RTMP Stream: What It is and Why Use an RTMP Encoder for Live Streaming

According to the 2022 survey titled The Business Value of Real-Time Streaming, low-latency streaming directly relates to increased business revenue and engaged viewers.So, why are companies still struggling to stream their live video content with low latencies? And what could change the course? An RTMP stream, perhaps.

After all, Chris Knowlton, a video streaming industry veteran and consultant at LiveArena Technologies AB – a video production technology provider – was quoted saying, “RTMP still provides a reliable way to provide low latency, ultra-low latency, and real-time delivery.”

Whether you are streaming live videos for corporate communications, training and learning, or any other purpose, you are faced with the challenge of your viewers getting frustrated over problematic delays in the live stream.

This leads to your viewers getting uninterested and never coming back because of a highly frustrating experience that tests their patience. The stakes could be even higher if you are live streaming a high-profile event that wants to attract the attention of both your audience and the media. Your reputation could be at stake if the stream experiences significant delays or drops the video quality.

To address the above challenges, the RTMP live streaming protocol was developed. The widely used protocol for live streaming video content is used by video-intensive businesses, such as YouTube and Twitch, for obvious reasons.

This is why this blog will be all about the RTMP stream. We will get started with understanding what an RTMP stream is, the video and audio codecs it supports, the evolution of RTMP, how RTMP ingest works, how RTMP works, software encoders that support RTMP streaming, why you should use an RTMP encoder for live streaming, key use cases of RTMP live streaming, and how does RTMP compare to other live streaming protocols.

So, without any further delay – or latency – let’s get started with what an RTMP stream is.

What is an RTMP Stream?

The RTMP stream, short for the real-time messaging protocol, uses the widely popular TCP-based live streaming protocol. The reason it is quite popular despite the sheer availability of other live streaming protocols is that it caters to specific use cases wherein you cannot make any compromises on video latency and audience interactivity and engagement. Another reason is that latency and video quality should go hand in hand, and RTMP makes sure that it does that.

As the name indicates, real-time messaging protocol streaming, or RTMP streaming, achieves low latency of up to 5 seconds, making it almost look like your viewer is watching the live stream in real time. It means that the event shown in the live stream is seen as it happens right then and there.

An RTMP stream supports the following video and audio codecs:

Video Codecs Supported in RTMP Stream

The following are the video codes supported in an RTMP stream:

• H.264
• VP6
• VP8
• Sorenson
• Flash Screen Video v1
• Flash Screen Video v2

Audio Codecs Supported in RTMP Stream

The following are the audio codecs supported in RTMP live streaming:

• AAC
• AAC-LC
• AAC+
• MP3
• Speex

The Evolution of RTMP

Macromedia (now Adobe) developed the RTMP streaming protocol in 2002. You might be familiar with the popular Flash Player. The RTMP protocol was designed to support the Flash Player. Back then, when Flash Player was a thing until December 2020, RTMP streaming used to support both first and last-mile delivery since 98% of browsers at that time used to support Flash until it got replaced by HTML5.

With the discontinuation of the Adobe Flash Player, the RTMP streaming no longer remained in its original form. However, RTMP is clearly not dead. In fact, it has evolved. Now, RTMP only supports first-mile delivery, alternatively known as RTMP ingest or video contribution.

First-mile delivery refers to the transmission of the video data between the RTMP encoder and the server. On the other hand, last-mile delivery is the transmission of video data between the server and the device that was previously used to support the Flash Player.

How RTMP Ingest Works?

Remember when we talked about how RTMP only supports first-mile delivery and not last-mile delivery? You might be wondering how last-mile delivery is possible then. The answer lies in RTMP ingest.

Since modern live streaming protocols, like Apple HLS, are equipped with the capabilities to perform last-mile delivery, the RTMP ingest converts the RTMP stream into an HLS stream. The following are the three stages involved in RTMP ingest:

• TCP/IP handshake
• Connection
• Stream

TCP/IP Handshake

In the first stage, a three-way TCP/IP handshake takes place. This further breaks down into three steps to establish communication between the client and the server to begin the data transmission. These steps are briefly discussed as follows:

SYN: SYN is short for Synchronize. In this step, the client sends a segment with a Synchronize Sequence Number to inform the server that the client wants to communicate with it.

