Chris co-founded the open source Red5 project, where he and his team of volunteers were the first to reverse engineer Adobe’s RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol).

With the demise of Flash based streaming he and his team modernized the platform and launched Red5 Pro in 2015 where they focus on providing a platform for real-time latency video streaming over WebRTC at scale.

Today Red5 Pro powers hundreds of interactive streaming use cases for enterprises including Sony, Accenture, Amazon, and NVIDIA.

Chris and Alan will talk about Red5 and where the market is going. Topics include:

• What is Red5, and what products do you offer?
• How do you monetize Red5 open-source solutions?
• What is the difference between Red5 Pro and Red5 Cloud?
• Why do customers choose Red5?
• What are your top use cases and why?
• How is Red5 different from other live streaming providers such as Wowza, Agora, Ant Media Server, and Dolby Optiview?

Introduction

Chris and I had a fun conversation, we know many of the same people, including Dan Jenkins, founder and CEO of Everycast Labs, here’s the interview we did last year with Dan. I opened by asking Chris to introduce Red5. They are known for real-time video streaming. They have a platform that enables developers to create real time streaming applications. Across individuals, start-ups, enterprises of all sizes, as well as government and defense / security.

Their core products are:

• Red5 open source project;
• Red5 Pro (on prem or on your own cloud);
• Red5 Cloud *hosted / SaaS model); and
• Red5 SDKs (create client-side apps).

Making money on open source depends on the stage of the market and the company giving the software away. Initially the consultancy around the open source project (back in the Flash streaming days) was good, so they left their jobs. When flash streaming closed down, there was a broad ecosystem of real time streaming applications. All suffering with HLS/DASH, HLS (HTTP Live Streaming, Apple) and DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP, MPEG), see video below for a comparison.

Betting on WebRTC and leaning on open source

They made the bet on WebRTC, which proved correct. And became Red5 Pro, which the addition of features, support, etc. Competitors started offer a SaaS model, like Dolby Milicast, so they followed suit with Red5 Cloud. Today there are competitors based on the Red5 open source project, like Ant Media.

The differences between Red5 Pro and Cloud from a technology perspective is zero. It’s all the operational issues in making it easy for the developer to focus elsewhere with Cloud. While with Pro, the developer can get into the details and create a service unique to them and their clients. Every developer is different.

We started talking about government accounts (defense / security). and how open source really helped them break into those accounts and meet their exacting requirements. I drew a comparison to Matrix and their success in the government / defense sector.

Chris highlight the security open source delivers, if the customer has the core, they’re not going to get cut-off. I’ve had many such conversations with clients on their open source strategy.

Flexibility and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Customers choose Red5 because of its flexibility, download the open source project and play, license, or have Red5 host and manage on your behalf. That first step of enabling developers to just get in and play for the software is critical. They use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which supports serverless, and fully managed platform for real-time event streaming. In my conversations users appreciate its ability to handle high-volume data streams, its Kafka compatibility, and robust security features.

Interestingly, Chris highlighted how OCI is highly competitive in some regions compared to the the other hyperscalers.

Uses Cases

We moved onto use cases. Chris highlighted how Red5 ingress and egress scale. So use cases include traffic monitoring, with applications like TrueTime MultiView that enables operators to interact with multiple live camera feeds. TrueTime MultiView allows users to dynamically switch between camera views without delays, enabling instant full-screen focus on any critical incident.

The use cases divide into security, where streams must be locked down, not available on the public internet, rather running on GovCloud (often AWS or Azure). And entertainment, sports streaming and betting, which is exploding. Chris highlights how Red5 recently bought Fan engagement startup Dale, to expand its LatAm market offer in sports.

Other use cases include shopping channels from influencers. A behind the scenes production use case includes real-time advertising.

Chris highlights the blurring of video between social media and traditional shopping channels. The audience figures are vastly great with social media shopping. Amateur sports commentary can be is vastly better than traditional broadcast, without the traditional corporate content filters.

I moved on to ask Chris Red5 differentiates from the competitors. Red5 flexibility and open source project to create converts is the core. You can watch the video from 17 minutes to see the details.

The Future: MoQ and AI

We moved to discuss the evolution of the industry, and how OpenMoQ (Media over Quic) is gaining mind share.

I then asked about what Red5 is doing on AI. Application areas include: detection in security use cases (fire), content moderation. They’re building a video collaboration app, where AI provides the transcription service, using the parakeet model from Nvidia. Below is Chris at RTC.on talking about their work in AI.