|
RTMP |
HTTP |
Port Number |
1935 |
80 |
Video Delivery |
RTMP server streams video bytes from any point of time according to client’s request. Good for long content video |
HTTP is designed to progressive download video |
Cache |
Video is stored at flash player’s memory |
Video is stored at web browser’s buffer before playback |
Video Codec Suggestions |
· Better use Constant Bit-rate (CBR) encoding; · Variable Bit-rate (VBR) encoded video might contain data spikes which can abruptly empty the flash player’s temporal cache and result in annoying pause-play-pause experience; |
Can safely use VBR encoding since video are progressively downloaded. Extreme data spikes might not impact during playback |
Firewall |
Firewalls might disable1935 port. RTMP takes two polices to deal with firewall: · If play video over port 1935 fails, RTMP over port 80 is used; · If port 80 still fails, RTMP packets are wrapped in HTTP packets; |
In default, almost all the firewalls allow HTTP connections over port 80 |
Video Access Control |
Most users can only watch video content. (Of course the hackers can steal any video stream.) RTMP is useful for companies distributing movies |
Users can fish the flash content out of the web browser cache |
Hosting |
Limited servers support RTMP services, e.g. RED5[1], FMS[2], Wowza[3], etc |
Any HTTP web server such as the widely used Apache[4] |
Cos t |
Data Transfer Cost |
Cost accounts only the streamed video |
Cost accounts since flash video starts to download to browser cache and continues to download even users are not watching |
Implementation Cost |
expensive |
cheap |
[1]http://www.red5.org/
[2]http://www.adobe.com
[3]http://www.wowza.com
[4]http://www.apache.org/