LivePeer

Livepeer is a decentralized live streaming broadcast platform. This repo is a proof-of-concept spike built on top of Swarm and go-ethereum developed by the Ethereum Foundation.

Building and running this node allows you to:

• Create a local Livepeer Network, or join the existing Livepeer POC network.
• Broadcast a live stream into the network.
• Request that your stream be transcoded into multiple formats.
• Consume a live stream from the network.

NOTE: The current working node is accessible at the go-livepeer repo. This is a proof of concept built on Swarm. We intend to bridge the browser, mobile, and native Swarm nodes together within the Livepeer network.

For full documentation and a project overview, check out the Livepeer Documentation

Installation

The Livepeer POC requires ffmpeg. On OSX:

brew install ffmpeg --with-ffplay

or on Debian based Linux

apt-get install ffmpeg

If you have never set up your Go programming environment, do so according to Go's Getting Started Guide.

Now fetch and build the livepeer node using go.

go get github.com/livepeer/livepeer-swarm/cmd/livepeer

Setup

If you would like to simply connect to the Livepeer Toynet (test network with id=326326), no setup is necessary. Simply run the command:

livepeer

This will prompt you to create a new ethereum account, and unlock it with a password.

If you would like to control where the data for Livepeer is stored, and which account is used in each data directory (you may want to do this if you're running multiple nodes), then use geth from go-ethereum to create a new account in a new directory:

(To build geth if you don't have it installed run go install ./vendor/github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/cmd/geth)

geth --datadir <datadir> account new

Copy the output account address, perhaps into an environment variable $BZZKEY. You can then use this when you start livepeer

livepeer --bzzaccount $BZZKEY --datadir <datadir>

By default this should connect you to the Livepeer POC network. For detailed instructions on all the options you can pass, refer to the following section.

Detailed setup including running a private network

Since this spike runs on top of Swarm and an Ethereum node, you'll need to do a little ethereum setup to get a node running and initialize an account. Follow the instructions in the go-ethereum README for running a private network.

Usage

The simplest way to start Livepeer and connect to the test network is just by running:

livepeer

By default, starting Livepeer will launch an RTMP interface on port 1935. You can override this with the --rtmp option:

livepeer --rtmp 1937

or more control over the account, data directory, and network you connect to:

livepeer --bzzaccount $BZZKEY --datadir $DATADIR --lpnetworkid 412 --rtmp 1935

To run a second node, so that you can test streaming to one another, specify a new --port, --rtmp, --bzzport, --datadir, and --bzzaccount argument:

livepeer --bzzaccount $BZZKEY2 --datadir $DATADIR2 --port 30402 --lpnetworkid 412 --bzzport 8502 --rtmp 1936

Now that you have two nodes running, make sure they are talking to each other, then stream into one node and play from the other. You can stream a saved video using ffmpeg, For example:

ffmpeg -re -i bunny.mp4 -c copy -f flv rtmp://localhost:1935/movie

This will output the streamID to the console of node running on port 1935 (the default). Copy the streamID. And you can play from the second node (running on RTMP port 1936) using the livepeer command.

livepeer stream --rtmp 1936 <streamID>

To start a true livestream instead of playing a pre-recorded video, visit our web client or use a broadcasting platform such as OBS, and point the output at rtmp://localhost:1935/movie

You can also use the web interface to test out streaming. To do that, make sure you are runing livepeer in the livepeer-swarm directory, and visit http://localhost:8935/. It should redirect you to http://localhost:8935/static/broadcast.html. Make sure the http port is your rtmp port +7000.

Transcoding

Currently transcoding is an experimental feature. An HLS output stream is available with its own unique streamID, which is placed into the console output. Try

livepeer --hls stream <HLS streamID>

to consume the HLS transcoded stream. Standby for more updates on using the network to transcode into multiple formats and bitrates.

Metrics and monitoring

To look at a list of metrics, use the --metrics flag when starting swarm, and use geth monitor to monitor metrics. For example:

livepeer --bzzaccount $BZZKEY --datadir $DATADIR --ethapi $DATADIR/geth.ipc --verbosity 4 --maxpeers 3 --port 30402 --lpnetworkid 412 --rtmp 1935 --metrics

geth monitor --attach ipc:/Users/erictang/Sandbox/swarmdata1/bzzd.ipc livepeer/test livepeer/chunks/

It is also possible to run a network visualization server which will let you view the current state of your network for a given streamID. See the documentation at the streamingviz repository. To start a livepeer node that reports to the visualization server, add the --viz flag:

livepeer --bzzaccount $BZZKEY --datadir $DATADIR --ethapi $DATADIR/geth.ipc --lpnetworkid 412 --rtmp 1935 --viz

Additional functionality available through Swarm and Ethereum

Since this spike is built on top of Swarm and Ethereum, all the available functionality is exposed through this project. Please see the documentation at the go-ethereum repository

License information for livepeer-swarm and go-ethereum

This repo is largely based on a fork of the go-ethereum codebase. The license and author information is included in ./vendor/github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/.

The livepeer-swarm library (i.e. all code outside of the cmd directory) is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0, also included in our repository in the COPYING.LESSER file.

The livepeer-swarm binaries (i.e. all code inside of the cmd directory) is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0, also included in our repository in the COPYING file.