Broadcast Box lets you broadcast to others in sub-second time. It was designed to be simple to use and easily modifiable. We wrote Broadcast Box to show off some of the cutting edge tech that is coming to the broadcast space.
Broadcast Box uses WebRTC for broadcast and playback. By using WebRTC instead of RTMP and HLS you get the fastest experience possible.
With WebRTC you get access to the latest in video codecs. With AV1 you can send the same video quality with a 50% reduction in bandwidth required.
WebRTC allows you to upload multiple video streams in the same session. Now you can broadcast multiple camera angles, or share interactive video experiences in real time!
Transcodes are necessary if you want to provide a good experience to all your users. Generating them is prohibitively though. WebRTC provides a solution. With WebRTC users can upolad the same video at different quality levels. This keeps things cheap for the server operator and you still can provide the same experience.
With Broadcast Box you can serve your video without a public IP or forwarding ports!
Run Broadcast Box on the same machine that you are running OBS, and share your video with the world! WebRTC comes with P2P technology, so users can broadcast and playback video without paying for dedicated servers. To start the connection users will need to be able to connect to the HTTP server. After they have negotiated the session then NAT traversal begins.
You could also use P2P to pull other broadcasters into your stream. No special configuration or servers required anymore to get sub-second costreams.
Broadcast Box acts as a SFU. This means that every client connects to Broadcast Box. No direct connection is established between broadcasters/viewers. If you want a direct connection between OBS and your browser see OBS2Browser.
To use Broadcast Box you don't even have to run it locally! A instance of Broadcast Box is hosted at b.siobud.com. If you wish to run it locally skip to Running
To use Broadcast Box with OBS you must set your output to WebRTC and set a proper URL + Stream Key. You may use any Stream Key you like. The same stream key is used for broadcasting and playback.
Go to Settings -> Stream and set the following values.
- Service: WebRTC
- Server: https://b.siobud.com/api/whip
- StreamKey: (Any Stream Key you like)
Your settings page should look like this.
OBS by default will have ~2 seconds of latency. If you want subsecond latency you can configure
this in Settings -> Output. Set your encoder to x264 and set tune to zerolatency. Your Output
page will look like this.
When you are ready to broadcast press Stream Streaming and now time to watch!
See the example script(s):
examples/gstreamer-broadcast.nu- can broadcast gstreamer's test sources, or pulsesrc+v4l2src
- expects
gstreamer-1.0, withgood,bad,uglyplugins andgst-plugins-rs -
# testsrcs ./examples/gstreamer-broadcast.nu http://localhost:8080/api/whip testStream1 # v4l2src ./examples/gstreamer-broadcast.nu http://localhost:8080/api/whip testStream1 v4l2
If you are broadcasting to the Stream Key StreamTest your video will be available at https://b.siobud.com/StreamTest.
You can also go to the home page and enter StreamTest. The following is a screenshot of OBS broadcasting and
the latency of 120 milleconds observed.
Broadcast Box is made up of two parts. The server is written in Go and is in charge of ingesting and broadcasting WebRTC. The frontend is in react and connects to the Go backend.
While developing webpack-dev-server is used for the frontend. In production the Go server
can be used to serve the HTML/CSS/JS directly. These are the instructions on how to run all
these parts.
Go dependencies are automatically installed.
react dependencies are installed by running npm install in the web directory.
Both projects use .env files for configuration. For development .env.development is used
and in production .env.production is used.
For Go setting APP_ENV will cause .env.production to be loaded.
Otherwise .env.development is used.
For react App the dev server uses .env.development and npm run build
uses .env.production
For local development you will run the Go server and webpack directly.
To run the Go server run go run . in the root of this project. You will see the logs
like the following.
2022/12/11 15:22:47 Loading `.env.development`
2022/12/11 15:22:47 Running HTTP Server at `:8080`
To run the web front open the web folder and execute npm start if that runs successfully you will
be greeted with.
Compiled successfully!
You can now view broadcast-box in the browser.
Local: http://localhost:3000
On Your Network: http://192.168.1.57:3000
Note that the development build is not optimized.
To create a production build, use npm run build.
webpack compiled successfully
To use Broadcast Box you will open http://localhost:3000 in your browser. In your broadcast tool of choice
you will broadcast to http://localhost:8080/api/whip.
