Imagine this scene.
You’re sitting at the center of a command-and-control room, orchestrating a flow of various high-quality audio-visual content streams, arriving from different sources. One stream is destined for a high-definition display within the control room, demanding a crisp 4K60 resolution. The other stream, on the other hand, is bound for a recording device in a remote location with limited bandwidth.
Now, what do you do? Would you use a single stream that requires two different encoders? Or is there a different, more sophisticated solution?
In this blog post, we explore the essence of the solution for the above situation: dual streaming. We explain dual streaming, its benefits, applications, and future.
What is dual streaming?
Traditionally, using a single stream in AVoIP, achieving these different streams would require two separate encoders: one for high quality; and another for lower quality – along with multiple cables and switches.
A single stream operates under the assumption that all receiving devices (encoders, decoders, monitors, etc.) can handle the same video quality. If they can’t, the system defaults to the lowest common denominator; it downgrades the entire AV stream to the lowest resolution acceptable by all destinations. This approach simplifies network demands but at the cost of optimal viewing quality and requires a set of encoders and cables for each format.
But dual streaming changes this dynamic. It allows the simultaneous transmission of two different formats—low-resolution content and high-resolution content—to two different destinations, ensuring that each destination receives the format best suited to its capabilities.
In contrast to the single streaming method, dual streaming simplifies the streaming process with a single encoder and cable. This consolidation results in significant savings on system and installation costs, simplifies the network architecture, and promotes ease of integration.
The rationale for dual streaming is simple yet compelling. High-quality video is always preferable, but it’s not always feasible, especially when dealing with constraints like cellular networks or distant destinations with limited bandwidth. In such cases, your content must go through numerous IP switches, necessitating compression and quality reduction for feasible transmission. Dual streaming elegantly bypasses this by sending the same visual content in different IP packets, tailored to the capabilities of each destination.