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Guide to RTMP live streaming apps for iOS
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Guide to RTMP live streaming apps for iOS
This is a guide for going live from an iOS app to rtmp server. I downloaded and tried all the top apps I could find. I don’t have any affiliation with these products and this is meant to be a guide to help you find the right one to use for your streaming purposes. Of course, I hope you use these with Mux live streaming, but this guide should help you with anywhere you are doing rtmp streaming.To get more news about moonlive, you can visit official website.
RTMP stands for Real-Time Messaging Protocol and it is a de-facto standard for ingesting video and audio over the internet for one-to-many live streaming. Back when we were using Flash, RTMP was the most popular and widely used protocol for delivering video to end users HLS has since taken over on the delivery side). You might recognize RTMP from social services like Twitch, Youtube Live, Facebook Live or Periscope. One way (sometimes the only way) to stream to these services is over RTMP. In order to stream over RTMP you have to have an application that encodes your video and sends it to the RTMP ingest server. Popular encoder applications for desktops include OBS (open source and free), Wirecast (for professionals and expensive) and Ecamm Live (somewhere in between). There are many other encoder apps available on your phone. This is a guide for popular iOS apps.
Price - this goes beyond an upfront cost to download the app. Many apps have hidden costs that you don’t find out about until you start trying to stream.
Support for rtmps - although Mux supports both rtmp and rtmps we try to encourage folks to use rtmps for a greater level of security. As of last year, Facebook started requiring rtmps, I was surprised to find a lack of rtmps support in many of the top apps.
Most apps only allowed for one output, but some supported multiple rtmp outputs. I didn’t care too much about this feature because at Mux we have a feature called simulcast targets which enables any live stream to be syndicated to multiple rtmp destinations.
Portrait orientation. Most of the apps I tested did not properly handle portrait orientation. This means when holding the phone upright with the front-facing camera enabled and starting the stream from that orientation, the stream ended up sideways in the video stream.
A surprising number of applications have no support for rtmps. They either: (1) failed when I entered the URL with an error along the lines of “enter an rtmp URL” or (2) allowed me to enter the URL and then had an infinite spinner with no clear error message, or (3) they had some generic “failed to start stream” error message.TLDR;
My favorite app that I can recommend is Wirecast Go. It costs a few bucks and doesn't have rtmps support, but it worked well and has some neat features around production. When broadcasting from a phone, think about if you want support for portrait mode if you do, only two of the apps I reviewed had support for that.