How to publish a live video stream from HTML and JavaScript?

javascript html video live-video

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The best practice approach, especially if you expect to have multiple clients viewing the video is to stream to a video streaming server and then have the video streaming server stream it to the individual clients.

Video streaming servers are available opensource or commercial and are quiet specialised with mechanisms to maximise device coverage and to handle different network conditions and device screen size/resolutions. rebuilding this type of functionality yourself would not be trivial.

Below is an example of the approach using Wowza a commercial streaming server (I have no affiliation to them):

More info here (from where the above picture was taken): https://www.wowza.com/products/capabilities/webrtc-streaming-software

An source example of streaming servers which will support similar approaches is GStreamer:

https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org

Update

Some links with info on using the Janus server. This supports connections from WebRTC clients and includes a streaming plugin:

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Author by

ikevin8me

Updated on July 17, 2022

Comments

ikevin8me almost 2 years

I have this piece of code which takes input the the camera and displays it within the web browser window (works only if served from a web server, not directly by opening a file):

<html>
<body>

<video id="video" width="640" height="480" autoplay="true"></video>

<script>
    var video = document.getElementById('video');
    if (navigator.mediaDevices && navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia) {
        navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({video: true}).then(function (stream) {
            video.src = window.URL.createObjectURL(stream);
            video.play();
        });
    }
</script>

</body>
</html>

I'd like to live-stream the video it to a URL (example: to "/publish/?password=" as in https://github.com/vbence/stream-m)

How do I code that?

Thanks!

ikevin8me about 7 years

So how do I write the JavaScript to stream the video out (from client browser to the server)?
Mick about 7 years

Well, there is a link on the wowza page which will allow you sign up to get their API. If you prefer an open source solution then you can connect WebRTC to the Janus WebRTX server and use its streaming plugin (Note I have not done this personally but it appears well supported). I'll add links in the answer above.