Frequently Asked Questions for iOS / Android RTMP Streaming

Here at Streamaxia, we receive various questions from our clients and various interested parties and we noticed that some of them keep on repeating so we decided to share our feedback with everyone.

How to broadcast a live stream from an iOS or Android app?

You have two options:
1. If you want to broadcast live from your own app, you need an RTMP library or SDK, like OpenSDK. This will expose the functions you need to post a stream to an RTMP URL.
2. If you don’t mind using 3rd party apps, you could use a free app, like Broadcast Me for iOS or Android, that also demonstrates the functionality of our SDK.

How to playback the stream?

You have at least two options:
1. Use an RTMP player if latency is relevant for you.
2. Use the HLS playback link provided by your media server or CDN. This is HTML5 native and in iOS and Android as well. Should be used in one-to-many applications, only, as it has around 10 seconds delay.
3. Use a push-JPEG player that has the best latency (below one second) and can be integrated with HTML or iOS/Android.

How to minimise the delay?

- Use a CDN or use servers as close to your audience as possible
- Avoid using transcoding
- Limit the usage of buffers as much as possible in both the server and the player
- Lower the image quality and framerate
- Tune the HLS playback to get to a delay of about 5 seconds
- Playback the stream in RTMP or push-jpg or WebRTC

Can you broadcast to Youtube or Facebook using Streamaxia OpenSDK?

Yes, you can stream to any RTMP service, including Facebook and Youtube.

Streamaxia provides RTMP and WebRTC tools. Get in touch with us today and see how we may help!