To understand it better, take the example of you wanting to meet a representative of another company. To express your desire to communicate with them, you will first need to communicate your availability and ask for theirs. The first step does sort of that.

SYN + ACK: In this step, the server receives and acknowledges (ACK) and makes a response to the request made by the client in the previous step. SYN refers to the synchronize sequence number the client wants to start the segment with.

Think of it as the company representative replying to your message and telling you their availability.

ACK: In the last step, the client acknowledges (ACK) the response made by the server in the second step. It is at this stage that both the client and the server establish a connection to transmit the video data.

Think of it as an appointment getting fixed between you and the company representative to meet for the intended purpose.

Connection

In the second stage, the data is established between the client and the server in a standard format known as Action Message Format (AMF). AMF is a binary format used to transmit messages between the client and the remote service. An RTMP encoder sends these messages comprising information like the video and audio codecs that will be used, the stream key, and the RTMP ingest URL.

Streaming

In the final stage, the live stream gets initiated after the connection between the client and the server is established. You can now ensure high-quality live streaming coupled with low latency for a smooth viewer experience.

How Does RTMP Work?

Getting the RTMP stream into action is a complex process that goes through a number of stages. These stages are listed as follows:

• Capturing the stream
• Configuring the RTMP server
• Encoding the stream
• Transcoding the stream
• Ingesting the RTMP stream
• Initiating the live stream

Capturing the Stream

The first and foremost step involves capturing the live video using camera and drone devices. Advanced live streaming software supports the capture and streaming of live videos from IP cameras and drones used for surveillance and reporting.

It is pertinent to note that not all IP cameras and drones support RTMP live streaming. Always make sure to use a camera or drone device that supports RTMP.

Configuring the RTMP Server

Once you capture the live video, it is now time to configure the point of publishing (PoP). To configure the PoP, you need to specify the following details:

• The RTMP server you intend to use
• Stream name
• Stream quality
• Authentication to access the live stream using the publishing point
• The transcoder provided by your live streaming platform
• Whitelisted and blacklisted IP addresses
• Bandwidth limit

Encoding the Stream

In this step, you need to set up your live stream encoder and configure it by defining the encoding provider and the encoding profiles. In the case of advanced live streaming software, you can also automatically encode your live stream without doing it manually.

The purpose of encoding is to ensure that the live stream plays on all devices, regardless of whether it is a computer, tablet, or mobile device. With the conversion of the live video into hundreds of file formats, you can ensure that your RTMP stream has a greater audience reach.

Transcoding the Stream

Right after the encoding is done, the process of transcoding the live video begins. While encoding is used to convert the live video into multiple file formats, transcoding is all about converting the live video into various renditions, such as 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, and 1080p.

By creating multiple quality renditions, you can ensure that your stream is viewed by your audience regardless of their Internet speed and bandwidth limitations.

Ingesting the RTMP Stream

Once the live video is automatically encoded and transcoded, it is now time to ingest your RTMP stream using an Ingest URL. Once the stream is ingested, you can preview the live stream before going live.

Initiating the Live Stream

Finally, you can initiate the live stream by going live and clicking the Publish button. With RTMP live streaming, your audience gets low-latency streaming.

Software Encoders that Support RTMP Streaming

One of the great things about RTMP is that it is widely accepted across the streaming industry. With RTMP support for various encoders, it is easy to choose from multiple encoders that align with your budget and specific needs. The following are some of the software encoders that support RTMP streaming:

• Wirecast
• OBS Studio
• AWS Elemental Live
• Digital Rapids

Wirecast

Wirecast is a live streaming encoder developed by Telestream. It has a user-friendly interface that takes no time to master. As far as capturing is concerned, Wirecast can be used to capture live video from multiple sources – be it IP cameras, webcams, microphones, etc.

