Meshcast is a free-to-use server-based service for broadcasting low-latency video streams. It can be used with VDO.Ninja in a couple different ways, either as an iFrame or as a peer-2-peer replacement for guest and director streams. It can be used to help lower system requirements of VDO.Ninja for some users or use cases.
Meshcast 2.0 (Beta)
You can use Meshcast 2.0 with the &meshcast2 parameter. This routes WHIP/WHEP through the new Meshcast 2.0 gateway and supports premium tokens or stream keys. If the token is invalid or out of slots, VDO.Ninja will fall back to the anonymous Meshcast 2.0 relay.
Example: &meshcast2
Example: &meshcast2=mc_... or &meshcast2=live_...
Adding &meshcast to a guest or director link will trigger the service, causing the outbound audio/video stream to be transferred to a hosted server, which then distributes the stream to all the viewers. This adds a bit of latency to the stream and reduces the theoretical privacy, but it implies the guest/director does not need to encode and upload multiple videos, lowering CPU load and bandwidth usage.
Viewers will automatically attempt to use the server-based feed over the peer-to-peer feed. Peer to peer is still used to send data though, and it can be optionally be used for sending audio p2p (lower latency).
Unlike the &broadcast flag, which uses IFrames, this new server-side mode does not; it's more deeply integrated. Echo cancellation should work as a result.
If publishing using &meshcast, I don't bother to show the viewer count, as it won't be accurate currently anyways; instead I just say you're broadcasting. I'll try to improve this in the future.
There is a toggle in the director's room which adds &meshcast to the guest's invite link.
Steve made a YouTube video explaining all the Meshcast stuff:
Understanding Meshcast as a tool for VDO.Ninja
As a director you can also select the Meshcast server on the bottom left of the director's control center. This method will show you the current load on a server, so you can avoid servers that are over-capacity.
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You can also specify the Meshcast server based on geographic timezone values using the &tz=300 parameter, where the value passed is the UTC timezone value in negative minutes. Eastern Europe I suppose would be a negative value, while North America would be a positive value. The &tz will also use the closest TURN server to that timezone, if needed; just keep in mind that timezones are east/west accurate; not north/south accurate.
Normally during peak-hours, around 7pm, the Internet in general can get slow, and Meshcast servers can occasionally become slow also as a result. Using a Meshcast server that's located in a different timezone, even if on the other side of the world, can sometimes avoid the bottlenecks in your local region, offering better results.
Lastly, if a Meshcast server fails to respond, please contact [email protected] or Steve on discord (discord.vdo.ninja) so it can be fixed.
Meshcast /w VDO.Ninja to host even Larger Rooms
Server Codes
You can select the Meshcast server (region) via URL Parameter, if you want low-level control there:
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