MPEG-TS vs. fMP4? about owncast HOT 3 CLOSED

Some old documentation in the ffmpeg wiki, with broken links, seems to point that maybe there's a benefit?

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/StreamingGuide#Codecs

The most popular streaming codec is probably ​libx264, though if you're streaming to a device which requires a "crippled" baseline h264 implementation, you can use the x264 "baseline" profile. Some have have argued that the mp4 video codec is ​better than x264 baseline, because it encodes about as well with less cpu. You may be able to use other codecs, like mpeg2video, or really any other video codec you want, typically, as long as your receiver can decode it, if it suits your needs.

Also note that encoding it to the x264 "baseline" is basically a "compatibility mode" for older iOS devices or the like, see ​here.

The mpeg4 video codec sometimes also comes "within a few percentage" of the compression of x264 "normal settings", but uses much less cpu to do the encoding. See ​http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=631&hilit=mpeg4+libx264+cores&start=10#p2163 for some graphs (which may be slightly outdated). Basically in that particular test it was 54 fps to 58 fps (libx264 faster), and libx264 file was 5.1MB and mpeg4 was 6MB, but mpeg4 used only half as much cpu for its computation, so take it with a grain of salt.

from owncast.

fMP4 is required for the future Low Latency HLS spec. #28

from owncast.

Closing since I'm not tackling low latency HLS at the moment. Maybe some day.

from owncast.