manage a red5 server, for this reason if you searching for a red5 server we suggest you pick a web host which specializes on red5 servers and red5 shared hosting.

1- Red5 Servers relatively cheap red5 servers starting at $15 a month.
2- Red5 Hosting, Hosting Marketers, a web host for experienced webmasters, it is the oldest hosting company specialized on Video and media servers, they also offer Wowza Streaming Engine on its shared plans. They have a very experienced customer support and a reputation for going out of their way to help customers. They starting plan with Red5 enabled costs $9.95 a month. Most other red5 hosting companies are resellers of Hosting Marketers.

Red5 is a formidable media server, extremely flexible and has the advantage of being a free product with with many people working on developing it, for now the main version does not yet work with mobiles, if that is what you need we suggest that instead of using the Red5 Pro version to use the Wowza instead.

June 23, 2013

news from sites with wowza and red5

here are our main sites, that we use to for posting our news about ffmpeg, red5 hosting and wowza hosting.

Wowza FFmpeg, red5 Hosting

FFmpeg Servers

FFmpeg Server

Red5 Hosting – FFmpeg Hosting

FFmpeg Hosting Comparison

FFmpeg Please?

Ethiopian Student

FFmpeg Hosting

European FFmpeg Hosting

Ffmpeg and Red5 Hosting

Wowza Hosting

Wowza Streaming

Wowza Control Panel

FFmpeg Adult Host News

Web Hosting Press Releases and News

Red5

Hosting Marketers News

FFmpeg Hosting House News

January 5, 2013

Promote Videos Through Wowza Hosting

In the present day world, the technology has opened up numerous ways for businessmen and internet users to run things much effectively and take the best in all ways. Websites are playing most essential role in promoting every business. There are various types of dynamic video websites available in this internet world. Video websites are revolving as the most popular websites where most of the internet users are showing much interest to watch various types of videos in online. Videos websites are now emerged in huge number with many attractive stored videos and also with live videos by utilizing the highly advanced hosting technique like wowza hosting. Since we are living in the internet world, most of the people are surfing the internet to watch various kind of videos just from their home that are being hosted in wowza server that supports wowza hosting. Watching videos in internet is really much enjoyable one and there is chance for every user to enjoy their moment by watching those videos. While watching videos in internet, every user will love to watch the videos without any distraction and delay which is possible only of the website is hosted by following the wowza hosting concept. Every website owner should host their website in such wowza server without any hesitation since there are many types of wowza hosting is available.
This wowza hosting technique is the right choice to follow by every video site owner since wowza server is right source to upload video websites. There is no doubt, only wowza server has the capability to streamline video without any interruption and the wowza hosting is the best way to implement. People who are living in various part of the world can watch live videos with pleasure by looking over the video websites that are hosted in wowza server by following numerous wowza hosting rules and regulations. Many differences are there while applying wowza hosting for video sites and other sites. The dedicated wowza hosting supports only dedicated wowza server which is much secured and contain only your website. The shared wowza hosting applicable for shared wowza server where many websites will be hosted in this server. The dedicated wowza hosting is one of the most advanced hosting techniques and it is the best source for every video based websites.
Website owner with an interest to attain excellent video website with good video steaming can prefer this wowza hosting without hesitation. Website owners from various part of the world will prefer this wowza hosting as the best way to host their video sites. Huge web space is provided for such video websites only if they are being hosted in wowza server under the guidance of highly reputable wowza hosting service provider. There is no doubt that only the highly advanced wowza hosting system will revolve as the right source to have a video website live for many decades. Moreover, the trust worthy wowza hosting service providers will never allow your site to get down at any cost.

February 20, 2012

cheap wowza servers

Today’s generations are living in the era of computers and internet. There are decidedly fewer dependencies on the conventional sources of information now than that used in older days. People are using internet now days more and more for getting the information on every topic. Lots of websites are offering people interactive ways of getting information. People are also dependent on these websites to make the information daily. They are using the websites not to get information on some contents only but. There are many other things that can be done by the using of the internet.

There are lots of facilities that are being provided by the internet. More and more websites are developing rapidly. The use of conventional sources of entertainment is almost ended. Internet today is the king of entertainment. The best use of the internet is done for the exchange of media content. There are thousands of media companies that are producing millions of media files daily. The use of media content on the web is done mostly than any other things. There are many media servers that are present over the internet today.

You can get several media content from these media servers. However, this must be noticed that there are only few such media servers that provide you instant media on–demand. This is the one best feature of wowza. Wowza is a media server that offers vast media space. This is a web hosting site also. It provides space to your media content for publishing over the internet. There are lots of other media servers also. However, the features of wowza hosting make this web host unique among them. Several features are provided by the website. The hosting is the main feature. There is tons of space that is available for the media content. You can upload your media content, and broadcast them by the use of wowza servers easily.