SRT Link to Red5 Opens Path to Real-Time Streaming Everywhere

The emergence of Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) as the leading playout mode for live M&E and other high-value video content has created a vast staging ground for implementing end-to-end use cases utilizing Red5’s real-time multidirectional streaming platform.

Thanks to Red5’s innovative approach to linking its Experience Delivery Network (XDN) Architecture with SRT any producer of live content that uses SRT for ultra-low latency playout is optimally positioned to seamlessly extend WebRTC streaming across all points of connectivity, from production workflows to millions of end users. This has unleashed capabilities that go well beyond the simple ingestions of SRT playouts enabled by other WebRTC-based platforms.

Real-Time Streaming in Production

Specifically, on the production side producers using SRT for live production playout or input into production workflows from SRT-encoded sports, news and other camera feeds can make use of integrated XDN support to break free of location-based restrictions. This is done with the aid of Red5’s TrueTime Studio^TM and TrueTime Multiview^TM for Production toolsets, which together enable production personnel working on commodity desktop computers in dispersed locations to:

·  Compile multiple SRT and other real-time formatted inputs from cameras, remote commentators, stored assets, online betting bookmakers and other sources into single-screen mosaics delivered over shared workflows. This enables simultaneous execution of distributed editing tasks on full-screen renderings surfaced from the mosaic by colorists, audio technicians and other specialists.

·  Frame-accurately synchronize in-stream placement of captioning, enhanced metadata elements and remotely sourced text, graphics and clips.

·  Make moment-to-moment choices from multiview displays of A/V sequences to determine what goes into the SRT playout stream.

Producers can also format multiviewing options for SRT playout utilizing Red5’s TrueTime Studio. This entails synchronizing any number of full-screen multiview options with an accompanying stream compiling thumbnail screen views of those options for playout to XDN-equipped distributors and passthrough to end users.

Real-Time Streaming in Distribution

On the distribution side, XDN integration with SRT enables:

• Ingestion of SRT playout streams for delivery to any size audience numbering into the millions over XDN infrastructure with glass-to-glass latencies registering at 250ms or less, unless playout distances or other conditions push the SRT latencies into the multi-hundred millisecond range.
• Real-time browser-based monitoring and analysis of SRT playout as well as XDN distribution performance.
• Use of Red5’s cloud-based transcoding software to support real-time distribution of SRT mezzanine-encoded content in multiple adaptive bitrate (ABR) profiles.
• Use of Windows support for SRT to set up XDN ingestion and any pre-ingestion transcoding requirements with SRT encoder outputs.
• Use of SRT to support connections of output from end users’ devices to XDN Origin Nodes for real-time distribution in interactive video applications.

Seamless access to all the capabilities discussed here holds for SRT playout users whether they activate XDN infrastructure as Red5 Cloud or Red5 Pro customers. As explained at greater length below, Red5 Cloud provides turnkey software-as-a-service (SaaS) support for XDN operations while Red5 Pro is designed for users who want to take more of a DIY approach.

The Benefits of Extensive Compatibilities Between SRT & XDN Architecture

There are other important benefits intrinsic to compatibility between SRT and the XDN Architecture that derive from the Red5 integration with SRT. One of these has to do with the fact that content played out over SRT is often formatted to the 188-byte MPEG Transport Stream (MPEG-TS) packet framework in order to serve the distribution requirements of traditional cable, telco and satellite multichannel video program distributors (MVPDs). In such cases the MPEG-TS encapsulation is maintained by the XDN architecture, enabling real-time video distribution to set-top boxes.

This points up an important, unique attribute of XDN Architecture, which is its flexibility to accommodate real-time transport of native encapsulations of content when end devices are unable to tap the plug-in-free support that all the major browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari and Opera, provide for WebRTC. In such cases, the XDN Architecture is able to tap the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) that anchors WebRTC to provide real-time transport with these native encapsulations.

Along with maintaining MPEG-TS formatting, this approach makes it possible to retain Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) and SRT formatting with the same latency performance XDN Architecture attains with WebRTC. This is especially significant when it comes to capitalizing on cameras generating RTSP- or SRT-formatted real-time output to XDN-connected smartphones or other end-user gear that’s equipped to work with either protocol, which eliminates processing complexities intrinsic to the peer-to-peer mode used with WebRTC.

