How to Live stream with HTML5, without Flash?

Question

The Problem: I need my clients to be able to stream their webcam to my streaming server(for instance Wowza server). I am building my site in PHP. I have gone through various streaming sites like twitch.tv, livestream.com and found that they all use third party broadcasting software like Wirecast, XSplit broadcaster, OBS etc to stream the Webcam feeds to the server. Then I came across sites like vLine, Opentokrtc that uses WebRTC for Video chat.

My Question: So, my question is that, is it possible for me to send the stream to the broadcasting servers like Wowza(So that they can then broadcast my live stream) without using broadcasting softwares with only WebRTC? If Yes, then how? If, No, then what are the other alternatives?

PS. I don't want to use Flash, ActionScript here.

Answer 1

You will basically need a server which has a pseudo WebRTC client integrated in it. WebRTC can get the stream but cannot start streaming until a PeerConnection is setup. You can try using various servers/gateways like Janus, Kurento, Licode, FreeSwitch, etc.

Also MediaStream generate by WebRTC can be directly attached to an HTML5 <video> tag.

Answer 2

Using WebRTC for such a use case incurs a high computing cost on the server side and is a rather new technique, which means you should be using it if you know what you are doing.

My suggestion would be to stick to Flash or MPEG-DASH instead - unless what you need must have a very low latency to it and you are fine with paying for it by smaller solution scales.