Online audio and video using free software and open standards

The web as we know it today couldn’t exist without free software. However, the web also helped re-emergence of proprietary technologies and incompatible, closed systems. One of the areas where this shows is in web multimedia - video and audio streaming, both live and on demand. Publishing a video or hosting a live stream today is trivial. Publishing a video or hosting a live stream using free technologies and avoiding artificial limits posted by the popular platforms is a quite different experience.

This talk highlights challenges in publishing video and audio content using only free and open source software and unencumbered technologies, examines choices you have to make and walks through several examples of how to publish multimedia on the web with minimal use of proprietary and closed solutions.

Transcript

1. Online Audio & Video
   using
   
   Free Software
   and
   
   Open Standards
   Senko Rašić
   

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2. Online video is everywhere
   9%
   2%
   14%
   75%
   Video Web,Email,Data Gaming File sharing
   Source: Cisco VNI-2016-2021
   

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3. Audio streaming is ubiquitous
   U.S. Music Industry Revenues 2017
   15%
   17%
   3% 65%
   Streaming Synch Physical Downloads
   Source: RIAA 2017 Revenue Statistics
   

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4. Producing video is trivial …
   … inside a walled garden
   

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5. Open Standards
   &
   Free Software
   

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6. Live & On Demand
   

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10. Compatibility nightmare
    Source: MDN web docs
    

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11. 99% solution — H.264+AAC
    Source: MDN web docs
    

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12. Progressive freedom enhancement
    Source: MDN web docs
    

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13. A new hope: AV1
    open, royalty-free video codec with patent grants
    30% improvement on VP9 and HEVC
    70% improvement on H.264
    

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14. Let’s stream!
    

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15. Internet Radio
    with Free Software
    IceCast
    ffmpeg
    mpd
    vlc
    ezstream
    gstreamer
    …
    HTML5 audio
    vlc
    mplayer
    omxplayer
    …
    Codecs
    AAC MP3
    Vorbis Opus
    SHOUT
    HTTP
    

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16. Cheese
    VLC
    mencoder
    ffmpeg
    OBS Studio
    …
    nginx
    red5
    ant media server
    …
    HTML5 video
    VLC
    GNOME/KDE media player
    mplayer
    gstreamer
    …
    Live Video Workflow
    with Free Software
    

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17. Recording
    ffmpeg
    -f v4l2 -framerate 25
    -video_size 640x480 -i /dev/video0
    -f alsa -i hw:1,0
    -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v 1800k -crf 31
    -c:a libopus
    output.webm
    ffmpeg Cheese (GNOME)
    

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18. Transcoding
    Handbrake
    ffmpeg -i input.mp4
    -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v 1800k -crf 31
    -c:a libopus
    output.webm
    ffmpeg
    

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19. Live Streaming
    OBS Studio
    ffmpeg
    -f v4l2 -framerate 25 -video_size 640x480 -i /dev/video0
    -f alsa -i hw:1,0
    -f flv rtmp://login:pass@example.com/app/stream
    ffmpeg (again!)
    

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20. Streaming Server
    nginx-rtmp-module, Red5, Ant Media Server
    

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21. Video Player
    VLC, Kodi, GNOME/KDE Media Player, mplayer,
    omxplayer, …
    
    

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22. Bandwidth & Compute
    Requirements
    

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23. LIVE
    H.264 + AAC in MPEG-TS over HLS (nginx) + JWPlayer
    

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24. Thank you!
    Senko Rašić
    

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