Transcoder Campaign: Captain Stronk

Captain Stronk: the Orchestrator with community values and a mission to make the Livepeer network the more robust


:wrench:   In need of open source contributions?
:globe_with_meridians:   Looking for a global high performing orchestrator?
:chart_with_upwards_trend:   On the hunt for low commission rates?
:rocket:   Captain Stronk comes to the rescue!


Stake with Captain Stronk


About Stronk

Hi! I’m a full stack video engineer at OptiMist Video. My main responsibility is working on MistServer, an open source, full-featured, next-generation streaming media toolkit
Besides running this Orchestrator I have a passion for making music, maxing out my level on Steam and cuddling with my cats on the couch

Why stake with Captain Stronk?

  • We have been active since December, 2021 and have never missed a reward call
  • To support our contributions to the Livepeer ecosystem
  • We have a professional setup with monitoring, alerts and high uptime. We have consistently been in the top 10 performers and will scale operations as needed to keep it that way
  • Our goal is to run at a 8% reward and 30% fee cut. This way our delegators will have high returns, while ensuring we earn enough revenue to fund our operations and community contributions. We will lower our reward commission over time, as our stake increases

:rocket: In short: we are setting a gold standard in terms of reliability and performance and set an example of how orchestrators can contribute back to the Livepeer ecosystem


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Our setup

We are located in Leiden, with a dedicated Livepeer machine and gigabit up/down connection. We are also cooperating with other high performing orchestrators to ensure high availability across the globe while keeping our costs as low as possible.

We have the following GPU’s connected and ready to transcode 24/7:
1x GTX 1070     @ Boston
1x RTX 3080      @ Las Vegas
3x GTX 1070Ti   @ Leiden
1x Tesla T4         @ Singapore

:bulb: Tip: You can visit our public Grafana page for advanced insights


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Published Projects

As a part of our mission to make the Livepeer network more robust, we are maintaining the following projects

:wrench: Tip: Feel free to request custom development work if you have have need of something which can benefit the Livepeer network as a whole

Orchestrator API and supplementary explorer - link

Useful data indexing tool which provides information on events happening on Livepeers smart contracts. The API aggregates data from the Livepeer subgraph, blockchain data, smart contract events and more. This data gets cached so that, even if one of these data sources has issues, the API can always return the latest known info without interruption to service.

:construction: Status: Prototype has been running for over a year now. A major refactor is currently in progress, as well as a redesign of the frontend.
The new version will be implemented generically (extensible to other projects than just Livepeer) as well as buffering the state over time (allowing getting the state at a specific point in time)

Stronk Broadcaster - preview

We are working on turning our Livepeer machines into a CDN and provide a simple website where users can trial the Livepeer network. The website allows visitors to stream into the network from the browser and view and share these streams with anyone. It includes basic statistics, like the delay of the transcoded video tracks versus the source track

:construction: Status: Global ingest and delivery of live media is enabled. Side-by-side comparison of WebRTC being streamed from the browser versus what the viewers receive is also functional. Next up: Enable streaming through a canvas to enable overlaying video tracks and adding overlays (or other custom artwork)

Dune Livepeer Dashboard - link

Provides statistics on events happening on Livepeers smart contracts

:ballot_box_with_check: Status: Finished, exploring new stats to add

Orchestrator Linux setup guide - link

Solves the knowledge gap of Windows users who want to improve their setup by running their Orchestrator operations on a Linux machine

:construction: Status: First public release. We have received plenty of feedback from orchestrators in order to cover more information

Orchestrator Discovery Tracker - preview

Pretend Broadcaster which does discovery checks to all active Orchestrators and makes the response times publicly available. These are the same requests a go-livepeer Broadcaster makes when populating their list of viable Orchestrators

:raised_hand: Status: Prerelease. On hold while we work on above projects


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Shoutouts

The Livepeer network has an awesome community of Orchestrators. In case you are not convinced of staking with Captain Stronk yet, the following Orchestrators are also a good spot to stake your LPT:

titan-node.eth: the face of Livepeer and also a public transcoding pool. Hosts a weekly water cooler chat in the Livepeer Discord to talk Livepeer, Web3 or tech in general
video-miner.eth: transcoding pool run by a group of Orchestrators (including myself)
xeenon.eth: a web3 media platform and promising new broadcaster on the network

6 Likes

Stonk is stronk. Stake with stronk :handshake:

1 Like
Update: progress report on the Stronk Broadcaster project

Besides global transcoding using our hosted Orchestrators and Transcoders, captain-stronk.eth is now capable of global ingest and delivery of live media.


Up next

Create a webpage to manage streams, stream into the network using WebRTC and view statistics

4 Likes

Update to the Stronk Broadcaster project


A few weeks ago the Stronk Broadcaster experiment was established. A CDN powered by MistServer combined with Livepeer nodes to enable low latency livestreaming from the browser

Powered by the broadcast-in-browser component of StreamCrafter, a new project from the OptiMist Video team (the maintainers of MistServer), you can now visit a prototype to ‘craft’ livestreams from the browser

Disclaimer: This is a very early release, so expect some unfinished UI elements or instability. The supporting infrastructure is rolled out on a small scale and can only support a small load of streams and viewers
Note that switching to another tab during a broadcast can cause the browser to pause the broadcast to save resources

Features Included

  • Input
    • Camera + microphone
    • ScreenShare + audio
  • Edit
    • Processing input tracks into a new stream (size, position, opacity)
  • Output
    • Broadcasting using WebRTC to the Stronk CDN
  • View
    • Share a link to your stream

Short Term Roadmap

  • UI upgrades
  • Input
    • Camera modes: facing, environment
    • images/gifs
  • Edit:
    • add overlays or logos
    • simple free hand drawing
  • Output
    • Ingesting as MKV via HTTP Put requests
    • Streaming to custom targets (rather than just my CDN)
    • Record to local file

Long Term Roadmap

  • More UI upgrades
  • Mobile compatible UI
  • Input:
    • Other live streams
    • Tracks emitted from WebRTC peers
  • Edit:
    • Generate audio effects

Other areas being researched

  • web3 integration: login with metamask, dstorage, dcdn
  • supporting a VoD workflow rather than live only
  • add (local) audio clippings as a (loopable) input source
  • transcode audio between eg opus/aac before broadcasting
  • Using low-level WebCodecs API to support more inputs and outputs

If there are any feature requests, feedback, ideas or questions on how this all works, ask away on Discord or this Forum post

3 Likes

Introducing the latest expansion of the renowned Stronk operation! We are excited to share our latest venture: operating a hive of Swarm Bees

Our integrated stack combines the strengths of MistServer (CDN, Ingest), Livepeer (Transcoding), Swarm (Storage, Messaging), and an innovative browser-based broadcaster.

Stake to captain-stronk.eth and support us on an exciting journey as we merge cutting-edge technologies and explore the potential of this groundbreaking combination. Together, they create an unparalleled ‘Media Gateway’ that will redefine the future of media experiences.

1 Like