Introduction
The way people communicate all over the world has changed now!!!
Live streaming is the live broadcasting of video content over internet. This has caused a major change in the way we communicate. Live streaming is becoming inevitable in the digital world where all sorts of organizations like education, business, entertainment, even family & friends meeting are flourishing because of this
Overview of Market Share
There is a great demand for live streaming. This has caused the live streaming market to grow. Covid – 19 is also one of the important growth factor. According to Global market insights the video chat market will grow by over 15% CAGR
How live streaming works?
A streaming server has to be already created and running. A broadcaster can initiate a stream by registering with a stream name. The users who want to be an audience can access the stream with the same stream name. When a stream is initiated, the below process happens to make the video available at the receiving end
Live streaming undergoes the below steps
- Compression
- Encoding
- Segmentation
- Content Delivery Network (CDN) distribution
- CDN caching
- Decoding
- Video playback
Features to have
User Sign up & Sign in
It can be a simple registration with an email or phone number and password. It’s a good way to offer sign-ups or ins via Facebook, Twitter, or Google as it saves the users’ time. A password reset feature via email or text message is needed
User Profile
It is better to decide on what kind of personal information will be in the user profiles like profile picture, full name, subscriptions, etc., This can be viewed by friends & subscribers
Live Streaming
Allows the user to record and broadcast a live stream to members who have subscribed to his/her channel or the public
Chat
Chat is an essential part of any communication application. Chat combined with live streaming will be very useful for the audience to give their feedback. Third-party tools like Firebase or Twilio helps to integrate chat into video chatting. Can include Emojis to make the chat interesting
Record
Feature to record the videos and can have a user gallery to store and organize the recorded videos on user profile
How to develop a live streaming app using WebRTC?
Backend development
Create a live streaming application by means of WebRTC technology
For a live stream to happen, the live video has to be sent to a server so that it can distribute the live stream to the audience or subscribers. So, a media server should be running somewhere that you can access
There are many open source WebRTC media servers available. One such is Ant Media Server that can live stream & supports ultra-low latency (0.5 seconds) adaptive streaming and records live videos in several formats like HLS, MP
Set up a media server You can download ant media server & use its trial version license
Broadcast live stream Provide a stream name for the video stream and start recording. This will be passed to the ant media server
View live stream The subscriber can use the same steam name to join the stream and view the live video
UI/UX design
Next comes the good & attractive user interface & user experience. It is better to have simple navigation as it will be convenient to understand. The user has to grasp the need for features & their performance
Tech stack
Content Delivery Network
Streaming protocols
Programming languages
API server
Database
Backend Hosting
Push notifications
Media processing platform
Messaging queues