Converting WebRTC to HLS With Wowza Streaming Cloud
When used in the most straightforward workflows, WebRTC enables peer-to-peer communication between a limited number of browsers. But by converting WebRTC streams into an HTTP-based protocol like HLS, it’s possible to scale broadcasts to reach thousands of viewers with adaptive bitrate technology.
Wowza makes it easy. With our Wowza Streaming Cloud service, you’re able to capture WebRTC streams from any browser for broadcast to any destination. Watch the video tutorial above for a play-by-play on all the steps involved.
Full Video Transcript:
Justin Miller:
WebRTC is a free, open-source protocol that lets you live stream peer-to-peer through a web browser. But if you want an easy way to broadcast that same stream to multiple destinations using adaptive bitrate HLS, Wowza Streaming Cloud is the solution.
In a Wowza Streaming Cloud account, we’ll start by Adding a new Live Stream, name it appropriately, and then select a location closest where you’re broadcasting from. Next, we’ll select our encoder, this will be Other WebRTC. Leave everything else as default, as the stream type needs to be adaptive bitrate and closed captions are not an option. Neither are available for WebRTC. We’ll click Next through all the other options and go straight to Finish. Many of these settings can be edited later through the available tabs.
Now for testing, we’ll need to Start Live Stream. For this test, you will need a WebRTC stream, so you can download our WebRTC HTML example from GitHub using the URL shown below. Once the zip file is extracted, open the index.HTML file from the published folder in a web browser or on a hosted server with encryption. You’ll also need to allow microphone as well as camera access.
Back in Wowza Streaming Cloud, we’ll scroll down in copy the SDP URL, Application Name, and Stream Name from the Overview page. Once this information has been added to your WebRTC HTML example, you can hit Publish. Returning back to Wowza Streaming Cloud, you’ll see a thumbnail under the overview tab, along with health monitoring statistics. If you scroll down to the Playback URL at the bottom, you can copy the information provided, go into an application such as VLC player and test the playback stream.
That’s it for converting a WebRTC see stream to adaptive bitrate HLS. Don’t forget to stop the stream in Wowza Streaming Cloud and the WebRTC HTML example when you’re done. Thanks for watching and happy streaming.