Direct Streams

[midnightstreamer]

What are Direct Streams?

Direct streams are a new way to stream that doesn't rely on FFmpeg. To get the incoming stream and send it to clients, it uses a streaming engine written entirely in PHP (future versions will be written in Rust to save even more CPU cycles).

Here is a short list illustrating the pros and cons when using Direct streams:

Pros:

• no audio-sync issues
• no need to restart streams under any circumstances (some FFmpeg streams need to be restarted periodically in order to work properly)
• ultra fast stream start when on-demand mode on, even from multiple hops (server1 (on-demand) -> server2 (on-demand) -> server3 (on-demand) -> server4 (on-demand) -> server5 (on-demand) in 4s<)
• no need to tweak the probe size setting
• can open sources without prebuffer (slow streams) in on-demand. Regular on-demand cannot open streams in time without or with a small prebuffer
• avoided issues caused by demuxing and remuxing (note: FFmpeg de/remuxes even if the stream is just copied without transcoding, while Direct streams forward the input to the output as-is)
• no issues when restreaming encrypted streams
• less CPU usage (-20% per stream on average compared to FFmpeg)

Cons:

• no transcoding available
• no mapping available (audio and subtitle tracks cannot be selected)
• no HLS input and output available (only MPEG-TS input / output is supported by Direct streams)
• no archives available
• no video/audio codec and bitrate info is shown

 

➡️ In MidnightStreamer you can choose between both FFmpeg and Direct streams. It's up to you when to use one or the other.