What is WHEP?

WHEP stands for WebRTC HTTP Egress Protocol. Simply put it's a standardization for serving WebRTC from a server to a viewer. Now WebRTC isn't exactly new as it's been around for a while, the main problem with WebRTC however was that everyone build their own flavour of WebRTC. Luckily both the ingress (input) and egress (output) have been standardized in WHIP (WebRTC HTTP Ingress Protocol) and WHEP. This is interesting because there's finally a method that looks like it will be accepted by all browsers and webrtc capable applications to handle WebRTC streaming data.

How do I use WHEP with MistServer?

Using WHEP with MistServer can be done through 2 methods. One would be to simply put the WHEP urls provided in the Embed panel into any WHEP capable player:

If you're looking for a simple WHEP player we provide an example here:

https://mistserver.org/demos/whipwhep.html

The other options is to use the MistServer Meta-player and select WHEP output:

When do you want to use WHEP?

WeBRTC is great for platforms where you want to deliver low latency playback of your sources. WebRTC and especially WHEP has a broad compatibility that can reach many users as described in our WEBRTC Streaming protocol page.

The only downside is that you're somewhat more limited with your codecs and it might not be compatible with most streams you've got as H264 for video and AAC for audio is quite common. H264 is supported, but it does need to be without bframes otherwise your playback might have some issues. AAC is simply not supported and you need Opus. However both SRT and E-RTMP can handle Opus now, so it's definitely lookinglike WebRTC might become easier to use!

Want help setting up WHEP?

While using WHEP is quite is when it comes to MistServer there's no shame in getting stuck. Feel free to contact us and we'll be happy to help you further.