6 Big Reasons Red5’s WebRTC Platform Outshines All Others

As the Red5 team responds to surging global demand for technology supporting real-time multidirectional video streaming we’re encountering an immense amount of confusion over what can and can’t be done with the WebRTC protocol.

While any use of WebRTC means real-time streaming is in play, painting all WebRTC-based streaming platforms with the same brush carries high risks of incurring damaging outcomes. Too often, what people, including experts, know about the basic parameters defined by the WebRTC standard leads them to believe that one WebRTC-based platform is as good, or as bad, as the other.

These are misconceptions that can result in choosing a WebRTC streaming solution inadequate to the tasks at hand or, as happens all too frequently, rejecting them all. That leaves what could be done in the real-time streaming environment to the province of competitors who know where to go for what works.

The fact that somebody’s streaming platform is offering WebRTC transport says nothing about how the protocol is being used. What really counts, no matter what transport protocols are in play, and that’s sure to evolve, is the underlying architecture supporting what can be done on a given real-time streaming platform.

For us at Red5, it’s easy enough to set the record straight by pointing out and demonstrating to prospective customers that our Experience Delivery Network (XDN) Architecture can support virtually anything a specific use case requires. Our website is chock full of information describing these benefits and capabilities.

But rampant confusion beyond the reach of our immediate customer interactions poses significant risk across myriad consumer, enterprise, government and institutional scenarios at a moment when transitioning away from exclusive reliance on one-way, high-latency streaming is essential to sustained vitality. Hopefully, we can make life easier for decision makers everywhere by offering a comprehensive explanation of everything that differentiates what can be done with XDN-supported infrastructure compared to what’s available elsewhere.

1. Unparalleled Real-Time Multidirectional Streaming Performance

First and foremost, it’s important to understand that what we mean by real-time streaming with unlimited scaling in all directions sets us apart. When we use that terminology, we’re referring to our ability to stream A/V and ancillary data content from any source location for simultaneous reception across any number of end points numbering into the millions at any distance with latencies at or below the 250ms threshold of human perception. That’s why we use the tagline “streaming at the speed of thought.”

Of course, there can be exceptions when technical roadblocks occur with major disruptions in cloud datacenters or access networks or when transmission distances push the speed of light over that threshold. But latency at or below 250ms is the proven norm as measured in everyday operations worldwide. And in use cases involving shorter regional or local distances, latencies can be reduced to as low as 50ms.

As for the multidirectional aspects, that refers to the fact that any and all end points on the receive end of an XDN streaming event can serve as sources of real-time simultaneous streaming to all other end points. Many WebRTC-based platforms stumble when it comes to scaling multidirectional participation.

Such capabilities go far beyond what can be done with WebRTC alone. As described in this blog, Red5 has implemented our own patented innovations as well as those of partners that have been pre-integrated with our platform to reduce all the processing latencies, having nothing to do with transport, that can slow transmissions.

These ancillary latency reductions begin with the accelerated third-party encoders we’ve integrated with XDN architecture for customers’ use in capturing and encoding live camera feeds. And we’ve mitigated all the impediments to real-time streaming that we’d otherwise have to endure as the price for multi-protocol ingestion, transcoding, combining multiple streams into a single stream, scaling cloud resource usage, and enabling all the other functionalities listed below. As a result, we’re uniquely able to cite 250ms latencies as the norm in XDN operations even though we’re offering an unprecedented range of functionalities on the platform.

Moreover, whichever way the streams are flowing, there’s no compromise in audio or video quality stemming from our use of WebRTC. Our customers are using H.264, VP8 & 9 and H.265 encoders to deliver content at quality levels all the way to 4K. And we’ll be adding support for next-gen AV1, H.266 and beyond as encoding speeds become viable for use with live streams.

2. Engagement Across Myriad Markets In & Beyond the Consumer Arena

Combined, these attributes represent a transformation in the possibilities surrounding just about every use of live video on the internet and in private IP networks.

This isn’t hype. It’s happening every day in countless applications worldwide with customers ranging from major sports and esports leagues, online bookmakers and casino operators, game producers, social media outlets and many other types of users in consumer market categories to national, regional and local government entities and enterprises of every description.

