3 Reasons You Need Real Time Video Software

Slow Engine – Slow Product.

Running an application with high latency is like putting a moped engine in a race-car. No matter how well the body is built, it will be going all but nowhere. The effort required to overcome inferior building materials will be costly and time-consuming. Even worse, it just won’t work as well as it could, no matter how well designed.

Unfortunately, putting a lot of work into something doesn’t automatically make it a good product.

When it comes to live-streaming, the inside of application is what matters most. You wouldn’t build a new home out of rotting wood, so why use a media streaming platform with high latency?

Bad UX – Bad Profits

The essential cornerstone of a good live-streaming experience begins with the latency. The video quality can look great, but if the signal takes too long to travel from the broadcaster to the subscriber, it makes for jilted interviews, spoiler-laden sports, and an overall bad UX.

88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience. [source]

Of course, it’s no secret that with bad UX, comes even worse things. Higher bounce rates, increased demand on the customer support team and a decrease in user engagement; all inevitably result in a lower revenue stream. Nobody wants that.

Let’s say you have a site where you can control a robotic car. There’s a live-stream coming from a camera on the robot so you can see where you are guiding it. Unfortunately, when you issue a command to the robot it takes seconds to receive the command. You click the button to make it turn right and then it just sits there staring blankly ahead until it finally jolts to the right. Not a great user experience, not to mention an impractical way to guide a car. No user is going to stick around getting bored.

No matter how great the network, or how powerful the device, if you are using software that can’t send out the stream fast enough, it is never going to get there on time. Latency is the main driver of speed.

You know you are going to put a good amount of work into your project, so why would you want to waste it all by building on top of software that isn’t going to work effectively?

Fast App – Fast Profits

Let’s go back to the robotic car example. Instead of seconds long latency where your users sit and wait, if you had low latency the robots would respond to input almost immediately. No waiting around and losing interest. With near real-time latency, you could even have users race each other. A much more exciting experience that would help your app to grow.

Luckily for you, our team has spent a lot of time building a scalable, live-streaming solution with under 500ms of latency to make it easy for you. Not only is what we’ve created fast, but it’s also completely customizable so that it can be integrated into an existing application.

So go ahead and rip out that tiny little streaming engine and hook up Red5 Pro to jump start your live-streaming. Not sure if Red5 Pro can fuel your application properly? Give us a call and we can discuss your specifications.