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When streaming live videos as a professional, you must focus on creating an excellent experience for your viewers. One way to create a great live video viewing experience is by keeping the latency on your streams low.
Imagine live-streaming a concert or live event, for example. You excite your viewers by creating buzz around the event on social media. Everything’s lined up, but there’s a lag in your live stream on the viewer’s end.
Only a few viewers will sit around waiting for the stream to load. A single buffering event can cause up to 40% of viewers to lose interest and switch to something else. Even if the live-stream buffers for a concise period.
These lost viewers might not be willing to tune in to watch your other live and on-demand streams in the future. Today’s audience is spoiled for choice, and they hate waiting.
That’s where streaming solutions that offer low latency come in. That’s how live streams maintain continuity best quality throughout their duration, allowing viewers to experience the content in real time. Latency is the delay between when an image is in the real-time video captured on your camera and when your viewer experiences it on their screen. With live content, you want the lowest possible latency. Low-latency video streaming is essential for professional broadcasting.
Understanding how low-latency video streaming works can help engage your audience better. That’s thanks to CDN solutions that can bring down latency to milliseconds.
This post will explain low-latency streaming and the features you should look for when choosing a low-latency streaming platform. We will wrap things up by mentioning a few great encoders for low-latency streaming.
Let’s get started.
What is Low Latency Streaming?
Live streaming without delay makes your streams more viewer-friendly.
Let’s get a bit technical here. Live streams are not live. There’s usually a 20-120 second delay between the event and the video streaming on viewers’ mobile devices. That’s video latency, the delay between when a video frame is captured and when that frame is displayed to the viewer.
For example, if you’re watching a live sporting event, latency is the time between a player making that legendary winning goal in real life and seeing it happen on your screen at home. You want the stream delay to be short enough to be unnoticeable.
Latency occurs in a broadcast because processing and sending live video takes time. It doesn’t take much time, of course. Nonetheless, each step in the process results in a tiny delay. These steps include:
- Camera processing of the image
- Encoders transcoding the content
- Time for the video to be transmitted to the viewer
- Buffering
- One’s viewing device decodes and then displays the video.
According to Encoding.com, most streams have latency in the 30-120 second range—sometimes more.
There are two parts to latency:
- Startup time and the lag between the event taking place
- The video streams on a viewer’s screen.
Both are important to the viewer’s experience. Unfortunately, reducing one latency component can increase the other in some cases. That’s why it’s important to understand the balance between these two parts and how to stream with less delay effectively.
The Value of Low Latency Video Streaming Solutions
Studies show that longer startups drive viewers away and negatively impact their smooth streaming experience. Online videos with a start-up time exceeding two seconds have significantly higher streaming video abandonment rates.
Each incremental second lag propels another 6% of viewers to jump ship. That’s why learning how to stream without delay, or as little delay as possible, at the start of your video is essential to retaining viewership.
Low latency during the broadcast of deployed content is critical in various situations. Here are a few scenarios in which low-latency media solutions are especially critical:
1. Sports streaming.
2. Live auctions.
3. Live streaming involves chat, real-time feedback, or audience participation.
4. Gaming.
5. Gambling.
6. Dual-screen viewing (increasingly common for all broadcasts)
7. Concerts.
8. Question-answer sessions.
9. Political events such as debates or vote counting.
Streaming with low latency solutions help viewers watch these events unfold in almost real-time, creating a more lifelike experience. Getting rid of streaming lag is the best way to keep your viewers engaged.
How to Choose the Best Low-Latency Streaming Solution for Live Streaming Without Delay
Only a few video streaming platforms deliver efficient low-latency video streaming platforms today. Each offers a different combination of price, usability, and features.
Let’s look at some of the features you should look for when choosing a solution to live stream without delay.
- HLS Streaming protocol
- Less than 15 seconds of latency
- Simple set-up
- Budget-friendly
- A reliable content delivery system
HLS Streaming Protocol Delivery
Make sure your chosen streaming solution uses low-latency HLS streaming.
The best low-latency video streaming platforms use the HLS streaming protocol. “HLS” is short for “HTTP Live Streaming.”
Apple designed HTTP Live Streaming to work with HTML5 video players on iOS devices and applications like Apple TV. Both HTTP Live Streaming and HTML5 players are successors of the ancient Adobe Flash Player technology.
How HLS Streaming Works
Most HLS streams or HTTP Live Streaming protocols start with RTMP ingest, automatically converted to HLS for delivery by the video platform. That provides high-quality HTTP Live Streaming to viewers but can introduce a latency of 30 seconds or more, a huge live stream delay.
RTMP is still used for video ingestion rather than HTTP Live Streaming for deliveries and ingest because HTTP Live Streaming has a much higher latency. The RTMP ingest/HTTP Live Streaming delivery combo makes streaming on an all-device HTML5 video player possible while reaping RTMP’s low latency benefit.