Wirecast is geared towards brand and content creators, education service providers, government personnel, churches and places of worship, enterprises, media and broadcasting, and live eSports.

OBS Studio

Unlike Wirecast, OBS Studio is a free and open-source software for recording videos and live streaming video content. Being open-source software, OBS Studio allows for multiple integrations with third-party plugins compared to Wirecast.

One of the significant advantages of OBS Studio over Wirecast is that it requires less processing power. While on the other hand, Wirecast can eat up a lot of your CPU and GPU resources.

AWS Elemental Live

AWS Elemental Live is a live streaming encoding solution that can run on your hardware and virtual machines (VMs). It allows the capture of live video from cameras or video production equipment. It also supports adaptive bitrate streaming. Last but not least, with AWS Elemental Live, you can make use of RTMP and RTMPS streaming with integrated CDN support for Amazon CloudFront.

Digital Rapids

Digital Rapids is another live streaming encoder that allows versatile ingest, encoding and transcoding, and rich format support. The StreamZ Live family of live streaming encoders supports real-time streaming outputs of up to 1080p.

Digital Rapids is geared towards post-production, broadcast, cable and TV, corporates, and institutions.

Why Use an RTMP Encoder for Live Streaming?

Now that we have covered some of the popular RTMP encoders for live streaming, it would be wise to know why you should opt for an RTMP encoder for your live stream. The following are the reasons why you should use an RTMP live streaming encoder:

• It can stream with low latency
• It supports adaptive bitrate streaming
• It is compatible with a range of live streaming platforms
• It allows for audience interactivity and engagement
• It offers robust security
• It lets you scale the live stream.

It can Stream with Low Latency

Low-latency streaming is no longer a nice-to-have capability to have for your live streaming. In fact, it is now so normalized that if your stream has high latency, you will end up losing your viewers. After all, everyone wants instant gratification, and even a 15-second delay can cause your viewers to be frustrated.

Despite this realization, occasion stops and significant lags or delays in live streaming are still quite common. This is why an RTMP encoder is essential for delivering a low-latency RTMP stream to your viewers so that they experience minimal delays.

In case you’re suffering from high-latency live streaming, refer to our blog on What Causes Occasion Stops in a Good Live Stream Video. Bonus: This blog also highlights the ways you can prevent high latencies in your live stream. And yes, using a low-latency live streaming protocol is one of them.

It Supports Adaptive Bitrate Streaming

Although the original RTMP protocol developed by Macromedia does not support adaptive bitrate streaming, there’s a catch. Remember when we talked about RTMP ingest earlier in this blog? To recall it, the RTMP ingest converts an RTMP stream into HLS for making last-mile delivery possible.

This makes adaptive bitrate streaming possible using RTMP streaming. This allows your viewers to stream the live video regardless of the speed and quality of their Internet connection. This means that, no matter how poor the Internet connection is, your stream will be running on your viewers’ devices.

It is Compatible with a Range of Live Streaming Platforms

The RTMP streaming protocol is widely popular, and its popularity is not going to end any time soon. The popularity of the RTMP protocol is evident in the 2021 Wowza Video Streaming Latency Report. According to the survey, around 77% of professionals revealed that they use an RTMP stream to live stream their video content.

Given the consistent popularity of the RTMP, it is a no-brainer to understand that many live streaming platforms support it. After all, RTMP has become the standard for live streaming. With such extensive support for RTMP live streaming, you can benefit from hosting your live stream on any platform of your choice that fits your budget and requirements.

In case you’re looking for live streaming platforms that suit you best, check out our comparison blog on the best live streaming platforms of 2024.

It Allows for Audience Interactivity and Engagement

Live streamed content, such as training sessions and virtual events or webinars, demands real-time audience interactivity and engagement. This is why an RTMP stream is mainly preferred since it allows you to interact with your viewers in real-time. In fact, one of the core reasons why RTMP is the go-to choice for live streaming is that it offers real-time interactivity.

With RTMP live streaming, your viewers can interact with your stream via live chat in real time so their comments sync with what is being streamed live.

