DEV Community

DEV feature idea: Self-serve live broadcasting

Ben Halpern on April 04, 2019

In the past we put on live streamed talks/tutorials/workshops which were generally well received, but they became a big coordination burden on our ...
Collapse
 
kayis profile image
K

I think it's a good idea.

Maybe, go with embedding third party stuff first, so we got something right away and then transition to something home grown?

Also, I don't use the chat. Don't know why. I use different Slacks and Discords, so I guess I don't have anything against chats. Maybe bad UX? Maybe to broad to be interesting? I don't know.

Just my two cents 😂

Collapse
 
itsasine profile image
ItsASine (Kayla)

Maybe, go with embedding third party stuff first, so we got something right away and then transition to something home grown?

I second this. Start with Twitch, see if interest is there, then iterate as needed.

Collapse
 
steveblue profile image
Stephen Belovarich • Edited

Building this kind of thing open source is easier then you might think. WebRTC is p2p and the only server side infrastructure you would need is a signaling server and possibly a messaging pipeline (WebSocket), storage for displaying metadata about the streams. Recording the live stream is a whole other can of worms, but it could be possible to stream WebRTC to a server and record it there, compress and serve. A lo fi solution would be to allow the user to record, the WebRTC MediaStream could be recorded on the client and then uploaded to a server as a Blob.

Collapse
 
steveblue profile image
Stephen Belovarich

P.S. if this feature goes live I will rig up a green screen for my home office and live stream content all the time.

Collapse
 
zimski profile image
CHADDA Chakib

There is a mature project around webrtc jitsy.org

But I dont think the webrtc will be the right tool for this.
By default each node will open a connection with all nodes connected to the session, so for mass streaming it will burn the computers ;)

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

This is music to my ears.

But is WebRTC the solution for mass streaming? I was thinking that was more for group video chat. It seems like video streaming is typically implemented by uploading to a server which distributes the content via a CDN.

I'm all for taking the right approach, we just need to figure out what that is!

Thread Thread
 
steveblue profile image
Stephen Belovarich • Edited

The way I was thinking about implementing this feature followed these steps.

  • Live broadcast over WebRTC
  • WebRTC MediaStream is recorded on server or client
  • Recording is transmitted to CDN
  • Recording is streamed from CDN

WebRTC would only be for the live broadcast, multiple people could participate or it could be a one to many broadcast (easier for MVP).

Thread Thread
 
coreyja profile image
Corey Alexander

Would love you to weigh in about WebRTC on this GIthub issue I just made! It sounds like a really cool thing to do, but I don't much experience in it to give it a good evaluation

github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/...

Collapse
 
vier31 profile image
Jan Schröder • Edited

I think it's a great idea. This would help new, unknown streamers to be more discoverable, since the signal to noise ratio here would be much better than on YouTube or Twitch. It certainly would encourage me to start streaming.

Maybe a tool like bigbluebutton.org/ could be interesting.

Collapse
 
misnina profile image
Nina • Edited

I really can't help with the technical questions, but I do have to say I'd be excited for this! I occasionally stream code work on twitch, but it's geared towards higher view counts instead of more interesting comments, and so far dev.to has been full of really insightful people. I'd rather have 1 person from here to talk to during a stream then 10 people on twitch who are looking for something completely different. There's still the science and technology category on twitch if you wanted to do embeds, but it would be nice if dev.to had it's own more specific tagging system for video steams.

Edit: How hard would it be to integrate the chat with something like restream.io?

Collapse
 
lostintangent profile image
Jonathan Carter

I’d be curious to hear if folks would be interested in some sort of integration with VS Live Share, that would allow you to publish live collaboration sessions, and interact with the community in a potentially more immersive way.

Collapse
 
thejoezack profile image
Joe Zack

I know of plenty of podcasters who would love this feature. You have to drag your audience over to YouTube/Facebook/Twitch if you want to do any broadcasting but I'm sure many of us would prefer a dev oriented space (especially one as friendly as Dev.To).

Collapse
 
ianknighton profile image
Ian Knighton

I would be super interested in this.

I actually think there would be a lot of value to see different peoples work flows and let them explain as they go.

I often struggle writing because I have to try and remember to stop and write. The ability to live stream means I could just talk it out, which is what I do most of the time.

Collapse
 
coreyja profile image
Corey Alexander

I think this would be great! I've tried streaming a few times before and twitch works fine but having something tailored to devs sounds awesome!

I'd definitely use it, and am probably down to write some code to support this!

Collapse
 
jamesmh profile image
James Hickey

I like the embedded third-party option starting off.

Collapse
 
projectmagenta profile image
Project-Magenta

We could do it the moxer way, with 8-second clips.

Collapse
 
mandaputtra profile image
Manda Putra

Third party first, I tend to use third party nowadays, twitch and youtube are good. I'll go for youtube it brings more audience, i think 😅😁

Collapse
 
dcschelt profile image
David Scheltema

Embeds would be so rad. Twitch especially.

Collapse
 
baskarmib profile image
Baskarrao Dandlamudi

Since dev.to already uses twitter- Including Twitter Live might be an option!

Collapse
 
coreyja profile image
Corey Alexander

I made a Github Issue

github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/...

to further discuss this and potential implementations! Would love anyone who might want to assist to join in on the issue!

Collapse
 
tobiassn profile image
Tobias SN

I think you should just integrate YouTube and/or Twitch.

Collapse
 
wesgrimes profile image
Wes

Legit excited about this. Too many other platforms that aren’t really tailored for coders. I think a custom in house solution would be a great long term investment.