Serve a video room as an HLS or DASH livestream with DVR

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HLS or DASH?

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When capping WebRTC participants is the right choice

• Cap interactive WebRTC joins at speakers, moderators, and Q&A panelists.
• Serve everyone else the HLS or DASH manifest from your CDN edge.

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Prerequisites

• A scheduled room id. The egress endpoints hang off /api/v1/video/rooms-scheduled/{id}, so the room must be a scheduled room (the same object webinars and recurring events use), not an ad-hoc room.
• A CDN target. Two options:
  • Orbit-managed playback (default): omit recording_storage and read playback URLs from GET /livestream (below).
  • Your own origin: pass recording_storage with your S3 or GCS bucket, the same object the bring-your-own recording storage guide uses, and front it with Fastly, CloudFront, or Cloudflare Stream. Segments and playlists upload to your bucket; your CDN serves them.
• A playback policy. Manifests and segments are ordinary HTTP objects. Enforce signed URLs, token auth, or geo rules at your CDN; the egress endpoints only write the media, they do not police who reads it.
• Consent, where applicable. On tenants with two-party recording consent, a broadcast egress persists replayable media, so the start call requires recording_consent_receipt_id, the same gate as recording and RTMP egress.
• Your limits. Each egress (and each ABR variants tier, which launches one composite egress per tier) counts against your tenant’s concurrent egress ceiling. Read it from the scheduled-rooms limits endpoint (listVideoRoomsScheduledLimits in the video API reference) before sizing a ladder.

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Start an HLS egress

curl -X POST "https://orbit.devotel.io/api/v1/video/rooms-scheduled/$ROOM_ID/egress/hls" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ORBIT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "layout": "speaker",
    "segment_duration": 4,
    "dvr": true,
    "dvr_window": 3600
  }'

• layout: "speaker" foregrounds the active presenter in the composite, the usual choice for a presentation-style room.
• segment_duration: 4 shortens the default 6 s segments, trading a little playlist churn for a shorter time-to-first-frame at the live edge.
• dvr: true with dvr_window: 3600 keeps one hour of rewindable media behind the live edge. The window accepts 30 s to 4 h and defaults to 30 minutes.

• Low latency. "low_latency": true switches the egress to LL-HLS (part-based playback) for sub-second glass-to-glass latency on compatible players; part_duration (0.2–1.0 s, default 0.5) sets the part target. Leave both off for ordinary segment-based HLS.
• Adaptive bitrate. variants takes a ladder of tiers, each with a unique name, width, height, and video_bitrate_kbps. Orbit launches one composite egress per tier and writes a master playlist, so a viewer on a weak connection steps down instead of re-buffering. Remember each tier counts against your egress limits.

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Start a DASH egress

curl -X POST "https://orbit.devotel.io/api/v1/video/rooms-scheduled/$ROOM_ID/egress/dash" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ORBIT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "layout": "speaker",
    "variants": [
      { "name": "1080p", "width": 1920, "height": 1080, "video_bitrate_kbps": 6000 },
      { "name": "720p",  "width": 1280, "height": 720,  "video_bitrate_kbps": 3000 },
      { "name": "480p",  "width": 854,  "height": 480,  "video_bitrate_kbps": 1200 }
    ]
  }'

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Combine WebRTC speakers with a streamed audience

1. Speakers, moderators, and panelists join over WebRTC with ordinary participant tokens (see video room access tokens).
2. Start an HLS or DASH egress as above; the passive audience watches the manifest, never touching the RTC media plane.
3. If you also need isolated per-speaker media for post-production, a per-speaker compliance archive, or training clips, start a participant egress:

curl -X POST "https://orbit.devotel.io/api/v1/video/rooms-scheduled/$ROOM_ID/egress/participants" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ORBIT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "format": "mp4",
    "participant_identities": ["speaker-alice", "speaker-bob"]
  }'

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Detach an egress before the room ends

# stop one HLS egress
curl -X DELETE "https://orbit.devotel.io/api/v1/video/rooms-scheduled/$ROOM_ID/egress/hls/$EGRESS_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ORBIT_API_KEY"

# stop one DASH egress
curl -X DELETE "https://orbit.devotel.io/api/v1/video/rooms-scheduled/$ROOM_ID/egress/dash/$EGRESS_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ORBIT_API_KEY"

# stop all per-participant egresses at once
curl -X DELETE "https://orbit.devotel.io/api/v1/video/rooms-scheduled/$ROOM_ID/egress/participants" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ORBIT_API_KEY"

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Playback URLs and embedding

• GET /api/v1/video/rooms-scheduled/{id}/livestream returns the room’s live-edge playback surface: the advertised HLS/DASH manifest URLs for the running egresses. Hand the manifest URL to any player, or put it behind your CDN’s signed-URL policy first.
• GET /api/v1/video/rooms-scheduled/{id}/livestream/dvr returns the DVR playback surface pinned at the live edge. Add ?rewind_seconds=300 to get a catch_up_url five minutes behind the edge, or pass an absolute start (and optional end) as ISO 8601 timestamps. rewind_seconds and start are mutually exclusive, and seeks are clamped to your dvr_window.

• Passive viewers in your app or web page: any HLS/DASH-capable player pointed at the manifest URL (native <video> on iOS and Safari, hls.js/ExoPlayer/Shaka elsewhere). Embed patterns are covered in the video embed demo.
• Guests who need to be seen and heard: that is a WebRTC join, not a stream; use the WHEP guest player for low-latency guest playback with an uplink.

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Limits, costs, and DVR notes

• The scheduled-rooms limits endpoint (listVideoRoomsScheduledLimits in the video API reference) reports your tenant’s concurrent egress ceiling. Count one egress per running HLS/DASH start, plus one per variants tier, plus one per participant in a participant egress.
• dvr_window accepts 30 s to 4 h and defaults to 30 minutes. A deeper window keeps more segments in the playlist and costs proportionally more storage; size it to how long viewers actually arrive late, not to the full event.
• DVR and LL-HLS are HLS-side features. A DASH egress gives you the manifest and lets the player and packager handle timeshift and DRM.

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Related

• Run video webinars
• Bring-your-own recording storage
• WHEP guest player
• Video engagement analytics