Video Delivery: RTMP Streaming | LongTail Video | Home of the JW Player

Video Delivery: RTMP Streaming
Purpose

This guide discusses and provides an overview on RTMP video streaming with the JW Player for Flash v5.
Introduction

RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) is a system for delivering on-demand and live media to Adobe Flash applications (like the JW Player). RTMP supports video in FLV and H.264 (MP4/MOV/F4V) formats and audio in MP3 and AAC (M4A) formats. RTMP offers several advantages over regular HTTP video downloads:

RTMP can do live streaming – people can watch your video while it is being recorded.
With RTMP, viewers can seek to not-yet-downloaded parts of a video. This is especially useful for longer-form content (> 10 minutes).
Videos delivered over RTMP (and its encrypted brother, RTMPE) are harder to steal than videos delivered over regular HTTP.

However, do note that RTMP has its disadvantages too. Especially since the introduction of HTTP Pseudostreaming (used by e.g. Youtube), RTMP is not the only option for efficient video delivery. Some drawbacks to be aware of:

RTMP is a different protocol than HTTP and is sent over a different port (1935 instead of 80). Therefore, RTMP is frequently blocked by (corporate) firewalls. The JW Player detects and circumvents this issue.
RTMP is a true streaming protocol, which means that the bandwidth of the connection must always be larger than the datarate of the video. If the connection drops for a couple of seconds, the stream will stutter. If the connection bandwidth overall is smaller than the video datarate, the video will not play at all.

The JW Player supports a wide array of features of the RTMP protocol, listed below.