Audio and video conference with NodeJS

Question

I would like to build a web application that lets two peers see and hear each other using video and audio streaming with HTML5 and no plugins (except for IE, that I pretend to use getUserMediajs to use a flash fallback).

I also want to transmit that data using NodeJS but I have no idea where to start. In an example:

Peer A <---> Node JS <---> Peer B

I'm interested in this Peer 2 Server 2 Peer approach instead of a Peer 2 Peer solution like PeerJS because:

1) I think it will be more compatible will all browsers. If this is not entirely true, please let me know.

2) PeerJS (which I'm not interested in) relies on black magic STUN-TURN-ICE signaling for some cases. I read somewhere that only the 70% of the connections are suitable for this kind of transmission, and I can not afford a loss of the 30%. Again let me know if this is no entirely true.

I have already played around with socket.io and know the concepts of getUserMedia() to get user's webcam, but don't know how to link that with socket.io and transmit that to the other client.

Answer 1

1. The browser compatibility has nothing to do with adding a server side component. You could be p2p, or p2s2p, if what you send is not recognized by the receiving browser, it won't work.

2. ICE is mandatory for webrtc, you can't do without, period. by default, you can only connect to computers in the same network (hosts candidates). If you provide a STUN server, you will be able to connect in 70% of the cases all together, much less in enterprise context. http://webrtcstats.com/webrtc-revolution-in-progress/ has the latest stats from some vendors. You can see that for social sites, as of june 2014, 92% of the calls can work through firewalls and NAT using simple STUN. The remaining of the called needed to be relayed through a TURN server. You have a lot of Free STUN server providers out there, this is the minimum you should use.

3. webRTC for Desktop IE and Safari.

While flash callbacks are interesting (read, easy) they pause two problems:

• They do not generate video stream compatible with peer connection or with HTML5. Not being compatible with peer connection means, you cannot send the images or the video, but only use it locally. Not being compatible with HTML5 means you cannot use the generated image and video in a element, and you do not have anyway simple way to render it outside of a flash plugin element. In the case of the shim you point to, they copy over from the flash plugin to HTML each single frame, and they mention in the read me that this is too computationally extensive to be used for lived video.
• flash use different protocols (RTMP, RTMFP, ..) and codecs from webrtc and they are not mutually interoperable. You would need to maintain both separately or to have a complicated, dual use infrastructure to deal with it. OpenClove is a vendor that propose such dual purpose infrastructure for example.

Another solution is to install on Desktop IE and Safari a webRTC plugin (not flash), which implements "pure" webRTC. In which case, you can directly interoperate with chrome, firefox, opera, and any other browser which implements natively webRTC 1.0

We propose such a plugin, for free (no cost) and for all (not vendor specific) here

Answer 2

Whatever you do, you need WebRTC support on the browser ("no plugins"). So, the "it will be more compatible will all browsers" is a moot point because browser support