It Offers Robust Security

Did you know that RTMP has a more secure version that goes by the name of RTMPS? Yes, the S in RTMPS stands for "secure." By streaming over a highly secure SSL/TLS connection, you can ensure that your live-streamed content does not get spoofed, as it helps you protect the data in transit.

By coupling it with a secure content delivery network (CDN), you can enhance the security of your live stream by mitigating distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and tokenizing URLs to secure the live-streamed content stored on servers.

To know more about CDN live streaming, refer to our blog on CDN video streaming.

It Lets You Scale the Live Stream

Another significant benefit of the RTMP live streaming protocol is that it allows you to scale up and down your live stream according to the load of the audience. This means that you do not have to worry about a sudden spike in the number of viewers of your RTMP live stream.

Besides that, using a CDN to deliver your RTMP stream can also help you handle random traffic surges and distribute the traffic using a load-balancing application. Moreover, in case your primary live stream fails, you can always rely on a backup stream using a fallback mechanism.

Key Use Cases of RTMP Streaming

Given the sheer popularity and wide acceptance of the RTMP streaming protocol, enterprises have adopted it for their several use cases, such as the following:

• IP camera/Fixed camera surveillance
• Drone surveillance
• Interactive events and webinars
• Town hall meetings
• Training and learning

IP Camera/Fixed Camera Surveillance

One of the key use cases of RTMP streaming is that of fixed camera surveillance. Surveillance is quite a sensitive area wherein you cannot tolerate extensive delays at all. After all, a significant lag in the live stream can negatively affect your response time and might pose a severe risk to the safety of people and property.

By delivering the RTMP stream of live footage from an IP camera, you can take swift action in response to the incident with minimal delays due to low-latency live streaming.

Drone Surveillance

Another form of surveillance is conducted through drones. Drone surveillance is used to monitor critical infrastructure and detect suspicious activities of skeptical individuals. Like IP camera surveillance, extensive lags in drone surveillance are not appreciated.

Imagine a person contaminating a manufacturing facility caught on the live stream. Any delay in you watching the live stream and responding to it lately risks the health and safety of individuals as well as the reputation of your organization.

Interactive Events and Webinars

Unless you plan on communicating one way with your viewers, like in a TED event, your virtual events and webinars will significantly depend on interacting with your audience in real-time. These live events might include informational webinars, product demonstrations, product launch events, etc.

These kinds of live events require you to keep your audience hooked to your stream. This is why RTMP live streaming is highly crucial for hosting interactive virtual events and webinars.

Town Hall Meetings

Town hall meetings are an essential aspect of corporate communications. They are a great way to bring together the company leadership and employees on one platform – in the case of live streaming, one online platform – where both parties can freely communicate and interact with one another.

When communicating with your employees during virtual town hall meetings, you need to answer their questions properly and acknowledge their feedback swiftly. This is made possible by delivering the town hall meeting using an RTMP stream.

Training and Learning

Training and learning sessions, whether done in a corporate or an educational setting, carry the same purpose – to maximize the knowledge of learners and trainees and help them retain the knowledge provided.

In live streams with high latencies, you are unable to engage your audience fully, nor can you maximize their knowledge retention. The reason is that significant delays in the stream can cause your learners and trainees to lose interest in the live-streamed content.

This is why RTMP streaming is of utmost importance when it comes to hosting live training and learning sessions in enterprises and educational institutes.

How does RTMP Compare to Other Live Streaming Protocols?

Although RTMP is by far the most popular protocol used for streaming live video content, other live streaming protocols are also being adopted for different purposes. The following are some of the key live streaming protocols other than RTMP:

• HLS
• RTSP
• WebRTC
• MPEG-DASH

HLS

HLS stands for HTTP Live Streaming protocol. Apple developed it and made it public in 2009. As the name indicates, HLS is based on the widely popular HTTP protocol used by web browsers. Compared to RTMP, HLS is not a suitable mode for low-latency streaming since it can offer delays of up to 45 seconds.

This is why HLS is more suitable for streaming live events that do not depend much on interacting and engaging with the audience.

