Nimble Streamer is a powerful and flexible media server that provides a wide range of features for live streaming. It can perform transmuxing to re-packaging content in real-time without changing it, and transcoding, which allows changing the content itself. The server is highly efficient and has a low resource consumption, making it one of the most efficient streaming servers on the market.
New: AMD Alveo™ U30 hardware acceleration support is now available in Nimble Live Transcoder
Nimble Streamer: Cost-Efficient Streaming Software read the spotlight article at Streaming Media to learn more about our approach to streaming efficiency.
Input protocols
The supported input protocols for live streaming in Nimble are as follows:
- RTMP and RTMPS for pulled and published streams
- SRT for Listen, Pull and Rendezvous modes
- NDI via Nimble Live Transcoder
- WebRTC WHIP ingest
- Zixi streaming ingest
- RIST for Listen and Pull modes
- RTSP for pulled and announced streams
- MPEG-TS for HTTP and UDP streams
- HLS for pulled streams
- Icecast and SHOUTcast
Hot swap capabilities like Emergency hot swap and Failover hot swap allow switching between source origin and substitute streams with no glitches or artifacts.
Enhanced interleaving compensation can be set up in case when your audio and video are unsynchronized.
Transmuxing
By default, Nimble Streamer performs transmuxing of content. This means re-packaging between protocols on-the-fly without changing the content.
The same core transmuxed all content from once set of protocols into other and avoids processing overhead.
Transcoding
Nimble Streamer Transcoder is a premium add-on that provides advanced filtering capabilities and supports a wide range of input and output codecs, including H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP8, VP9, and more. The server also provides support for a variety of output protocols, including ABR HLS, ABR MPEG-DASH, RTMP, RTMPS, SRT, RIST, RTSP, MPEG-TS, Icecast, and SLDP. Nimble Streamer provides DRM protection and server-side ads insertion through its Advertizer framework.
- Input video content codecs are H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP8, VP9, MPEG2 and MPEG4
- Input audio codec are AAC, MP3, MP2, Opus, Speex and PCM G.711 (a-law, μ-law).
- Output video codecs: H.264 and HEVC
- Output audio codecs: AAC and MP3
- Pass-through of original codecs may also be used
- Advanced filtering with FFmpeg filters allows transforming content in various ways. Some examples are changing the video resize, graphic overlays, picture-in-picture, key frames alignments, audio re-sampling etc.
- Decoding and encoding are done just once to avoid processing overhead.
- Several advantages over traditional FFmpeg command-line tool.
- Web UI provides easy-to-use drag-n-drop workflow to apply transcoding scenarios across various servers in a few clicks.
- AMD Alveo™ U30 hardware acceleration support.
- Intel® Quick Sync Video hardware and software support.
- NVidia® NVENC hardware acceleration support – check stress-testing of Tesla M60 GPU to see some benchmarks.
- NDI is available for input and output.
Transcoder documentation reference has links to all setup and configuration articles.
Output protocols
The supported output protocols for live streaming are highlighted below:
- ABR HLS with MP4, fragmented MP4 (fMP4), audio-only and MPEG2TS containers
- Apple Low Latency HLS is fully supported by Nimble Streamer for fMP4(CMAF) and audio-only containers
- ABR MPEG-DASH
- Read more about ABR setup for outgoing streams
- HTTP/2 can be used for HLS and MPEG-DASH live output in modern browsers
- SRT for Push (Caller), Listen and Rendezvous modes
- WebRTC WHEP playback
NEW: WebRTC adaptive bitrate WHEP is also supported. - Zixi streaming output
- RIST for Push and Listen modes
- RTMP and RTMPS for re-publish and playback
- NDI as Nimble Live Transcoder output
Synchronize NDI output with SEI metadata - SLDP for low latency live playback
- RTSP for playback and re-publish
- MPEG-TS via UDP and TCP, with multiple programs
- Icecast
YouTube recommends Nimble Streamer among approved encoders for YouTube Live streaming for RTMP and upcoming SRT ingest.
Output options
- DVR feature set allows recording incoming live streams and provide playback via HLS and MPEG-DASH.
- DVR HLS supports both HEVC (H.265) and AVC (H.264) codecs for fMP4 and MPEG2TS containers simultaneously.
