OvenMediaLabs/OvenMediaEngine

OvenMediaEngine is a sub-second latency live streaming server that delivers large-scale, high-definition streams over Low Latency HLS and WebRTC to hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers.

The tool addresses the challenge of delivering live video with minimal delay while maintaining quality and scale. It ingests streams through multiple protocols including WebRTC, SRT, RTMP, RTSP, and MPEG2-TS, then applies an embedded live transcoder to encode content into adaptive bitrate variants. Viewers receive streams via LLHLS or WebRTC, with WebRTC delivery achieving sub-second latency through techniques like NACK-based retransmission and forward error correction. The server includes an embedded TURN server to handle WebRTC over TCP and a WebSocket-based signalling server for connection negotiation.

It suits large-scale deployments through its clustering architecture with origin-edge structure and monitoring capabilities. The project supports Docker deployment and runs on Ubuntu, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, and Fedora, making it accessible for various infrastructure setups. For organizations already invested in HLS workflows, the LLHLS support provides a lower-latency alternative without abandoning the protocol entirely.

The project maintains active development with regular updates to its codebase and documentation. The team actively develops new features across multiple protocol support areas and encoding options. The project sustains a public demo service and provides comprehensive documentation including quick-start guides and API references. Development activity spans both core streaming functionality and operational features like admission webhooks, file recording, and access control mechanisms.