RTMP Streaming & Recording

Want to preserve your video call for posterity in a recording? Or live stream it out to millions of viewers on Twitch or YouTube or whatever gives you an RTMP ingest URL?

Turn on RTMP Streaming or Recording!

In 100ms, recording and streaming is usually achieved by having a bot join your room and stream what it sees and hears to a file (recording) or an RTMP ingest URL (streaming).

Types of Recordings

Apart from the RTMP stream and the browser recording, there is also a Server Recording, which can be turned on for the room.

- Server Recording

This is used for archival purposes and cannot be stopped by method calls from SDK. This can only be enabled/disabled from the dashboard. This represents that the room was set to be recorded when it was created and all sessions within it will always be recorded for archival by the server.

- Browser Recording

This is a normal recording that can be enabled/disabled using HMSSDK instance method startRTMPOrRecording with record property set to true.

RTMP Streaming & Recording

The topics covered in this doc are:

1. How to start streaming / recording.
2. How to stop streaming / recording.
3. How to check the current status for streaming / recording.
4. When to check the current status

Permissions

Can't let just anyone record and stream room audio and video. First, you need to create a role with the permissions to record and stream room.

You can check if you (local peer) have permission to record and stream room as follows -

const localPeer = await hmsInstance.getLocalPeer();

// Permissions are available on `HMSRole` object of Local Peer
const localPeerPermissions: HMSPermissions = localPeer.role?.permissions;

// Check if Local Peer has Room Recording Permission
const canRecord: boolean = localPeerPermissions?.browserRecording;

// Check if Local Peer has Room Streaming Permission
const canStream: boolean = localPeerPermissions?.rtmpStreaming;

Start Streaming / Recording

Let's understand the process by following steps:

import { HMSRTMPConfig } from '@100mslive/react-native-hms';

const roomJoinLink = 'https://...app.100ms.live/streaming/meeting...';

const recordingConfig = new HMSRTMPConfig({
    meetingURL: `${roomJoinLink}/viewer?token=beam_recording`,
    rtmpURLs: [],
    record: true
});

interface HMSRTMPConfig {
    meetingURL?: string;
    rtmpURLs?: string[];
    record: boolean;
    resolution?: HMSRtmpVideoResolution;
}

try {
    // Calling `startRTMPOrRecording` with config created in above step
    await hmsInstance.startRTMPOrRecording(recordingConfig);

    console.log('Start Recording Success');
} catch (error) {
    console.log('Start Recording Error: ', error);
}

Stop Streaming / Recording

You can use stopRtmpAndRecording method available on HMSSDK instance to stop the RTMP Streaming and Recording.

Make sure you have above mentioned permissions for stopping RTMP streaming and recording.

try {
    await hmsInstance.stopRtmpAndRecording();

    console.log('Stop Recording Success');
} catch (error) {
    console.log('Stop Recording Error: ', error);
}

Current Room Status

The current status for the room is always reflected in the HMSRoom object which we can get from getRoom method available on HMSSDK instance or HMSUpdateListenerActions.ON_ROOM_UPDATE event.

This can be used to show the stream or recording status on UI something similar to this:

Here are the relevant properties inside the HMSRoom object which we can read to get the current recording/streaming status of the room:

• rtmpHMSRtmpStreamingState - Contains info about RTMP Streaming, running attribute if true indicates streaming is ON currently
• browserRecordingState - Contains info about Browser Recording, running attribute if true indicates browser recording is ON currently
• serverRecordingState - Contains info about Server Recording, running attribute if true indicates server recording is ON currently

Each of them is an object which contains a boolean running which lets you know if it's active in the room right now and error which lets you know if there was an error.

1. rtmpHMSRtmpStreamingState is an instance of HMSRtmpStreamingState, which looks like:

interface HMSRtmpStreamingState {
    running: boolean; // `true` indicates that RTMP streaming is running
    error?: HMSException; // Gets populated if there is some error in starting the stream or recording
    startedAt: Date; // time at which RTMP streaming was started
    stoppedAt: Date; // time at which RTMP streaming was stopped
    state: HMSStreamingState; // indicates the current state of RTMP Streaming
}

HMSStreamingState is a enum which can have the following values:

enum HMSStreamingState {
    NONE,
    STARTING,
    STARTED,
    STOPPED,
    FAILED,
}

2. browserRecordingState is an instance of HMSBrowserRecordingState, which looks like:

interface HMSBrowserRecordingState {
    running: boolean; // `true` indicates that browser recording is running
    error?: HMSException; // Gets populated if there is some error in starting the browser recording
    startedAt: Date; // time at which browser recording was started
    stoppedAt: Date; // time at which browser recording was stopped
    state: HMSRecordingState; // indicates the current state of Browser Recording
}

3. serverRecordingState is an instance of HMSServerRecordingState, which looks like:

This represents that the room was set to be recorded when it was created and all sessions within it will always be recorded for archival by the server.

interface HMSServerRecordingState {
    running: boolean; // `true` indicates that server recording is running
    error?: HMSException; // Gets populated if there is some error in starting the server recording
    startedAt: Date; // time at which server recording was started
    state: HMSRecordingState; // indicates the current state of Server Recording
}

Here is a listing of all possible values for HMSRecordingState -

enum HMSRecordingState {
    NONE,
    STARTING,
    STARTED,
    PAUSED,
    RESUMED,
    STOPPED,
    FAILED,
}

When to check for room status

The room status should be checked in any of the following ways -

1. Inside onJoinListener function which is subscribed to HMSUpdateListenerActions.ON_JOIN event
2. Inside onRoomListener function which is subscribed to HMSUpdateListenerActions.ON_ROOM_UPDATE event
3. When hmsInstance.startRTMPOrRecording(recordingConfig) is called
4. When hmsInstance.stopRtmpAndRecording() is called

• In the above mentioned onJoinListener & onRoomListener functions, The properties mentioned above will be on the HMSRoom object.
• Whenever either of the startRTMPOrRecording or stopRtmpAndRecording functions are called, the values of the streaming and recording will be updated on the room object available in onRoomListener function. So, You should update the instance of HMSRoom in your application at that time.