Hector Martin

So Twitch has a new “low latency” mode. Except by low latency they mean 2-3 seconds, whereas before it was more like 10 seconds. And for some reason they’re still using HLS. Meanwhile, Mixer has been sub-second for a long time… which is still an order of magnitude over ideal.

there is no cross-browser-compatible streaming protocol that supports loading less than a GoP of latency

What is GoP? And doesn’t MSE allow for low-latency streaming?

group of pictures; the span between two keyframes MSE requires you to pass the browser an entire MP4 segment at once; theoretically those are allowed to start on non-keyframes, but in practice browsers flip a shit if they don't

that gets you around it in theory, but it's not ubiquitous in browsers yet (especially mobile), doesn't work on all networks, and adds a large amount of server-side complexity

WebRTC works in practice, but is very heavy server-side. We use it for audio (<70ms latency end to end) but it's a lost cause for video with our infra.