- Playout: server playlist allows creating live streams from VOD files.
- RTMP and RTSP re-publishing allows streaming to edge servers for further transmuxing into protocols required by viewers.
- RTMP re-publishing also allows streaming to YouTube.
- Live streams can be re-transmitted within your delivery network.
- Generate thumbnails for output streams.
- SCTE-35 markers passthrough is supported for MPEG-TS, HLS and DASH.
- Subtitles in live streams: CEA-608, CEA-708 and DVB closed captioning formats are supported for forwarding.
- Convert DVB subtitles into WebVTT for HLS live streams using image recognition AI.
- DVB teletext can also be converted into WebVTT.
- Set up streams emergency substitution and failover fallback using seamless hot swap.
- If-Modified-Since header is supported for CDNs requests.
- Stream aliases are available for making flexible security settings and statistics.
- CDN-friendly streaming setup is available for outgoing HLS streams.
- Nimble Streamer can be used as an origin for peer-to-peer streaming. It has all necessary features for being the source.
- Forward SEI metadata via Live Transcoder
Supported codecs
Video:
- H.264 input and output is supported via all protocols
- H.265/HEVC input via RTSP, SRT, RIST and MPEG-TS with output via MPEG-DASH, RTSP, MPEG-TS, SRT, RIST and HLS
- AV1 input via RTMP, SRT, RIST and MPEG-TS with output via MPEG-DASH, RTMP and SRT.
AV1 can be delivered via WebRTC WHIP from Chrome browser and played via WebRTC WHEP in Chrome as well. - VP6 input and output via RTMP
- VP8 and VP9 input and output via RTSP
- VP8 and VP9 input via WebRTC
Audio:
- AAC input and output is supported via all protocols
- AC3 and E-AC3 input via MPEG-TS and RTSP, output via MPEG-TS, RTSP and HLS
- MP3 input and output via all protocols
- Speex input and output via RTMP
- Opus input and output via WebRTC
Read more about codecs supported in Nimble Streamer
Nimble DRM
Nimble Streamer DRM provides protection with digital rights management.
- Google Widevine for MPEG-DASH.
- Multi-key HLS can be protected using both Widevine and FairPlay.
Read Widevine DRM support for HLS article to learn more. - Microsoft Playready for MPEG-DASH.
- Apple FairPlay for HLS.
- Supports EZDRM, Axinom, Cloud DRM, BuyDRM KeyOS, castLabs DRMToday, PallyCon, Sigma DRM and Verimatrix VCAS CPIX providers.
- Supports Widevine Cloud Service with key rotation.
- CENC-powered MPEG-DASH and fMP4 HLS formats support DVR and VOD encryption.
- All encryption works for H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC.
Easy setup is described on Nimble Streamer DRM page.
Server-Side Ads Insertion (SSAI)
Nimble Advertizer server-side ads insertion (SSAI) framework allows performing dynamic ads insertion into your live streams.
- Pre-roll and mid-roll ads
- SCTE-35 markers support
- Custom business logic and Personalized ads
Currently HLS, RTMP, SLDP and Icecast output protocols are supported.
Read more on Advertizer page
Remote control via web service
Control your fleet of servers via WMSPanel web UI service. All settings are applied on-the-fly without streaming interruption. Same setting can be applied to multiple server instances in one click.
You may also use web APIs, native APIs and config files. See all configuration options.
WMSPanel reporting service allows aggregating stats from all servers and give your customers full picture of their content performance.
High performance
Nimble Streamer is the most efficient media server on the market and it has low resources consumption.
- Take a look at performance tuning basics to see basic approaches to best performance.
- Low latency live streaming example gives some insights as well.
- Also check example of utilizing 10Gbps bandwidth with single Nimble instance.
- You may create robust delivery networks by using load balancing techniques for spreading the load between several Nimble instances.
Paywall
Nimble Streamer is used for building secure content delivery networks.
- Hotlink protection, pay-per-view and geo blocking feature set is available for all output streams.
- HLS AES-128 encryption is available for HLS.
- HLS and MPEG-DASH output streams can use SSL protection to stream via HTTPS
Free trial of WMSPanel included