Video: Pros and Cons of SRT for Streaming Playback

Learn more about SRT at Streaming Media's next event.

Watch the complete video of this presentation from Streaming Media West, T202: HOW-TO: Identifying Real-World Options for Live Streaming Playback, in the Streaming Media Conference Video Portal.

Read the complete transcript of this clip:

Robert Reinhardt: SRT is relatively new. I actually have a client that's having some problems with SRT and it's usually from server to server.

Teradek has got some SRT implementation in their encoders; Wowza supports SRT. I believe Haivision originated that spec and has made it open-source, but it was something to replace RTMP.

Philip and I have been joking about how some of these acronyms are poorly chosen. There was already something called SRT in video, related to caption files. I don't know why they picked SRT.

When we try to do Google searches, we might come up with a whole different tech stack than what we're talking about here. I would just say search for secure reliable transport if you want to find more information about it.

Again, it's meant more for server-to-server. That's a push target. I have a client right now that's approached me that is pushing from North America across the pond to Europe and they're using SRT to connect, and they were having issues with it because it was a relatively initial implementation by Wowza, and I said, “Why are you using SRT? Why don't you just go back to RTMP?”

“We were having issues with RTMP too.”

“If you're having issues with both RTMP and SRT, I don't think you can blame the transport, it sounds like something else is going on here, because if RTMP is timing out, then you probably have other network problems going on.”

Anyway, that's just a recent experience I've had with SRT that didn't seem to work out as well. But I do think that what I like about SRT is--I haven't really seen this talked about as an HEVC carrier but--since it is a push, out of a device, I would love to see a device, and maybe Teradek's already there with Wowza, but I haven't tested it yet. But if I could do HEVC over SRT from a remote location for a webcast, that would be great, but when I open up my AJA HELO encoder, or I open up a Videon encoder, I'm not seeing an SRT path there for HEVC. I did test a Cube from Teradek over a year ago that I believe I did not see an SRT update for at the time, so I had to do a UDP transmission as well for HEVC from that Teradek.

This is promising for encoders and media servers and media servers to talk to each other. As far as I've heard it talked about, it is not something that we would be using any day soon for client playback. It's not like I'm going to put some SRT URL in browser, because, again, that's a long road, right? I mean, even if Haivision gives a lot of resources to it, I don't think they're going to convince all the browser vendors to just magically insert this by next year into their product.

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Epiphan's George Herbert describes how Epiphan uses SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) and remote contribution encoders with multiple remote guests to upgrade streaming quality substantially over what Zoom provides in this clip from his presentation at Streaming Media Connect 2021.

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