DEV Community

Discussion on: I work for a live video streaming company, ask me anything!

Collapse
 
missamarakay profile image
Amara Graham

I always recommend people understand their goal or use case. This make it easier when looking at your workflow and the tools that may help make it easier.

For example, if your goal is just to stream a short video of yourself, YouTube Live or Facebook Live probably have all the built in tools that you would otherwise need. If your goal is to take that video global, restream, multicast, or more, you need to start looking at other tools that would assist with getting your stream to multiple platforms.

Video is a difficult concept to grasp, so we have a lot of folks right now asking to "just stream in the browser". You need to remember you are capturing a video signal and converting it into something that can be packaged and sent across the internet. Raw video is huge, so that's where we look at encoders to help us. Encoders can be hardware, software, or totally obfuscated from the user with platforms like YouTube Live or Facebook Live.

Do your research for your use case. You know best about what you are trying to accomplish.