Kinari Live
A real-time streaming system that enables creators to go live directly from the browser, delivering low-latency video to global audiences without relying on external tools.
Real-time video delivery is fundamentally complex. Traditional streaming pipelines introduce latency, break under network variability, and rely heavily on external encoding tools. The challenge was to design a system that enables real-time broadcasting directly from the browser, while maintaining performance, reliability, and scalability.
Zero-Tool Broadcasting
Real-time streaming directly from the browser, eliminating the need for OBS or complex external software.
Sub-Second Ingest
Near-instant transmission from creator to infrastructure.
Global Scalability
Seamless playback for thousands of concurrent viewers via automated CDN distribution.
Fault Resilience
Graceful degradation and adaptive bitrate handling to maintain uptime during network variability.
Browser-Native Encoding
Using WebRTC to capture and encode streams directly from the client, bypassing external heavy-lifters.
Real-Time Transport
LiveKit SFU handles real-time distribution, ensuring streams remain fast and stable even as viewership grows.
Format Conversion
Egress pipelines to convert WebRTC to RTMPS for legacy CDN compatibility.
Global Delivery
Cloudflare HLS transformation for scalable, regional playback.
Latency vs. Compatibility
WebRTC offers ultra-low latency but struggles with massive concurrent global fan-out compared to robust CDNs. Extracting the pure WebRTC feed and dynamically transcoding it into HLS via egress workers was necessary to support unbounded audiences while keeping the host's ingest latency sub-second.
Network Variability
Browser-native capture is vulnerable to the client's network state. We implemented aggressive adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR) and simulated edge fallback mechanics to ensure that upstream packet loss resulted in resolution degradation rather than connection drops.
- WebRTC
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- LiveKit
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- Cloudflare Stream
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- Next.js
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- Node APIs
Most streaming systems prioritize either low latency or scalability—rarely both. This architecture bridges that gap: creators get real-time responsiveness, viewers get reliable playback, and the system remains stable under growth.
"Building real-time systems requires more than connecting services — it requires understanding how data moves, transforms, and fails under pressure."
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