HLS vs. RTMP - dry statistics
If someone decides to independently process, store and transmit video for his online project, rather than use sites like YouTube, he inevitably comes to the question of which transmission protocol to use for broadcasting video to users' devices. The choice is small, because There are a number of industry standards that support certain devices. In addition, the choice of protocol depends largely on the “class” of the video - live broadcast or video-on-demand. The choice of the media server that will be the engine of your media machine also depends on the choice of protocol: will you install multiple disparate servers or build a delivery network on one solution? Therefore, you need to weigh everything and make a decision based on the criteria of your business.
In general, an equation with many unknowns is obtained. Here the dynamics of the process is important - where is the industry going? Suddenly I will invest in technology support, and it will be bent in a year, because this has already happened. Or put on a fashionable technology, but no one supports it?
We decided to assess how the share of different protocols changed over time - to look at the dynamics of the whole process. Data taken over the last year.
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To begin with - who are we to judge market shares? We are the developers of a web reporting service for media servers . We have been working on the market for the fourth year and companies with different infrastructures, different numbers of servers and different needs come to us. It turns out a good impression of the industry.
We made a small report where you can select a date range and receive data with a graph by the number of video views through different protocols.
The report provides data on the servers:
At the time of this writing, the service serves about 1000 servers from 60 countries of the world.
The report is also periodically updated in our blog, it is available on the corresponding tag .
The report for June / July 2014 looks like this. Of the 1.4 billion views, more than half are HLS. In second place is RTMP with a quarter of views. RTSP is about sixth. The rest are in the area of ​​statistical error.
What was a year ago during the same period? The situation is almost a mirror. RTMP - almost two thirds, RTSP and HLS share second and third places. True, the base for measurements was almost 3 times less - “only” 500 million views . The servers in our service were smaller too, of course.
Walk between these two points.
So, June - August 2014, 3 months of summer. 800 million views , but the shares are the same, August did not bring changes.
September - November 2013. The new season began, HLS began to eat off the share of RTMP. Only 1.1 billion views , RTMP has about half of the total, HLS - a quarter.
December 2013 - February 2014. 1.4 billion views , of which HLS already accounts for more than 40%. RTMP and RTMP share second and third place with a quarter of a share. The Olympics in Sochi gave an increase in the number of views and at the same time forced the providers to remember all the clients with all their exotic or old devices that only the RTSP understands - hence the jump of this protocol.
March - May 2014. 1.9 billion views and HLS is already the undisputed leader with more than half the market. RTMP confidently holds a quarter, the rest occupied the shares that we saw on the first chart.
HLS ( HTTP Live Streaming ) today has become the de facto standard in the world of video streaming for consumer devices. Initially made for devices of one fruit company, quickly gained popularity on other devices — desktops, STBs, and Androids — starting from version 4, they began to understand this protocol.
RTMP remains indispensable where data transfer is required close to real time. HLS gives some delay when connecting to download the first chunk with data, and in the case of RTMP, the mapping starts almost immediately. In general, this is the most advanced protocol for transmitting media in real time, despite all the ambiguities in the implementation (each new vendor adds its own characteristics), more time-consuming deployment and scaling relative to HLS.
RTSP is still used as a fallback for older androids.
Separately, I want to say about MPEG-DASH - despite the best efforts of the industry, the transition to it happens with a creak. Of course, sooner or later there will be a smooth transition from all HTTP-based protocols — HLS, HDS, SmoothStreaming — to it, but for now these are only plans.
Interesting and share Progressive download , which runs the video on a considerable number of sites. Technically very simple, it allows you to start distributing video-on-demand with almost no special media servers. Since Vovza by this protocol does not work, its share became possible to track only as soon as our Nimble Streamer is installed on the client servers. The current 20M + views for 2 months of summer is not the limit, and the actual proportion of this protocol is definitely higher. Although he has limitations that leave him a relatively small niche.
