Use cases
Real workflows Bilbycast was built to solve — from live event contribution to AAC-to-Opus WebRTC distribution to path-synchronised clean & dirty feeds. If your workflow isn't here, it's almost certainly a combination of a few of these.
Live Event Contribution
Deploy edge nodes at venues to contribute live feeds back to the broadcast center via SRT with FEC and hitless redundancy over commodity internet.
Remote Production
Bridge remote cameras and audio sources into your production facility using WebRTC (WHIP/WHEP) for ultra-low-latency monitoring and SRT for broadcast-quality transport.
Facility Integration
Bridge compressed media flows into existing broadcast facilities. NMOS IS-04/IS-05/IS-08 and BCP-004 receiver capability sets let your control systems discover and manage Bilbycast edge nodes alongside other IP infrastructure.
Cloud Distribution
Fan out to RTMP (YouTube/Twitch), HLS, and WebRTC (WHEP) simultaneously from a single input. Each output runs independently with no cross-output interference.
Audio Gateway
Bridge SMPTE ST 2110-30/-31 broadcast audio to AES67, SRT, or generic IP transports. Hot-reload IS-08 channel maps without restarting flows. Ship 48 kHz LPCM as SMPTE 302M-in-MPEG-TS for byte-identical interop with ffmpeg, srt-live-transmit, and broadcast hardware decoders.
AAC Contribution → Opus WebRTC Distribution
Ingest an AAC RTMP contribution feed from the field and fan it out to browser viewers as Opus over WebRTC in a single bilbycast-edge process. The in-process FDK AAC decoder (AAC-LC, HE-AAC v1/v2, multichannel) and the in-process libavcodec Opus encoder replace a separate transcode box — no cascade, no re-muxing hop, no ffmpeg subprocess, no extra hardware.
Hot Source Failover & Main/Backup Switchover
Attach a primary SRT input and a backup RIST input to the same flow and cut over between them with a single API call. A shared TS continuity fixer and PSI cache keep receivers locked even when the two sources use different codecs, sample rates, bitrates, or containers. Zero overhead before the first switch, zero visible glitch at the switch.
Transcoding Gateway
Normalize mixed contribution feeds to a consistent distribution codec on the way out. Re-encode incoming HEVC to H.264 for WebRTC viewers, down-rate a 4K JPEG XS ST 2110 source to 1080p H.264 SRT, or shuffle a 5.1 multichannel source into stereo Opus — all in-process, with libx264, libx265, or NVIDIA NVENC on the video side and FDK AAC / libavcodec on the audio side.
Path-Synchronised Clean & Dirty Feeds
Run a clean international feed alongside a commentary-processed one with matching end-to-end latency. The per-output delay block accepts a fixed delay, a self-adjusting target latency, or a frame-accurate target — keep the two paths in lockstep even when one goes through an external loudness processor or captioning engine.
Audio Channel Crosspoint
Reroute, downmix, or upmix audio channels per output without restarting a flow. IS-08 channel-map activations hot-reload via a lock-free watch channel; built-in presets cover 5.1→stereo BS.775 downmix, stereo→mono sum, mono→stereo split, and arbitrary matrix routing.
Multi-Vendor Broadcast Plant
Manage Bilbycast edges, third-party encoders, and Appear X gateways from a single UI. The driver-aware action system lets the AI assistant create flows on any registered device using the same interface.
Set it up in 10 minutes.
Runs on commodity off-the-shelf hardware. Edge and relay are free under AGPL 3; manager is free for up to 10 nodes. No sign-up wall, no credit card. The same binaries you'd run in production.