NDI support in Nimble Streamer

NDI

Nimble Streamer supports NDI® input and output

NDI is a free protocol for video delivery over IP. It's widely adopted by industry professionals in a variety of products used in live production.

What is NDI

NDI is a technology which was implemented with these ideas in mind:

Live video is produced and processed by professional production teams in local networks prior to outer-world delivery.
Various solutions from various vendors are fully interoperable using the same protocol.
Network topology doesn't matter, making it easy to find and capture video streams.
Video source is abstracted from video destinations, it just sends out the data into the network.
The video content is moderately compressed with 10x factor down to 100 MBps making it easy to deliver over local networks.
It's a replacement for SDI technology.

NDI in Nimble Streamer

Nimble Streamer has full support for NDI protocol input and output. Its main purpose is to deliver live streams efficiently so it's not a production-level mixing and editing tool.

Nimble Streamer is a "bridge" between live production environments and global networks.

NDI input
Nimble Streamer takes NDI input and handles it for further processing.

Get NDI from local network.
Decode and transform the stream with Live Transcoder filters: re-sizing, re-sampling etc.
Encode content into H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, VP8, VP9 with supported encoding libraries.
Re-package into other protocols for further delivery, like SRT, RTMP, HLS, MPEG-DASH , Icecast etc.
Convert NDI to Apple Low Latency HLS.
Convert NDI to DRM MPEG-DASH.
Record and play via DVR feature set with HLS and MPEG-DASH, check this short tutorial.
Use Nimble native API to get a list of available NDI streams.
Handle heavy duty when serving streams to multiple viewers.

Example: Nimble Streamer gets NDI stream in local network, re-package it to SRT and deliver it to distant production site with high reliability and security. E.g. check NDI to SRT to AWS Elemental MediaConnect video as example.

NDI output
Nimble Streamer can take any live stream input and create output NDI stream.

Take any content input via supported protocols like SRT, WebRTC, RIST, RTMP, MPEG-TS etc.
The generated NDI can be used by any NDI-powered tools.
New: Synchronize output NDI with NTP SEI metadata. Watch video tutorial with a demo of SRT streams syncing up into NDI output.
Use Server Playlist to generate NDI from a set of local files.
Transcode and send the content via NDI into local network.

Example: having SRT stream from external public network, Nimble Streamer can re-package it into NDI for further production purposes.
Or generate NDI stream from local files via Server Playlist.

NDI monitoring console tool
Along with implementing NDI in Nimble Streamer, we've made a console tool for diagnosing NDI streams.

Get the list of active NDI streams in your network;
Get detailed information about video and audio frames;
No GUI, just plain text console for your convenience.

This helped us test and debug our own solution, so we are sure it will also help our customers debugging their setup of Nimble and NDI streams in general.

Installation and usage

Currently NDI is available in Nimble Streamer only on Windows, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04.
To start using NDI in Nimble Streamer, you need to make the following installation of Softvelum products:

Sign up for WMSPanel account or log in if you have it.
Install Nimble Streamer or upgrade it to latest version.
Subscribe for WMSPanel account, the price starts from 30 USD per month.
Create Live Transcoder license and subscribe for it. It costs 50 USD per month per server.
Install Live Transcoder package and register the license on the server with Nimble Streamer instance
Follow full NDI setup instructions to make NDI-specific setup of Nimble Streamer and Live Transcoder.
New: Synchronize NDI output with SEI metadata with NTP if your source supports it.
Also, watch video tutorial with Makito X4 sending SRT streams to Nimble for NDI output sync-up.
Generate NDI stream from local files using Server Playlist feature of Nimble Streamer.
Also watch these video tutorials:

This playlist has all NDI-related videos explaining various use cases.

Please contact our team if you have any questions or suggestions on NDI functionality.

NDI® is a registered trademark of NewTek, Inc.

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Easy installation and upgrade

Nimble Streamer can be installed in a couple of small steps and upgraded to the latest version by running two or three simple commands in console.

Let us know if you need any help and search through our documentation to find more information.