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WebRTC

Beta

Sub-second latency live streaming (using WHIP) and playback (using WHEP) to unlimited concurrent viewers.

WebRTC is ideal for when you need live video to playback in near real-time, such as:

  • When the outcome of a live event is time-sensitive (live sports, financial news)
  • When viewers interact with the live stream (live Q&A, auctions, etc.)
  • When you want your end users to be able to easily go live or create their own video content, from a web browser or native app

Step 1: Create a live input

Use the Stream Dashboard ↗, or make a POST request to the /live_inputs API endpoint

API response from a POST request to /live_inputs
{
  "uid": "1a553f11a88915d093d45eda660d2f8c",
 ...
  "webRTC": {
    "url": "https://customer-<CODE>.cloudflarestream.com/<SECRET>/webRTC/publish"
  },
  "webRTCPlayback": {
    "url": "https://customer-<CODE>.cloudflarestream.com/<INPUT_UID>/webRTC/play"
  },
...
}

Step 2: Go live using WHIP

Every live input has a unique URL that one creator can be stream to. This URL should only be shared with the creator — anyone with this URL has the ability to stream live video to this live input.

Copy the URL from the webRTC key in the API response (see above), or directly from the Cloudflare Dashboard ↗.

Paste this URL into the provided WHIP example code ↗.

Simplified example code
// Add a <video> element to the HTML page this code runs in:
// <video id="input-video" autoplay muted></video>


import WHIPClient from "./WHIPClient.js"; // an example WHIP client, see https://github.com/cloudflare/workers-sdk/blob/main/templates/stream/webrtc/src/WHIPClient.ts


const url = "<WEBRTC_URL_FROM_YOUR_LIVE_INPUT>"; // add the webRTC URL from your live input here
const videoElement = document.getElementById("input-video");
const client = new WHIPClient(url, videoElement);

Once the creator grants permission to their camera and microphone, live video and audio will automatically start being streamed to Cloudflare, using WebRTC.

You can also use this URL with any client that supports the WebRTC-HTTP ingestion protocol (WHIP) ↗. See supported WHIP clients for a list of clients we have tested and confirmed compatibility with Cloudflare Stream.

Step 3: Play live video using WHEP

Copy the URL from the webRTCPlayback key in the API response (see above), or directly from the Cloudflare Dashboard ↗. There are no limits on the number of concurrent viewers.

Paste this URL into the provided WHEP example code ↗.

Simplified example code
// Add a <video> element to the HTML page this code runs in:
// <video id="output-video" autoplay muted></video>


import WHEPClient from "./WHEPClient.js"; // an example WHEP client, see https://github.com/cloudflare/workers-sdk/blob/main/templates/stream/webrtc/src/WHEPClient.ts


const url = "<WEBRTC_URL_FROM_YOUR_LIVE_INPUT>"; // add the webRTCPlayback URL from your live input here
const videoElement = document.getElementById("output-video");
const client = new WHEPClient(url, videoElement);

As long as the creator is actively streaming, viewers should see their broadcast in their browser, with less than 1 second of latency.

You can also use this URL with any client that supports the WebRTC-HTTP egress protocol (WHEP) ↗. See supported WHEP clients for a list of clients we have tested and confirmed compatibility with Cloudflare Stream.

Using WebRTC in native apps

If you are building a native app, the example code above can run within a WkWebView (iOS) ↗, WebView (Android) ↗ or using react-native-webrtc ↗. If you need to use WebRTC without a webview, you can use Google's Java and Objective-C native implementations of WebRTC APIs ↗.

Debugging WebRTC

  • Chrome: Navigate to chrome://webrtc-internals to view detailed logs and graphs.
  • Firefox: Navigate to about:webrtc to view information about WebRTC sessions, similar to Chrome.
  • Safari: To enable WebRTC logs, from the inspector, open the settings tab (cogwheel icon), and set WebRTC logging to "Verbose" in the dropdown menu.

Supported WHIP and WHEP clients

Beyond the example WHIP client ↗ and example WHEP client ↗ used in the examples above, we have tested and confirmed that the following clients are compatible with Cloudflare Stream:

WHIP

WHEP

As more WHIP and WHEP clients are published, we are committed to supporting them and being fully compliant with the both protocols.

Supported codecs

  • VP9 ↗ (recommended for highest quality)
  • VP8 ↗
  • h264 ↗ (Constrained Baseline Profile Level 3.1, referred to as 42e01f in the SDP offer's profile-level-id parameter.)

Conformance with WHIP and WHEP specifications

Cloudflare Stream fully supports all aspects of the WHIP ↗ and WHEP ↗ specifications, including:

You can find the specific version of WHIP and WHEP being used in the protocol-version header in WHIP and WHEP API responses. The value of this header references the IETF draft slug for each protocol. Currently, Stream uses draft-ietf-wish-whip-06 (expected to be the final WHIP draft revision) and draft-murillo-whep-01 (the most current WHEP draft).

Limitations while in beta

  • Recording is not yet supported (coming soon)
  • Simulcasting (restreaming) is not yet supported (coming soon)
  • Live viewer counts are not yet supported (coming soon)
  • Analytics are not yet supported (coming soon)
  • WHIP and WHEP must be used together — we do not yet support streaming using RTMP/SRT and playing using WHEP, or streaming using WHIP and playing using HLS or DASH. (coming soon)
  • Once generally available, WebRTC streaming will be priced just like the rest of Cloudflare Stream, based on minutes stored and minutes of video delivered.
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