Another aspect to compatibility between SRT and XDN Architecture is the fact that SRT, which is nearing IETF standardization, uses the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) as the packet transfer layer in conjunction with Adaptive Repeat reQuest (ARQ) retransmission technology to dynamically adapt to packet loss, bandwidth fluctuations and jitter. The fact that SRT and WebRTC both rely on UDP expedites the transition from one to the other, which ensures the lowest possible end-to-end latency.

Link-level security, another must-have for live playout, is another aspect to tight compatibility between SRT and WebRTC. SRT utilizes the combination of Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS), a derivative of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), to encrypt the data channel and Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP) to encrypt the audio and video channels. This harmonizes SRT security with the security mandated by the WebRTC protocol, which also utilizes the combination of DTLS data channel encryption and A/V encryption via SRTP.

Ubiquitous Encoding Support Drives SRT Usage to New Heights

One of the great advantages stemming from the Red5 XDN Architecture integration with SRT lies in the fact that the seamless connection between the two platforms can be activated with simple point-and-click commands directed from users’ XDN control panels to the encoders employed for output over SRT connections. See the demo on this link to view how easily this is done with Red5 Pro implementations of XDN infrastructure. When it comes to activating SRT encoder connections on the Red5 Cloud platform, those processes are performed automatically.

As a long-standing member of the SRT Alliance, Red5 is able to track the ongoing expansion of the protocol into ever more suppliers’ hardware and software encoding platforms. At this stage support for SRT encoding is nearly ubiquitous encompassing major hardware brands like Haivision Makito, ATEME Titan, Videon, Osprey Video, Matrox, Nimbra, AWS Elemental and many others as well as software versions like Vmix, FFMPEG and OBS.

SRT as an open-source protocol administered by the SRT Alliance is readily available at no cost for anyone to use for live video playout. As a result, the scale of what’s at hand with SRT users’ access to the capabilities enabled by the Red5 integration is unprecedented.

The only research we’re aware of to confirm the volume of SRT usage compared to other playout platforms is performed annually by Haivision, the inventor of the protocol who freed it for open-source usage in 2017. According to Haivision’s latest survey of live content producers, 77% of respondents said they were using SRT in 2025, marking a 9% increase over the 68% usage rate in 2024. With many respondents attesting to using more than one playout platform, the next highest usage rate was registered by the traditionally dominant Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) at 58%.

While the survey can’t be considered entirely objective, since it is executed through the Haivision web site where visitors are more likely to be SRT users than the sum of market players at large, the trend line seems indisputable. Along with free usage, there’s much to SRT that is ideally suited to meeting the latency-reducing priorities set by virtually every entity engaged in commercial live streaming.

The protocol allows producers to get their productions into distribution pipelines quickly, securely and at legacy broadcast quality without relying on costly satellite and dedicated fiber links or RTMP for internet transport. Notably, tests performed by Haivision have demonstrated RTMP incurs 2.5x-3.2x higher latencies than SRT.

How XDN Architecture Takes SRT Users Far Beyond the Limits of HTTP Streaming

But it’s also what WebRTC and its application in XDN Architecture can do that SRT can’t that makes pairing the two platforms the ideal solution to realizing the full potential of multidirectional real-time streaming. SRT, which is unidirectional and requires client hardware or software support in receiving devices, was never intended for use in distribution to end users, which means producers traditionally had to rely on the one-way streaming support provided at much higher latencies by HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) and other HTTP-based streaming modes to reach end users.

The broad range of real-time interactive streaming capabilities that come with using XDN infrastructure in backend operations as well as distribution stem from the unique architectural approach Red5 has taken to making use of public and private cloud resources. Use of those resources in terms of server and virtualized capacity allocations, backup for failsafe redundancy, assignment of application toolset, SDK and other XDN functionalities, and activation of interfaces with partner technologies is orchestrated across cloud clusters of Origin, Relay and Edge Nodes by the XDN Stream Manager.

