YouTube embraces SRT as RTMP successor for live video contribution
YouTube has joined the SRT Alliance and will participate in the SRT InterOp Plugfest in May 2023 to establish vendor interoperability for live video contribution via the SRT protocol. The SRT protocol, originally developed by Haivision, is now widely adopted across the streaming industry.
Key Takeaways
- YouTube will join the SRT InterOp Plugfest May 9-11, 2023, with a kickoff webinar on May 9 at 10am ET, focused on vendor interoperability for live contribution into YouTube's platform.
- SRT was originally developed by Haivision in 2013 for its Makito encoder/decoder line and open-sourced in April 2017; the SRT Alliance now has over 600 members including Paramount, Cloudflare, and Dolby.io.
- Past SRT InterOp Plugfests have produced over 1,000 independent interoperability validations across broadcast and streaming vendors.
- Haivision CEO Mirko Wicha said YouTube's adoption demonstrates SRT's ubiquity for low-latency end-to-end video transport from contribution to distribution.
- Almost every major streaming service, cloud platform, and broadcast solution provider has adopted SRT, which is now used across every element of broadcast and streaming workflows.
Why It Matters
YouTube adding SRT support means the world's largest live streaming platform is positioning the protocol as a successor to RTMP for contribution ingest — a significant shift given RTMP's limitations with HEVC and lack of active development. For encoder manufacturers and live production vendors, SRT interoperability with YouTube opens a path to codec-agnostic, encrypted, low-latency contribution that RTMPS cannot match. The immediate signal to watch is whether YouTube extends SRT ingest beyond the Plugfest participants to general availability, and how quickly its Live Verified Encoder Program populates with certified devices.
Additional Context
YouTube's adoption of SRT comes as the protocol has been steadily displacing RTMP across the broadcast industry. Haivision's 2023 Broadcast Transformation Report found that 63% of broadcasters now use SRT for live video transport, overtaking RTMP at 60% for the first time since the report's inception (per Haivision, May 2023). RTMP's limitations are well documented: it cannot carry HEVC-encoded streams, is no longer actively developed, and struggles with long-distance high-bitrate transmission. SRT, by contrast, is codec-agnostic and supports AES-128 and 256-bit encryption.
The May 2023 SRT InterOp Plugfest that YouTube participated in yielded substantial results. According to Haivision's post-event recap (June 2023), 32 vendors brought 55 devices and software solutions, conducting 2,257 individual device-to-device tests — a 51% increase over prior years. YouTube used the event to introduce its "Live Verified Encoder Program," giving Plugfest participants early access to test SRT as a replacement for RTMPS ingest, with vendors reporting positive results on latency, entry-point coverage, and codec flexibility including H.264 and HEVC up to 4Kp60.
Notably, SRT ingest on YouTube remains limited as of early 2025. Per streaming infrastructure provider Callaba.io (January 2025), SRT ingestion is available only to a select group of users invited by YouTube, with no public timeline for general availability. YouTube's own developer documentation lists RTMP, RTMPS, HLS, and DASH as supported ingestion protocols but does not prominently feature SRT, suggesting the rollout is still in a controlled phase.
The broader competitive context includes Cloudflare, whose CTO John Graham-Cumming publicly endorsed SRT as "a great candidate to replace legacy protocols such as RTMP" when Cloudflare joined the SRT Alliance in March 2023 (per Haivision press release). Other major entrants in the same cohort included Paramount, whose Lead Video Engineer Nishant Sirohi confirmed the company is actively transforming workflows to SRT for live video contribution.
Read full article at srtalliance.org
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