Supported protocols and formats

Supported streaming protocols 

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HDS

HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) to deliver adaptive bitrate live and VOD content to Adobe Flash Player 10.1 or later. HDS is a segment-based protocol from Adobe that uses HTTP for delivery.

Wowza Streaming Engine supports the following codecs for HDS:

Video	Audio
H.264(Live only) On2 VP6, Screen video, Screen video 2, and Sorenson Spark	AAC, AAC-LC, HE-AAC (AAC+ or aacPlus), and HE-AACv2 (enhanced AAC+, aacPlus v2)MP3(Live only) Speex

HLS

HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) to deliver adaptive bitrate live and VOD content to iOS devices (iOS 3.0 or later); JW Player and QuickTime Player (version 10 or later); Safari (4.0 or later); devices such as the Roku and Amino set-top boxes; and some smart TVs. HLS is a segment-based protocol from Apple that uses HTTP for delivery.

Wowza Streaming Engine supports the following codecs for HLS:

Video	Audio
H.264	AAC, AAC-LC, and HE-AAC (AAC+ or aacPlus)Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound (AC-3) and Dolby Digital Plus (Enhanced AC-3 or E-AC-3)MP3

Microsoft Smooth Streaming

Microsoft Smooth Streaming to deliver adaptive bitrate live and VOD content to Microsoft Silverlight players and Windows Phone devices. Smooth Streaming is a segment-based protocol that uses HTTP for delivery. The media platform performs all of the segmenting and packaging necessary to deliver Smooth Streaming streams; a Microsoft IIS server isn’t required.

Wowza Streaming Engine supports the following codecs for Smooth Streaming:

Video	Audio
H.264	AAC, AAC-LC, HE-AAC (AAC+ or aacPlus), and HE-AACv2 (enhanced AAC+, aacPlus v2)MP3

MPEG-DASH

MPEG-DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) adaptive bitrate live and VOD content to clients that can play DASH streams. MPEG-DASH is an ISO standard for streaming segment-based content over HTTP.

Video	Audio
H.264, H.265 (preview)	AAC, AAC-LC, HE-AAC (AAC+ or aacPlus), HE-AACv2 (enhanced AAC+, aacPlus v2)Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound (AC-3) and Dolby Digital Plus (Enhanced AC-3 or E-AC-3)(Wowza Streaming Engine 4.7.2.01 or later) MPEG-4 Audio Lossless Coding (ALS)

RTMP

RTMP can deliver adaptive bitrate live and VOD content to Adobe Flash Player using Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP).

The media platform supports all video and audio formats that Flash Player supports:

Video	Audio
H.264On2 VP6Sorenson SparkScreen video and Screen video 2	AAC, AAC-LC, HE-AAC (AAC+ or aacPlus), HE-AACv2 (enhanced AAC+, aacPlus v2)MP3Speex

RTSP/RTP

RTSP/RTP can deliver live H.264, AAC, and MP3 content to players and devices that support Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP), and MPEG-TS (transport stream). This includes QuickTime Player (version 10 or later), VideoLAN VLC player, set-top boxes, and 3GPP devices.

WebRTC

Web Real-time Communication (WebRTC) is an open source project to enable real-time communication of audio, video, and data in web browsers and native apps. WebRTC is designed for peer-to-peer connections but includes fallbacks in case direct connections fail. Encryption is mandatory for WebRTC streams, so you must configure Wowza Streaming Engine to use secure sockets layer (SSL). 

WebRTC is still gaining adoption, so not all browsers and mobile platforms support it. With Wowza Streaming Engine, you can ingest and play WebRTC streams with Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers on the desktop.

The media platform supports the following codecs for WebRTC:

Video	Audio
H.264VP8VP9	VorbisOpusPulse Code Modulation (PCM) types PCMU and PCMA

Supported media file formats

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	Prefix	Extension(s)
MP4	mp4:	.mp4, .f4v, .mov, .m4a, .m4v, .mp4a, .mp4v, .3gp, .3g2
MP3	mp3:	.mp3
SMIL	smil:	.smil
FLV	flv:	.flv