Low Latency Live

Reducing latency in livestreams is a challenge that numerous Brightcove customers and others in the market strive to address. Consumers expect near-instantaneous streaming, but providing that is getting more and more complex.

Several industries like sports, arts, live performance and others are introducing interactive elements to attract, retain, and further engage audiences. However, this requires reduced latency streaming to facilitate these experiences.

As part of a series of recent enhancements, Brightcove provides low-latency, near-real-time streaming with delays reduced to approximately 5–10 seconds. These enhancements are supported in the following Brightcove player versions:

• Brightcove Player (web) release 6.62.0 and newer
• Native SDK for iOS release 6.10.3 and newer
• Native SDK for Android release 7.0.1 and newer

There are numerous factors that determine whether a low-latency feed can be delivered (encoder, viewer bandwidth, etc.). Brightcove addresses the unpredictability of low latency streaming by falling back to a regular or standard latency stream if there are disruptions. In addition to Brightcove’s low latency capabilities, Brightcove also offers support and best practices for improving the quality of livestreams in its support materials and documentation.

Further documentation and other materials is available on our support site, as well as more information regarding requirements for low latency source encoder setup:

• 30 frames per second, drop frame rate is not supported (29.97)
• Codec: H264
• Profile: Baseline

It's important to note that there are specific limitations not supported with livestreams using reduced latency:

• DRM
• SSAI
• Multi-language audio tracks
• Redundancy
• B-frames on the output

For more information regarding low latency, steps to set up, or inquiries about enabling low latency on your Brightcove account, contact us or reach out to your Brightcove Account Manager.