[RTMP VLC] What is RTMP? How to Play RTMP Stream in VLC?

RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) is a streaming protocol developed by Macromedia (now owned by Adobe) for streaming video, audio, and other data from a server to the Adobe Flash Player. It was once the primary means for live streaming before the advent of HLS streaming. Later, the end of Adobe Flash Player took a heavy blow on RTMP streaming.

Now RTMP streaming is gradually phasing out from the live streaming industry. You can’t directly play an RTMP stream on the web anymore. Actually, you won’t see many rtmp:// URLs as before. But that doesn’t mean RTMP is getting obsolete. In fact, RTMP is still widely used by broadcasters for its low latency and its support for low-end devices. It now plays a new important role as RTMP ingest, meaning using the RTMP encoder to encode and deliver the live video from the encoder to online video platforms. In this way, one can stream video with RTMP and the online video platform using HLS streaming.

One thing worth mentioning is that the RTMP encoder can also ingest directly into the video player. But here’s the problem, besides the Flash player, what can serve as another RTMP stream player. The best answer is VLC. According to the official VLC team, VLC supports RTMP and rtmp:// URLs from version 1.1 and onwards. If you have received an RTMP link, you can still use VLC to open the RTMP stream. I will show you the simple RTMP VLC solution in the next part.

1. Open VLC (requires version 1.1 and upwards).

2. On the top menu bar, click “Media” > “Open Network Stream…” or press “Ctrl + N.”

3. At the window that appears, enter an RTMP URL in the format “rtmp://Server URL/live/Stream Name” at the URL box, and hit “Play.” The stream will start in a few seconds.

That’s all for how to play RTMP stream in VLC. Hope you’ll find this article helpful. Thanks for reading!