Youtube made a major announcement related to the live streaming functionality of the platform at the Game Developers Conference, 2013. It is now possible to stream live videos from a mobile application with the help of the new API which may be used to integrate it with games to stream live gameplay. Such functionality has already been demoed by games like Call of Duty Black Ops II and is also similar to functionality shown of recently in Sony PlayStation 4.
While presenting the new platform, Youtube said that with the help of this platform, game developers will find it much easier to utilize the Youtube live streaming experience and will be beneficial for not only promoting games, but also for users who would love to share their gameplay with others.
The youtube live streaming blog mentions that the new platform also carries new capabilities like automatic downscaling of videos, so that only one input stream of the highest bitrate needs to be streamed to the media servers. The servers will then automatically transcode to lower bitrates in order to save the upload bandwidth and encoding CPU. Then there are functions like viewer selected cameras, for events that employ multiple cameras. Essentially this will allow users to select the angle from which they want to see the live event.
Youtube has been one of the best and irreplaceable website for sharing online videos, but has somehow lagged behind in live streaming content, an option which is as of yet only available to select distributors which are recognized directly by the company. The platform is however catching up at a much faster pace lately and is soon expected to be on par with its competitors like UStream.tv and Livestream, as the blog post mentions. It has also been made clear that the company surely intends to bring this functionality to the larger masses when the right time comes.
