Video streaming solution - lighttpd or wowza?
 

I need a video streaming solution for a paysite. Customers will be able to download videos so I don't think I need some hardcore protection of the videos preventing downloading the stream. The paysite will be run on Wordpress. What are the advantages of Wowza vs LightTPD?

Almost any server can do this. Unless you mean live streaming.

No live streaming, just prerecorded videos. Are there any advantages of Wowza vs Lighttpd ? Speed maybe?

Wowza will save you around 20-30% bandwidth and let users skip around your videos a bit better.

Thanks! I am also looking for someone who can set it up for me. Any suggestions?

That's a bold statement.

Let's see some details on how Wowza saves 20-30% bandwidth.

Imagine you have a 10mbyte video file that is 3 minutes long and a guy on a 10mbit connection. For the sake of simplicity, lets say he can download at 1mbyte/second. This is slightly inaccurate but I don't feel like busting out the proper math :1orglaugh. Not ever user watches every second of every video they watch.

Via http, this guy loads up this video on your site and it downloads in approximately 10 seconds. While it's three minutes long, he might decide to go watch another video instead after 15 seconds. He's downloaded 3 minutes of video but watched 15 seconds of it.

Via RTMP, this guy loads up this video on your site and it's "real streaming". If he watches 15 seconds of it, he downloads more or less 15 seconds of it.

So in a nutshell, with rtmp you waste less bandwidth. The http problem can be mitigated by throttling each user connection to just over the amount of kbytes/sec it takes to stream the video without stopping to buffer all the time, but in the real world on say a tube site you have tons of varying bitrates so there's no good way to optimize this.

Right but that's not a Wowza exclusive feature. But I get what you are saying that it would save bandwidth.

yeah it's not a wowza specific feature - it's true of any http vs any rtmp comparison.

Wowza = Not free / Full streaming solution
Lighttpd = Free / Pseudo streaming

There are also Nginx plugins:

https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module

lighttpd can do all that video streaming shit and save bandwidth if it's configured properly

It's handled 600 mbit consistently (not streaming flvs though) on some old boxes.

you can accomplish rtmp like bit rate streaming limitations if you know your bitrate your videos are encoded at and set the throttle/rate limit per connection based on that bit rate thats encoded. This isn't rocket science.

Now saying that. Wowza/Abobe FMS is hell on disk IO vs a progressive download.

Nginx/lighttpd can be ran on fast disks and atom servers..


Wowza/FMS requires a bit more processing power and memory and is better suited on a quad or dual quad with ample ram.

It really comes down to what "perks" you want to accomplish, any of the modules/bw check, swf tokens etc? then wowza/FMS is your way ot go. If you just don't care and want to be cheap? lighttpd/nginx works fine.

Wowza is great!

Does it mean lighttpd is enough for a small paysite ? Apart from bandwidth any other advantages of Wowza?

I tried Wowza a couple of years ago and honestly it sucked.

As a video streaming platform it worked fine until I wanted to put the videos inside my member section and keep them protected. I could never get an answer on how to do it. short of the wowza support people telling me I had to write "custom code"

fuck that I dont know if version 3 has made that easier but version 2 was given back to them.

If it is behind a members area or if your server is fully managed and your hosting company can set it up for you (mine couldnt) I would avoid it.

if no livestreaming wowza is meaningless

What solution would you recommend then?

unless you need live streaming Id say lighttpd would suit you just fine. if its a small site bandwidth probably isnt an issue anyway.

Medium term I would be looking at MPEG-DASH but you wont need a media server for that because apache can do it although Id bet lighttpd will also support it. When it becomes readily available it will solve LOTS of problems.

Advantages:

encode once play on anything

adaptive streaming

streams in segements that are not stored so much simpler to protect your streams from being ripped. plus simple to insert ads between segments

streams over HTTP and allows future and past seeking

supported by adobe, microsoft, apple, sony, netflix, wowza and most everyone else except google.

Standardized.

Im watching it closely

I guess I will go with lightpd then. How difficult is to set it up on the website? I have lighttpd installed by my host already but I don't know how to make it work with JWplayer.