When paired with the right-side CDN providers, this technology can help decrease your latency into the 12-15 second zone. That’s a much better live stream delay.
Less than 15 Seconds of Latency
Cable TV and professional broadcasts usually have 10 seconds or less latency. Ultra-low latency is under 1 second.
To achieve less than 15 seconds of latency, you need a combination of features to work together. That’s why, when comparing streaming solutions, it’s best to ask the sales representative how many seconds of latency their platform has.
You want to aim for less than 15 seconds of latency for professional broadcasts. Mslive, for example, offers HLS delivery with RTMP ingests for low-latency video streaming. That reduces latency to 15 seconds or less and is most suited for professional broadcasts and online businesses.
At Mslive, we’re constantly working to reduce our latency further so that our end users everywhere can produce live streams close to real-time video streaming. We’re very excited about our recent partnership with Limelight CDN with the launch of our UApp. Both of these additions aim to reduce latency even more. Mslive continues to invest in the best tools so that you don’t have to think about reducing stream delay; we will take care of it for you.
Simple to Set Up and Use
Find an HTTP live-streaming HLS platform that is easy to navigate.
If you are new to professional broadcasting, you’ll want to choose a low-latency streaming solution that is easy to use. Unless your role at your company is dedicated to live streaming, you likely don’t have the time for a steep learning curve. That is why you need a video hosting service that makes learning to reduce stream delay as easy as possible.
Choose a user-friendly streaming solution with a reliable customer support team who can help you when you need it.
It is also good to ensure your streaming solution works seamlessly with professional equipment and the laptop or computer you plan to work with.
For example, Mslive requires a consumer-grade laptop to run (i5 processor and 8 GB of RAM minimum). You can also use the OBS Studio software encoder with Mslive, which is free.
Compare that to hardware encoders or workstations that typically cost $1,000 and up (some cost $10k+), and you can save substantial amounts of money. That makes streaming professional-grade broadcasts without a massive budget more manageable than ever.
Fits Your Budget
Live streaming pricing varies widely. Many offer cheap introductory pricing but limit professional features to costly platforms.
- For example, a service like IBM Cloud Video restricts features like API access to plans costing over $999 monthly.
- As another example, Vimeo restricts 24/7 live streaming, monetization, advanced security features, dedicated support, and video API access to custom plans with a similar costly price range.
These aren’t cherry-picked examples. Every live-streaming platform on the market requires an investment to access more advanced features.
Comparatively, Mslive offers live streaming starting at just $39 per month and all access to premium features at $188 per month, billed annually. That includes all the restricted features of these other streaming solutions. Mslive offers low-latency video streaming at a price all businesses and broadcasters can afford.
VOD hosting, live streaming, API access, monetization, 24/7 tech support, and all security features are included with every Mslive plan. Mslive offers many professional features allowing you to produce professional content and avoid a lengthy live stream delay when you broadcast.
Reliable Content Delivery
Why do your viewers seem to drop out during your live streams? Let’s hear it straight from your audience. Sixty-three percent of live streamers’ viewers last year cited buffering issues as the most severe issue they experienced, an increase from the previous year.
Meaning streaming lag and buffering point to a tough issue. A robust CDN, Content Delivery Network, or a multi-CDN solution is the best.
A CDN network consists of thousands of servers distributed to data centers worldwide. These services help deliver internet content to users fast. They do that by automatically duplicating data and using intelligent routing algorithms to mine web traffic and find the fastest path to any website or viewer.
Here are some plus points to streaming with less bandwidth usage, no matter where your viewer is located and regardless of their network conditions, the stream latency they experience will be as low as possible. That’s how you’re able to:
- Improve security
- Speed up delivery
- Reduce buffering
- Eliminate lagging issues, cutting down on steam latency
- Improve scalability to suit audiences of any size
- Build in an additional layer of redundancy.
Don’t want to introduce latency in your streaming when your audience grows? Then close your CDN providers carefully. Using more than one CDN can also help since multi-CDNs help improve web performance and security. Using multiple CDNs is an excellent plan B in case one fails. Not all CDNs are created equal. Some are much smaller and slower than others, and some CDN providers don’t support live streaming video. Mslive works with Limelight, one of the most reliable CDN providers. That means your live stream delay will be as short as possible for your viewers worldwide.
How to Stream With No Delay With Mslive
Ultra-low latency video streaming is essential in professional broadcasting. When comparing video streaming solutions, pay close attention to the offerings that support low-delay live streaming.
Mslive’s low latency live streaming, video streaming platform, and other features make it the best solution today. Mslive offers low-latency camera streaming, so your live content will reach your viewers quickly.
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