WHIP and WebRTC broadcasting from the browser
WHIP (WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion Protocol) lets a browser publish live video with one HTTP request and a WebRTC connection: sub-second latency, no RTMP, no plugin. flint pairs it with an OBS-style studio.
How flint publishes
- One offer/answer to the WHIP endpoint, the stream key as a bearer token, H.264 video and stereo Opus audio.
- The video is encoded with WebCodecs on the graphics card where the browser allows, with flint choosing each frame's quantiser, and swapped into WebRTC's stream; otherwise WebRTC's own encoder at a floor of half the bitrate so congestion control can't starve it.
- The picture is converted to YUV with dither before encoding, so dark gradients don't band.
- Reconnects with backoff on drops; a wrong key is reported, not retried.
- Several destinations at once, each its own connection and encode, plus a vertical canvas to its own endpoint.
Test without an ingest
flint's test viewer is a second tab that receives the stream over a real local WebRTC connection: the same encoder, bitrate and stats as going live, without going live.
Questions
Which servers work?
Any WHIP endpoint: Twitch, Cloudflare Stream, Amazon IVS, Owncast, Broadcast Box, MediaMTX and others.
Does it do RTMP or SRT?
No: browsers can't open raw TCP or UDP connections, so publishing from a browser means WebRTC.
Guides
- Streaming somewhere other than Twitch: Any service that takes WHIP: Cloudflare, Amazon IVS, Owncast, Restream…
- Stream to several places, and stream delay: Also send the stream elsewhere at the same time; or run it a few seconds behind.
- Video size, frame rate and bitrate: What 720p, 1080p, 30/60 fps and kbps mean, and what to pick.
- Test without going live: Stream to a viewer tab on your own computer, exactly as Twitch would receive it.
- The Stats panel: CPU, GPU, frame rate and stream health, and what to do when they're high.
Open the studio: free, nothing to install, no account.
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