Chalkstream is an open source, self-hosted live streaming "server" that runs on serverless edge functions. You can stream right from the browser, with a public link to share with your friends. It uses Netlify Edge Functions to ingest and serve HLS streams, and the chunks are stored in Netlify Blobs. Control your own data.
HLS is a streaming protocol created by Apple that doesn't require a special server to stream. It works by splitting the video into small chunks, and serving them in a playlist. Chalkstream does this encoding in the browser using a WebAssembly build of FFmpeg. This is a lot quicker if your browser natively supports H.264 (most except Firefox). Otherwise your computer needs to be quite fast if it is to handle real-time encoding. The chunks are then uploaded to Netlify Blobs. Netlify Edge Functions handle the ingest and generating the dynamic playlist.
When you load the broadcast page it generates a random stream ID, and once you start streaming you can share a page with the live stream. HLS streams can be played in any modern browser, either natively or via Media Source Extensions and Hls.js. Players such as Video.js and react-player make this easy - see the demo sites for examples.
This template is an Astro site, with a streaming page and a playback page. There is no authentication. Anyone with the link can stream to the site, and anyone with the link can watch the stream. You can set up your own access control, or use the Netlify Identity widget to add authentication: see the Netlify docs for more information on enabling identity, then see the Chalkstream docs for details on adding auth to the streams.
The easiest way to deploy is to click the "Deploy to Netlify" button above. Otherwise clone this repo and then locally use the Netlify CLI to deploy.
To run the site locally, you'll need to install the Netlify CLI:
npm install -g netlify-cliThen run the following commands:
netlify devThis runs the Astro dev server, as well as the local Netlify edge functions and blob store server.
Copyright Matt Kane 2023. Chalkstream is released under the MIT license.