Rebuilding Custom Multi-Cam Live Streaming Apps

The client's solution includes a web platform for creating and managing live video feeds and native iOS/Android apps that allow users to send their video and audio streams from their mobile devices to the web platform. 

Discovery

To detect all the issues and distinguish the reasons behind them, the DataArt team started by conducting an extensive discovery phase followed by preparing the solution design project based on the findings. At this stage, it became obvious that the reasons for many issues were rooted in less than optimal architecture of the original platform. 

Hence, DataArt decided to "treat" the cause rather than symptoms and designed the optimal architecture for the web and mobile apps as well as selected the proper tools and technologies to implement it.

Technical Implementation

After the solution design, it was decided to develop both the mobile and the web apps anew. Along with a novel approach to the architecture, the DataArt team took the following steps:

• Organized collecting of all the streams from all the cameras on a single server to avoid hops
• Used UDP-based WebRTC and SRT to reduce latency and eliminate freezes and stuttering
• Applied AWS VGPU plugin + Nvidia MPS to ensure multi-processing (up to 10 concurrent processes)
• Reduced switching latency from 3-4 sec to 250 ms by forcing keyframes every 0.5 sec
• Used GStreamer to manage media streaming and switching
• Implemented WebRTC to deliver high-resolution video streams

Novel Prototype and UI

In addition to improvements made on the software development end, the team came up with a novel prototype and UI/UX based on the system that follows Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) and Material Design essential for the iOS and Android apps. The new UI provided better accessibility and usability.

Business Benefits

With a novel architecture, decreased latency, and improved performance, both web and mobile apps became more accessible and manageable for streamers. All the technical and design improvements ensured that the client’s customers are receiving better orchestration of the live streaming process. Now, they can invite different cameras in one click and manage video and audio from the camera in a more straightforward way without delay. As a result, the usability and user experience of the platform increased significantly.

Technology