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Custom RTMP Live Streaming: The Ultimate Guide
For nearly two decades, RTMP has been a leading “vehicle” for transmitting audio, video, and data over the internet due to its stability, low latency, and accessibility.
Most live-streamers are dependent on RTMP to broadcast their content to their viewers even if they do not realize it!
Virtual broadcast studios, such as StreamYard, eliminate the need to worry about the back-end logistics that make live-streaming possible.
However, knowing a bit about RTMP will help you better understand how it all works and how you can reach new audiences outside of the standard “go-to” platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and Twitter.
What is RTMP Live Streaming?
Real-Time Messaging Protocol (or RTMP) was developed by Macromedia as a proprietary system to transmit audio, video, and data between their Flash player and a server. Adobe purchased Macromedia and their respective technologies back in 2005, later releasing RTMP as an open-source protocol to the public in 2012.
Once public, RTMP became a widely used backbone of streaming technology despite Adobe’s move to push flash into obsoletion by the end of 2020.
At the time RTMP was rolled out, one of the main benefits was low “latency” – the delay in transferring data from the encoder to the video player. RTMP achieved what technophiles considered “ultra-low latency” with stream delays as low as 5 seconds.
Today, newer protocols, such as WebRTC and FTL, are gaining traction due to their sub-second latency. Still, RTMP remains a key protocol for streamers due to its reliability and wide platform support.
