Empowers Large-Scale Event Live Streaming With Millisecond-Level Cross-Continent Media Transmission

In today's interconnected world, live streaming of events on a global scale has become increasingly popular and essential. Audiences from all corners of the world can now enjoy real-time access to sports competitions, concerts, conferences, and other large-scale events through various online platforms.

For large-scale events, global live streaming has always been a significant challenge. In the live streaming process of large-scale events, organizers usually need to remotely transmit the audio and video signals collected at the event site to the production center, then go through secondary production, and finally process and distribute the media through the cloud to present the event to audiences worldwide. The stability and quality of the entire transmission link are crucial.

Challenges

However, in the live streaming scenario of events, we faces many challenges:

●Transmission stuttering: Network instability can easily cause packet loss, excessive delay, or jitter in transmission, leading to stuttering in streaming and playback.

●Packet loss in mobile environments: In 3G/4G/5G/WiFi environments, due to errors in the physical layer and link layer transmission, packet loss occurs at the transport layer, but this type of packet loss does not necessarily indicate congestion.

●Insufficient bandwidth or switching of a single network: A single 3G/4G/5G/WiFi network link may have insufficient bandwidth or jitter, or network switching may easily occur in mobile scenarios.

Tencent Cloud, based on years of experience in large-scale sports events live streaming, concert live streaming, and large-scale gaming esports events such as League of Legends, has integrated cutting-edge encoding kernel, stable and efficient media transmission technology, powerful and intelligent video AI, and large-scale streaming media system technology to build an integrated event live streaming solution from the video source collection end to the playback end, providing global ultra-low latency live streaming capabilities for events.

Enhancing Media Transmission Performance in All Aspects

Tencent Cloud StreamLink provides the ability to transmit audio and video data with low latency and stability across regions. Users can use StreamLink to achieve low-latency media transmission between two regions, solving the problem of low-latency and stable transmission from the site to the production center. It can stably control the cross-continent latency within 400ms.

1.Tencent Cloud TMIO Streaming Solution

In response to network fluctuations and insufficient bandwidth issues at the site collection end, Tencent Cloud StreamLink offers the TMIO SDK to optimize the streaming transmission quality from the terminal to the cloud.

2.Multi-Link Transmission

Tencent Cloud StreamLink introduces a multi-link transmission solution that can transmit simultaneously through multiple link layers, improving the overall end-to-end transmission reliability and quality, and further enhancing the upstream streaming and the final playback experience. The solution is based on the reliability, jitter resistance, and low-latency features of Tencent Cloud's SRT, implementing a transport layer multi-path transmission algorithm based on SRT bonding, and optimized for live streaming media scenarios.

At the same time, there is no need for complicated hardware deployment, and only multiple network cards are required on the sending end. Tencent Cloud StreamLink improves the transmission quality of the broadcaster's upstream through adaptive multi-path streaming.

In some practical scenarios, for important events with sufficient upstream multi-network bandwidth, the sender will select the best route based on QoS for data transmission. When the link experiences abnormalities or QoS fluctuations, the sender will dynamically adjust the route, switch the current data channel to the best-quality route, and proceed with the next stage of data transmission.

Alternatively, redundant transmission may be performed based on QoS conditions, and the server-side improves overall transmission stability and low latency through aggregation and deduplication. As network quality changes over time, the data channel will continuously switch based on real-time QoS.

On the other hand, for scenarios with insufficient bandwidth or jitter in a single network link, the sender will also perform multi-path transmission based on the QoS conditions of multiple channels.

At the same time, the sender adjusts the transmission path at the packet level, such as using shorter RTT routes for high-priority packets and retransmitted packets, to ensure the overall transmission quality is optimized.

3.Ultra-Low Latency Lossless Video Transmission

By utilizing the JPEGXS visual lossless compression algorithm and ST2110 transmission protocol standard, Tencent Cloud StreamLink can control the node transmission latency within approximately 80ms, which is about 1-2 frames.

Comprehensive scenarios

Global live streaming of sports events: The one-flow-multi-node capability provided can transmit live streams of sports events to all parts of the world with one click. The simple and easy-to-use console helps customers enhance the new experience of global live streaming.

Long-distance transmission of esports live events: Provides high-quality streaming media transmission delivery services for live esports events, helping customers to obtain a low-latency live streaming experience worldwide with simple operations.

Global live streaming of brand launch events: High-speed, large-scale, cross-regional transmission capabilities are very suitable for the global synchronous live streaming of brand launch events, with high stability, low packet loss rate, and low latency.

Global live streaming of large-scale concerts: In addition to its high-stability transmission capability, it supports primary and backup stream redundant transmission capabilities, thus having better disaster recovery characteristics, fully ensuring the stability of the global large-scale concert live stream.

Cases

Live Streaming of Esports Events

Tencent Cloud StreamLink has been serving TJ Sports for five consecutive years, providing technical support for the League Of Legends World Championship. Taking the S13 in 2023 as an example, StreamLink provided stable cross-region live streaming transmission support in two stages：

In the first stage, the live streaming of the competition was transmitted from the overseas event site to the Shanghai studio for processing.

In the second stage, the live streaming of the event was transmitted within the same region, from the studio to the cooperating broadcast platforms. With advanced technologies and seamless coordination, StreamLink ensured a smooth event and an exceptional live streaming experience for audiences.

Live Streaming of Large-scale Sports Events

Hangzhou Asian Games: Tencent Cloud StreamLink provided stable live streaming transmission services for Hong Kong Cable TV, transmitting the live streaming of the event from Hangzhou to the Hong Kong studio for processing/directing and playback. To learn more about the product and its features, please visit the product details page.

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