Speedify LIVE: Building the VDO.Ninja Plugin for OBS

On the 55th episode of Speedify Live we’re joined by Steve Seguin to take a look at VDO.Ninja, a streaming tool using the browser source of OBS, with no need for any downloads, just a browser, on pretty much any device.

We discuss how VDO.Ninja came to be, how it all works, his experiences with Speedify, and how these services can complement each other to improve your livestreams.

Here are our 5 takeaways from our talk to Steve Seguin:

1. When it comes to security, VDO.Ninja uses passwords, stream IDs and room names to make sure only the right people can join. In case your room gets exposed, you can move to a secure room with the transfer room option. In addition, the initial handshake between peers is end-to-end encrypted, using an encryption key and encrypted with SHA-256bit encryption. 
2. Steve tells us that he’s been a long-time Speedify customer, finding it an accessible way to get into bonding. Even with the free tier of the service he was able to use it for debugging issues, and he highlights the ability to switch between UDP and TCP mode. 
3. VDO.Ninja also has an Android app, providing a good alternative if the browser of the Android device doesn’t work. The app offers screen sharing, can run in the background, and an upcoming feature will be the ability to use front facing camera and screen sharing at the same time! 
4. We’re told that VDO.Ninja’s co-director feature allows you to add an additional director to help manage the stream: change camera source, zoom in, add guests to a scene, change volume, etc.
5. Having worked with all sorts of people in streaming, Steve has seen quite a few Streamergencies himself! He says one of the common issues he’s seen is that everything goes well when testing during the day, but when the stream goes live in prime time, the connection quality is often drastically worse. So he found that having the ability to bond with cellular connection often helps save the stream.