For production usage Go will server the frontend and backend.
To run the Go server run APP_ENV=production go run . in the root of this project. You will see the logs
like the following.
2022/12/11 16:02:14 Loading `.env.production`
2022/12/11 16:02:14 Running HTTP Server at `:8080`
If APP_ENV was set properly .env.production will be loaded.
To build the frontend execute npm run build in the web directory. You will get the following output.
> [email protected] build
> dotenv -e ../.env.production react-scripts build
Creating an optimized production build...
Compiled successfully.
File sizes after gzip:
53.51 kB build/static/js/main.12067218.js
2.27 kB build/static/css/main.8738ee38.css
To use Broadcast Box you will open http://localhost:8080 in your browser. In your broadcast tool of choice
you will broadcast to http://localhost:8080/api/whip.
The backend can be configured with the following enviroment variables.
DISABLE_STATUS- Disable the status APIENABLE_HTTP_REDIRECT- HTTP traffic will be redirect to HTTPSHTTP_ADDRESS- HTTP Server AddressINCLUDE_PUBLIC_IP_IN_NAT_1_TO_1_IP- LikeNAT_1_TO_1_IPbut autoconfiguredINTERFACE_FILTER- Only use a certain interface for UDP trafficNAT_1_TO_1_IP- If behind a NAT use this to auto insert your public IPNETWORK_TEST_ON_START- When "true" on startup Broadcast Box will check network connectivitySSL_CERT- Path to SSL certificate if using Broadcast Box's HTTP ServerSSL_KEY- Path to SSL key if using Broadcast Box's HTTP ServerSTUN_SERVERS- List of STUN servers seperate by '|'. Useful if Broadcast Box is running behind a NATTCP_MUX_ADDRESS- If you wish to make WebRTC traffic available via TCP.UDP_MUX_PORT_WHEP- LikeUDP_MUX_PORTbut only for WHEP trafficUDP_MUX_PORT_WHIP- LikeUDP_MUX_PORTbut only for WHIP trafficUDP_MUX_PORT- Serve all UDP traffic via one port. By default Broadcast Box listens on a random port
When running in Docker Broadcast Box runs a network on startup. This tests that WebRTC traffic can be established against your server. If you server is misconfigured Broadcast Box will not start.
If the network test is enabled this will be printed on startup
NETWORK_TEST_ON_START is enabled. If the test fails Broadcast Box will exit.
See the README.md for how to debug or disable NETWORK_TEST_ON_START
If the test passed you will see
Network Test passed.
Have fun using Broadcast Box
If the test failed you will see the following. The middle sentence will change depending on the error.
Network Test failed.
Network Test client reported nothing in 30 seconds
Please see the README and join Discord for help
Join the Discord and we are ready to help! To debug check the following.
- Have you allowed UDP traffic?
- Do you have any restrictions on ports?
- Is your server world routable
If you wish to disable the test set the enviroment variable NETWORK_TEST_ON_START to false.
A Docker image is also provided to make it easier to run locally and in production. The arguments you run the Dockerfile with depending on if you are using it locally or a server.
If you want to run locally execute docker run -e UDP_MUX_PORT=8080 -e NAT_1_TO_1_IP=127.0.0.1 -p 8080:8080 -p 8080:8080/udp seaduboi/broadcast-box.
This will make broadcast-box available on http://localhost:8080. The UDPMux is needed because Docker on macOS/Windows runs inside a NAT.
If you are running on AWS (or other cloud providers) execute. docker run --net=host -e INCLUDE_PUBLIC_IP_IN_NAT_1_TO_1_IP=yes seaduboi/broadcast-box
broadcast-box needs to be run in net=host mode. broadcast-box listens on random UDP ports to establish sessions.
A Docker Compose is included that uses LetsEncrypt for automated HTTPS. It also includes Watchtower so your instance of Broadcast Box will be automatically updated every night. If you are running on a VPS/Cloud server this is the quickest/easiest way to get started.
export URL=my-server.com
docker-compose up -d
The backend exposes two endpoints.
/api/whip- Start a WHIP Session. WHIP broadcasts video via WebRTC./api/whep- Start a WHEP Session. WHEP is video playback via WebRTC./api/status- Status of the all active WHIP streams