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Brightcove's live streaming video feature enables you to deliver high-quality live streaming broadcasts to any device or browser. You can deliver live streams without any custom development or complex integration, however, APIs are available if you have custom needs or require custom integrations.

In Brightcove Player versions previous to 6.33.0 the Live DVRUX plugin was required to play live streams. This is no longer the case, as that functionality is now built into Brightcove Player. See the Playing Live Streams document for further details. The Live DVRUX plugin is now deprecated and should no longer be used.

Brightcove offers several options for delivering live streams. This topic contains the following sections:

Hardware vs. cloud-based encoding

Brightcove supports both hardware and cloud-based encoding. Various factors may determine whether hardware or cloud-based encoding is best for an event.

When to use hardware encoding

When to use cloud encoding

Live streaming using the Live module

The Live module provides an easy to use interface to help you broadcast a live event to both desktop and mobile devices. No programming is required. After entering your event information into the Live module, you will be provided with a set of encoder settings that you plug into your on-site encoder. All transcoding is done in the cloud so you don't need a hardware based transcoder. For more information, see one of these documents.

Live API

The Live API is a REST-based API that allows you to create and manage live streaming events. Optional features include:

For more information, see the Live API documentation.

Live streaming using a hardware-based encoder

This option uses a hardware based encoder to encode and deliver live streams to your CDN. On the Video Cloud side, you create remote assets to host the streams and then you can publish a player for your live stream.