The node management and routing capabilities of the XDN architecture enable configuration of servers within any given node location to provide real-time streaming support for content in all directions. For example, servers in any datacenter housing an Edge Node can also serve as host to an Origin Node for ingesting content from proximate users with routing executed from there across the most direct node paths to other users.

By leveraging both containerized and virtual machine-based iterations of datacenter virtualization, the XDN platform enables the flexibility and speed of resource utilization that is essential to unlimited scalability and fail-safe redundancy. Consequently, XDN infrastructure can be scaled to accommodate any number of users both as receivers and senders in live streaming sessions.

The Stream Manager orchestration software employs intelligence in Edge Nodes that enables output, no matter how many streams may be coming in from the Origin/Relay Nodes, to be tuned to the device capabilities, bandwidth availability and demographic profile of the end user or users in the case of shared viewing on a TV screen. This intelligence is essential to enabling XDN infrastructure support for previously discussed TrueTime Studio and Multiview applications and many other capabilities involving delivery of personalized content elements.

For example, Red5’s approach to ABR profile streaming avoids the typical distributed transcoding processing redundancy by delivering all bitrate profiles in a given live streaming session to all Edge Nodes, where the bitrate most appropriate to each end user’s situation at any given moment is chosen for the last-mile distribution. These intelligent Edge Node dynamics also come into play to support Red5’s patented approach to dynamic server-side ad insertions and forensic watermarking.

As for the TrueTime compositing of multiple camera feeds or other input into a single real-time stream from which any full-screen view can be instantly displayed in live production workflows, XDN Architecture employs Red5’s Mixer, which is software running on dedicated commodity processors that allows users to configure exactly how they want multiple camera feeds to be combined for ingestion into XDN Origin Nodes. The Mixer can perform overlays, resizing and synchronization combining dozens of live streams into a grid layout along with sidebar display of all the feeds in thumbnail arrays.

Operators click on those thumbnails to switch back and forth among instantly rendered full-screen displays as often as necessary. Along with enabling simultaneous participation of dispersed technicians in live production workflows, the Mixer technology is key to the ground-breaking live surveillance Red5 customers in emergency management, facilities oversight, military operations and other fields are able to perform with aggregations of terrestrial and drone camera feeds across wide stretches of territory.

Red5 Cloud & Red5 Pro

As mentioned earlier, the vast array of capabilities supported by XDN Architecture can be activated in integrations with users of SRT technology through either the turnkey Red5 Cloud service or implementations of XDN infrastructure undertaken with use of Red5 Pro SDKs and APIs. Critically, both scenarios afford customers much greater flexibility to leverage resources as they see fit than is typically available from either real-time platform providers who specialize in turnkey services or those who operate on the DIY side.

The highly automated Red5 Cloud SaaS responds to customers’ input setting geographical reach, targeted user counts and other basic parameters on their service portals with instant activation of XDN-dedicated resources precisely tuned to their needs in datacenters hosting the global Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The Red5 Cloud service includes sustained managed support for maintenance, changes in original parameters and other needs through the entire engagement life cycle.

Each Red5 Cloud instantiation of a customer’s XDN infrastructure and its subsequent modifications remain dedicated exclusively to that customer’s use in perfect alignment with the use case requirements. This is a major departure from the shared usage platforms operated by other suppliers of WebRTC cloud services, where pre-formatted use-case applications are offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

Customers choosing to pursue the Red5 Pro DevOps approach can mount XDN infrastructure in public or private clouds utilizing a comprehensive portfolio of Red5 Pro SDKs and open APIs with recourse to assistance from Red5 personnel. Public cloud XDN infrastructures built with Red5 Pro can operate seamlessly with no loss of latency in cross-cloud scenarios involving the leading cloud providers, including AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, OCI and others that have been pre-integrated with the platform, as well as many more that can be integrated for XDN use with the aid of the Terraform open-source multi-cloud toolset. 

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There’s never been anything like the opportunity users of SRT transport now have to cut costs and increase revenue by extending real-time interactive streaming across all points of connectivity. In dispersed live production operations and middle- and last-mile distributions to any number of end users over any distance worldwide, the prospects brought to life by XDN Architecture are limitless.

To learn more about how to capitalize on what’s in store at the intersection between SRT and XDN-enabled real-time streaming contact info@red5.net or schedule a call.