For example, in the consumer services space:

• Producers streaming live sports and other content over XDNs are supporting multiviewing that enables users to instantly switch the full-screen views of one camera angle to another or from one streamed service to another by clicking on their choice of simultaneously displayed options in sidebar windows, all without adding to bandwidth consumed by a single stream and with no limit on the number of viewing options on display.
• XDN support for unlimited participation in real-time watch party applications is enabling the spread of shared viewing experiences to virtually any use case involving not only consumer services related to sports, concerts, game shows, live shopping and any other kind of social media engagement but also shared viewing situations in every other sector, such as live-streamed space vehicle launches that can now be watched with interactive video communications across dispersed work forces.
• By leveraging the XDN platform, online bookmakers supporting live in-stream betting on moment-to-moment developments in sports competition – i.e., micro-betting – are able to create far more compelling user experiences by relying on primary screen displays of the action in real time, thereby allowing information about the betting options and odds to be rendered on those screens, eliminating the need for framing the betting options in data feeds to second-screen devices.
• Major sports and esports producers are avoiding the high costs of venue-centered production by providing editors, commentators and others simultaneously shared access to real-time video workflows across dispersed locations with multiviewing options that enable moment-to-moment selection of what’s included in the output to end users.

Beyond the consumer markets:

• Rapidly growing numbers of government agencies, including the U.S. military, as well as utilities and other entities that employ remote video monitoring are employing XDN infrastructure to stream aggregations of live surveillance camera feeds from terrestrial, aerial and marine locations for simultaneous analysis covering vast reaches of territory.
• XDN usage is also enabling a growing movement toward real-time collaboration in engineering and architectural design, medical research, working training and other activities involving dispersed work forces, including those that have brought use of virtual reality and other modes of extended reality into their endeavors.

3. Unique User Flexibility with Managed Cloud Service & DIY Options

Before we drill down on the wealth of functionalities and application-specific tools that go into supporting these and all the other XDN use cases unfolding worldwide, it’s important to note another thing that sets us apart. Namely, Red5 is uniquely positioned to serve both the needs of customers looking for turnkey software-as-a-service (SaaS) support for real-time streaming and the needs of those who prefer to take a hands-on DevOps approach to developing their real-time streaming services and applications. Moreover, both scenarios afford customers much greater flexibility to leverage resources than is typically available from either the providers who specialize in turnkey services or those who operate on the DIY side.

The highly automated Red5 Cloud SaaS, in response to customers input setting geographical reach, targeted user counts and other basic parameters on their service portals, instantly activates our resources hosted by the global Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for implementations precisely tuned to their needs. The 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.

Another aspect to the uniqueness of Red5 Cloud is the fact that it is far less costly to use than other managed real-time streaming platforms. One aspect to the savings has to do with the fact that customers can avoid paying for resources dedicated to their XDN operations when they’re not in use by temporarily deactivating usage on the service portal, knowing the resources will be quickly available when they’re needed again. Moreover, with engagement through our Pay-as-You-Grow plan now available in the U.S. Central Region, Red5 Cloud customers can stream up to 50 Gigabytes per month free of charge on an ongoing basis without having to pay any upfront charges when they exceed that limit.

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.

4. Unmatched Functionality

Red5 is continually expanding the built-in functions supported by XDN Architecture and the integrations with partners that bring additional functionality to the platform. The list of capabilities is long and unique in its comprehensiveness. Some of the more notable features include:

• Multi-DRM content protection as an alternative to solely relying on Secure Real Time Protocol encryption and the other multi-layered security mechanisms intrinsic to WebRTC.
• Transcoding of mezzanine encoded live content to multiple streams matching profiles used in adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming to ensure flow continuity over congested access networks and to all types of devices.
• Mixing (compositing) technology that frame-accurately synchronizes and composites two or more streams from separate sources into a single stream.
• Dynamic server-side ad insertion (SSAI) using our patented approach to enabling interstitial placements of targeted ads and personalized feature enhancements.
• Real-time forensic watermarking using our patented SSAI system to facilitate timely action against purloined live streams.
• Live-stream recording for Catch-Up or long-term VOD playback.
• Support for simultaneously delivered secondary streams used as primary screen text and graphics overlays and sidebars or as second-screen companion streams synchronized with primary content.
• Client-optimized transport flexibility that enables use of the Realtime Transport Protocol (RTP) underlying WebRTC and RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol) to transmit content encapsulated in other formats, including the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP), Secure Reliable Transport (SRT), Zixi Software-Defined Video Protocol (SVDP), and MPEG Transport Protocol, in cases where end-user devices don’t work with browsers supporting WebRTC but do work with one of those protocols.
• Automated stream handoffs to HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) in extremely rare instances where devices are unable to support WebRTC or any of the encapsulated protocols over RTP.
• Optional use of transport over RTSP to mobile devices that have built-in support for that real-time streaming mode.
• Automatic AI detection in live streams for monitoring use cases and beyond.