RTSP

RTSP stands for Real Time Streaming Protocol. Although RTSP has a lower latency compared to RTMP, it comes at the cost of reduced live streaming quality. No wonder RTMP is the preferred choice for live streaming since it maintains a perfect balance between latency and stream quality.

Also, RTSP is not secure by default since it does not use SSL/TLS encryption to secure the live streamed content. If security is not your priority and you can compromise on the viewer’s quality of experience, you can choose RTSP over RTMP.

WebRTC

WebRTC is another live streaming protocol that offers more reduced latencies than RTMP and RTSP. However, it comes at the cost of the lack of scalability. This is why WebRTC is more suitable for live streaming video conferencing sessions wherein relatively fewer people are present.

MPEG-DASH

MPEG-DASH stands for Moving Picture Experts Group – Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP. Like HLS, it also uses the HTTP protocol for live streaming. As the name suggests, it makes use of adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR) technology to deliver live video content to viewers no matter what their Internet bandwidth is.

You might be wondering how MPEG-DASH is different from HLS since both stream live video content over HTTP and offer adaptive bitrate streaming. The difference lies in the fact that MPEG-DASH is an open-source, codec-agnostic protocol while HLS is not.

RTMP Stream in a Nutshell

By now, we have figured out what an RTMP stream is and why it is the first choice for delivering live video content. With benefits such as low-latency streaming, high stream quality, adaptive bitrate streaming, compatibility with live streaming platforms and CDNs, etc., RTMP live streaming is still popular among professionals and broadcasters who want to interact and engage with their audience without compromising on the stream quality so that their viewers can enjoy a smooth live streaming experience.

Apart from delivering a smooth streaming experience, RTMP also prioritizes security by offering a secure SSL/TLS connection to protect live-streamed video content. This is why RTMP is great for live streaming content that you fear might get leaked, such as internal company communications, employee training sessions, exclusive events and webinars, etc.

Deliver Secure RTMP Stream with EnterpriseTube

EnterpriseTube lets you deliver a secure RTMP stream over the Internet. This means that EnterpriseTube does not support RTMP but also supports its secure variant RTMPS. With capabilities such as support for popular RTMP software encoders, automatic ingestion of live footage from IP cameras and drones, automatic encoding and transcoding of live video content, interactivity capabilities (live chat, Q&A, FAQs, live Twitter feed display), and support for major CDNs, EnterpriseTube is the go-to solution for RTMP streaming.

The best part? EnterpriseTube also uses other protocols, such as RTSP, WebRTC, MPEG-DASH, etc., to deliver a live streaming experience.

Want to see how EnterpriseTube does all this in a simple, easy way? Why not experience it yourself by signing up for a 7-day free trial? No credit card required.

You can also book a demo with us, and our team will be happy to demonstrate to you how to configure an RTMP server and set up the encoder to deliver a secure RTMP stream to your viewers.

People Also Ask

What is an RTMP stream?

An RTMP stream is a live stream that uses the widely popular real-time messaging protocol or RTMP for live streaming video content when audience interactivity and engagement and low latencies are critical to a successful live stream.

How to create an RTMP stream?

You can create an RTMP stream by following the steps mentioned below:

• Capture the stream using an IP camera or a drone
• Configure the RTMP server
• Encode and transcode the stream
• Ingest the RTMP stream using the Ingest URL
• Initiate the live stream on your live streaming platform.

Where is RTMP used?

The use cases of RTMP streaming include the following:

• IP camera/Fixed camera surveillance
• Drone surveillance
• Interactive virtual events and webinars
• Town hall meetings
• Training and learning

What are the benefits of RTMP streaming?

The following are the benefits of RTMP streaming:

• Low-latency streaming
• Adaptive bitrate streaming
• Live streaming software compatibility
• Audience interactivity and engagement
• Robust security and encryption
• Scalable live streams

Is RTMP encrypted?

Yes, the secure variant of RTMP, known as RTMPS, comes with SSL/TLS encryption to protect live-streamed content when in transit.