Thanks for all the interest in the proposal!
We’ve grouped together all the questions from the forum and discord and posted them with replies below to keep the discussion organized.
Q&A
- @Authority_Null asks “What separates this from livepeer studio for the end user?”
Livepeer Studio is one of many great media engines that individuals use to broadcast streams. While there has been great progress with Studio, it requires users to learn a new tool and migrate their existing workflow. By integrating additional media servers, users don’t need to learn a new tool or change their approach. As a result, we are bringing Livepeer to them and opening up new distribution channels into Livepeer. This latter point also drives client diversity in Livepeer that will strengthen the network.
- @thomshutt | Livepeer asks
"This is awesome, my main comment would be that each of:
- Livepeer Integrations with Widely Adopted Media Servers
- Clear and Easy documentation for a go-livepeer Broadcaster
- Introduce the “Public” Livepeer Cloud Broadcaster
could each be their own project, which might make the scoping a bit more manageable"
While each milestone has been designed to be discretely understood, they work together as a whole. We want to reduce barriers to adoption and increase the available distribution channels bringing content to Livepeer. If we integrate Livepeer into these media servers without the Public Cloud Broadcaser, the integrations will require additional effort and complexity to setup a Broadcaster, wallets, and so on. > The reverse scenario is the current status quo where no direct integration exists with these media engines. The end result is a partial solution that only transcodes files and leaves the media engine user to manage the rest of the process (download segments and serve them). By combining all the scope together, we are enabling the Livepeer community along with the SPE team to commit to an end-to-end solution with a streamlined UX that works out of the box. This streamlined experience eliminates all the aforementioned complexities to quickly bring these tools and their commnunities to Livepeer.
- @Strykar asks
"Very interesting and would fill a much needed gap in broadcaster adoption.
Two questions:
Does this need to be an SPE, why not just a grant or a series of grants to see this to fruition?"
See Response to Question #2
“Why Owncast and not Mist?”
In regards to Owncast vs Mist, we are not looking to exlucde any media server in the long term. Mist currently is the engine within Studio and so an integration exists today. Additioanly, Owncast is a lightweight and easy to use offering. Combined with Studio, these capabilities enable Livepeer to boast various options depending on the user. More directly, Livepeer will be able to offer a robust, scaleable soltion with Studio and a more personal solution with Owncast. With regards to other media engines, this SPE team is interested in future integrations under additional proposals.
“could each be their own project, which might make the scoping a bit more manageable”
See Response to Question #2
In addition to our response, @stronk says “Not to speak for them, but MistServer already has Livepeer support and Catalyst makes it easy to deploy a MistServer-based stack. People who are running MistServer directly can plug in their Studio API key or point to their own B’s and get started with transcoding. The Mist team will also come out with our own docker and cloud images (so that people can easily deploy to IE AWS). Heck, we’re working on an entire custom Linux OS finetuned for media workflows with a customer (we’ve got a box in the office with SDI I/O and a Intel Arc GPU for transcoding with the OS installed to test with). This grant would be an excellent supplement to cover more bases, though! There are tons of media servers out there which deserve access to cheap transcoding”
- @hthillman | livepeer asks
“How do you plan to generate demand? Is the idea that if the capability exists people will use it, or do you plan to evangelize this somehow?”
As mentioned above, we believe in bringing Livepeer to the users and enabling them to use their native tools. This gives communities outside Livepeer an opportunity to use Livepeer without the need for any migration or capital investment. As part of our work, we wil be engaging the Owncast community to raise awareness, encourage usage, and adopt our integration as an available default in their distributions. These activities will offer valuable insights into additional features to increase adoption and eliminate barriers.
There were several new discussions in discord in the last hour which I will summarize and add here shortly.