5. Tools Supporting Ready-to-Deploy Use Case-Specific Applications

Adding to all the foregoing points of differentiation, TrueTime tools developed by Red5 can be used in various combinations by Red5 Cloud and Red5 Pro customers to quickly activate a wide range of use case-specific applications. Red5 has bundled TrueTime tools with native iOS, macOS, Windows, Android, Linux, HTML5 SDKs into solution subsets that can be combined or applied individually for use in any market segment.

The current lineup of TrueTime tools includes:

• TrueTime Datasync for integrating personalized as well as general use-case specific real-time data feeds with primary video streams in sports and other mass market productions as well as scenarios involving fewer participants like surveillance and workforce collaborations.
• TrueTime MultiView for providing end users multiple simultaneously delivered viewing options in entertainment, production and surveillance scenarios.
• TrueTime Studio for creators who need the flexibility to combine and switch among video feeds from multiple sources in any real-time scenario from webinars to live sports productions.
• TrueTime WatchParty for socializing viewer experiences in synchronized real-time interactive video engagements ranging from small groups to mass audiences.
• TrueTime Meetings for setting up video conferences within the XDN environment, which not only enables customers to avoid having to go outside their real-time networking domain to host a video conference but also, at no added costs, supports levels of quality and user participation that typically incur premium fees from commercial video conferencing services.

6. XDN Architecture

As mentioned at the outset, the key to all the differentiating qualities discussed above is the XDN Architecture. Whether operating in the multi-cloud environment as supported by Red5 Pro or in the automated Red5 Cloud environment hosted on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the fundamentals pertaining to how our resources are structured and orchestrated are the same.

In all cases, XDN infrastructure runs on commodity servers in locations that can be hierarchically configured to seamlessly operate in cloud clusters as Origin, Relay and Edge Nodes under orchestrated management by the XDN Stream Manager. One or more Origin Nodes in a cluster serve to ingest and stream encoded content out to Relay Nodes, each of which serves an array of Edge Nodes that deliver live unicast streams to end points in their assigned service areas. In cases encompassing a small geographic area or very few end points, content is streamed directly to Edge Nodes without the use of Relay Nodes.

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.

Or any Origin Node location can also be put into service as host to an Edge Node. Thus, in a situation where one hierarchical node cluster configuration is supporting real-time streaming of, say, an esports event, that same cluster of node locations can serve as the distribution hierarchy for any user engaged in an interactive application tied to that content.

Origin node placements can be optimized to accommodate ingestion of massive volumes of streams at minimum latency in interactive scenarios, all the way to extreme edge points. Along with ingesting any content delivered via WebRTC or RTSP, the XDN Origin nodes can ingest video formatted to all the other leading protocols used with video productions, including RTMP, SRT, Zixi, MPEG, and HLS.

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 capabilities such as Red5’s approach to ABR profile streaming, dynamic ad and other content insertions, watermarking, and multiviewing.

Cluster-wide redundancy essential to fail-safe operations is enabled by the Stream Manager’s autoscaling mechanism through platform controllers designed to work with cloud providers’ APIs. With comprehensive performance monitoring, the Stream Manager executes the load balancing essential to persistent high performance across the entire infrastructure without manual intervention. And in the event of a malfunctioning node component, it can instantly shift processing to another appliance in that node.

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Clearly, there’s no justification for anyone assuming that, when it comes to WebRTC real-time streaming platforms, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. In truth, there’s nothing in the market today that matches the scaling and latency performance, implementation flexibility, and use case versatility of XDN Architecture.

Feel free to share this document with anyone who thinks otherwise. And don’t hesitate to request more information by contacting us at info@red5.net or scheduling a call.