Technical Requirements for High Quality Live Streaming. Image credit: AdobeStock
In recent years, live streaming has become one of the most popular features of mobile, desktop apps and video streaming platforms. Today, every reputable online video platform that relies on the most advanced live streaming technologies.
Thanks to advanced live streaming technologies, Internet users across the globe can watch engaging video content streamed in real time. Live streaming technologies also let you create and share your videos.
Essentially, live streaming is one of many data transmission methods. Live streaming is a way to share video content or a video file from a remote storage location online.
A few seconds of the video file are transmitted online at a time, so streaming client devices can play the video without downloading it first.
In other words, video content shared this way online is sent in real time. It has not been stored or recorded previously. As advanced as it is, live streaming technologies are used in many different industries.
Live streaming is especially popular in the video gaming industry. Speaking of the video gaming industry, there are many different video gaming streaming platforms. Twitch owned by Amazon is one of them.
Besides Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and Steam also have a huge base of fans scattered all over the globe who consume video content in real time via these platforms.
The viewership of popular video streaming platforms has tremendously risen in the past several years. According to this ReaseachandMarkets report, the popularity of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Twitch, and other live streaming platforms will increase even more in the years to come.
According to the same report, the video streaming industry is expected to reach a staggering value of US$223 billion in seven years from now at a predicted growth of twenty-one percent.
Thanks to different technological advancements, the demand in the market will also significantly increase in the years to come.
One of the major factors contributing to the growth of the video streaming industry is the adoption of cloud-based services and products.
The growth of the video streaming industry is also positively impacted by the use of AI-based solutions that significantly boost the video quality of content streamed in real time.
This leads us to the most basic requirements for high quality live streaming. When discussing high-quality live streaming, the most important thing to check out is your Internet connection.
Without a stable Internet connection, you will not be able to create and share high-quality video content without constant interruptions.
Having a faster broadband connection is even better and it most certainly boosts live streaming. How slow or fast the minimum network connection speed should be depends on the website or the platform on which you want to stream videos.
Some websites require a network connection speed of 700Kbps and higher for high-quality live streaming. Some sites require a network connection speed of 2MB and even higher for high-quality streaming. Professional live streaming services for example use ‘bonded’ internet connections which splits the data stream across multiple connections allowing for video bitrates of up to 6mbits.
All in all, the faster the Internet connection, the more high-quality live streaming is. For high quality live streaming, you also need a high-quality camera. Whether you are using an HD camera or a standard-definition camera, your camera must be there
Depending on which live streaming platform you join, hardware requirements vary. Some websites require 3GB of RAM. Some require a 64-bit or 32-bit processor if you want to stream videos using your webcam.
In addition, you need the latest Adobe Flash Player plug-in for most websites and of course, a web browser such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Explorer, or Safari.