If you have questions about data collection or their interpretation - ask.
PS Who is interested in other observations from the world of online media - read also my materials on Geektimes .
In general, an equation with many unknowns is obtained. Here the dynamics of the process is important - where is the industry going? Suddenly I will invest in technology support, and it will be bent in a year, because this has already happened. Or put on a fashionable technology, but no one supports it?
We decided to assess how the share of different protocols changed over time - to look at the dynamics of the whole process. Data taken over the last year.
')
Initial data
To begin with - who are we to judge market shares? We are the developers of a web reporting service for media servers . We have been working on the market for the fourth year and companies with different infrastructures, different numbers of servers and different needs come to us. It turns out a good impression of the industry.
We made a small report where you can select a date range and receive data with a graph by the number of video views through different protocols.
The report provides data on the servers:
- Wowza Streaming Engine in all versions, starting from 2.2 and up to the last 4.x; most - 3.x.
- Nimble Streamer working with HLS, Smooth, HDS and progressive download is our development.
- Windows Media Services - there are literally a couple of dozen, but they are, and they need to be taken into account
At the time of this writing, the service serves about 1000 servers from 60 countries of the world.
The report is also periodically updated in our blog, it is available on the corresponding tag .
Go
The report for June / July 2014 looks like this. Of the 1.4 billion views, more than half are HLS. In second place is RTMP with a quarter of views. RTSP is about sixth. The rest are in the area of ​​statistical error.
What was a year ago during the same period? The situation is almost a mirror. RTMP - almost two thirds, RTSP and HLS share second and third places. True, the base for measurements was almost 3 times less - “only” 500 million views . The servers in our service were smaller too, of course.
Walk between these two points.
So, June - August 2014, 3 months of summer. 800 million views , but the shares are the same, August did not bring changes.
September - November 2013. The new season began, HLS began to eat off the share of RTMP. Only 1.1 billion views , RTMP has about half of the total, HLS - a quarter.
December 2013 - February 2014. 1.4 billion views , of which HLS already accounts for more than 40%. RTMP and RTMP share second and third place with a quarter of a share. The Olympics in Sochi gave an increase in the number of views and at the same time forced the providers to remember all the clients with all their exotic or old devices that only the RTSP understands - hence the jump of this protocol.
March - May 2014. 1.9 billion views and HLS is already the undisputed leader with more than half the market. RTMP confidently holds a quarter, the rest occupied the shares that we saw on the first chart.
How to understand all this?
HLS ( HTTP Live Streaming ) today has become the de facto standard in the world of video streaming for consumer devices. Initially made for devices of one fruit company, quickly gained popularity on other devices — desktops, STBs, and Androids — starting from version 4, they began to understand this protocol.
RTMP remains indispensable where data transfer is required close to real time. HLS gives some delay when connecting to download the first chunk with data, and in the case of RTMP, the mapping starts almost immediately. In general, this is the most advanced protocol for transmitting media in real time, despite all the ambiguities in the implementation (each new vendor adds its own characteristics), more time-consuming deployment and scaling relative to HLS.
RTSP is still used as a fallback for older androids.
Separately, I want to say about MPEG-DASH - despite the best efforts of the industry, the transition to it happens with a creak. Of course, sooner or later there will be a smooth transition from all HTTP-based protocols — HLS, HDS, SmoothStreaming — to it, but for now these are only plans.
Interesting and share Progressive download , which runs the video on a considerable number of sites. Technically very simple, it allows you to start distributing video-on-demand with almost no special media servers. Since Vovza by this protocol does not work, its share became possible to track only as soon as our Nimble Streamer is installed on the client servers. The current 20M + views for 2 months of summer is not the limit, and the actual proportion of this protocol is definitely higher. Although he has limitations that leave him a relatively small niche.
If you have questions about data collection or their interpretation - ask.
PS Who is interested in other observations from the world of online media - read also my materials on Geektimes .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/232297/
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