broadcast-box

Broadcast Box

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.

Subsecond Latency

Broadcast Box uses WebRTC for broadcast and playback. By using WebRTC instead of RTMP and HLS you get the fastest experience possible.

Latest in Video Compression

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.

Peer-to-Peer (if you need it)

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.

You could also use P2P to pull other broadcasters into your stream. No special configuration or servers required anymore to get sub-second costreams.

Setup

These instructions made it work for me.

• Run git clone https://github.com/RedMser/broadcast-box.git
• Apply .env.production changes
  • HTTP_ADDRESS is the TCP port to host website (this is done automatically by the go server, so no need to host it yourself)
  • Add UDP_MUX_PORT - it is the UDP port to handle WebRTC stuff properly (not sure if it can be the same as HTTP_ADDRESS)
  • Add INCLUDE_PUBLIC_IP_IN_NAT_1_TO_1_IP=yes
  • Should likely set up SSL as well, since /publish won't work without it
• Run APP_ENV=production go run . (this needs go set up, I had go version go1.20.2 windows/amd64) - this also builds the application if needed

Usage

• Via OBS: Stream onto http(s)://<your ip><value of HTTP_ADDRESS>/api/whip
• Via browser: Open http(s)://<your ip><value of HTTP_ADDRESS>/publish<stream key>
• Watch a stream in browser via http(s)://<your ip><value of HTTP_ADDRESS>/<stream key>
• Leave out stream key to get an overview page instead

Neat Features

• When watching a stream, move your mouse to the top left corner to select from other streams
• Stream keys with numbers in them are intentionally hidden, so that's an easy way to have some privacy

Running

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 plain HTML/JS and connects to the Go backend.

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.

Installing Dependencies

Go dependencies are automatically installed.

Configuring

Go uses .env files for configuration. For development .env.development is used and in production .env.production is used.

Setting APP_ENV will cause .env.production to be loaded. Otherwise, .env.development is used.

Local Development

To run the Go server with frontend, 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 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.

Production

For production usage Go will serve 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 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.

Docker (Outdated)

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.

You can also run it in docker-compose with the following

broadcast-box:
  environment:
  - INCLUDE_PUBLIC_IP_IN_NAT_1_TO_1_IP=yes
  image: broadcast-box
  hostname: broadcast-box
  container_name: broadcast-box
  network_mode: "host"
  privileged: true

The command to upload the image to Dockerhub is docker buildx build --platform=linux/amd64,linux/arm64 --push -t seaduboi/broadcast-box:latest .

Design

The backend exposes following 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 - JSON array of current connections.
• /api/sse - Internal API.
• /api/layer - Internal API.