Red5 Pro integrates castLabs’ DRMtoday to increase WebRTC video content protection

Due to rising online piracy, content owners are understandably worried about releasing their valuable assets across the internet. To prevent unauthorized downloading, copying, and redistributing, digital rights management (DRM) is frequently required as a layer of encryption when delivering online content.

The ability to rely on WebRTC for premium content use-cases was previously limited as some operators were prevented technology-wise from being fully compliant with content owner security requirements. That’s why castLabs brought industry standard DRM systems like Google Widevine, Apple FairPlay Streaming, and Microsoft PlayReady to WebRTC. This action prevents users from copying video content as well as using a software-based video recorder so events such as live sports, betting, premium webinars, secure conferencing, and e-sports can be securely transmitted thanks to the low latency of WebRTC and the additional DRM protecting the content. Leveraging the browser content decryption module (CDM), castLabs’ WebRTC and DRMtoday multi-DRM solutions enable end-to-end encryption even if there are several media servers between the stream source and final audience.

From their open-source roots in 2005 to the current XDN ecosystem, Red5 Pro has been on a mission to accelerate how people connect, learn, and play. With custom real-time interactive streaming solutions for industries as diverse as sports, education, and surveillance and security, Red5 Pro is a proven partner for creating scalable workstreams that power experiences for the emerging metaverse and beyond. With Red5 Pro’s WebRTC video streaming platform, you can create interactive live streams and avoid live event spoilers with sub-500 millisecond latency. Send fully encrypted, high quality streams with automatic scaling across all devices.

The integration with castLabs is a straightforward process. Until now, an encrypted video stream was sent to the Red5 Pro server, and with an additional JavaScript module on the server, it was decrypted on the client’s device. To make this process even safer, Red5 Pro decided to collaborate with castLabs using DRMtoday, a global multi-DRM license service built on scalable multi-region Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure. After the integration of castLabs’ solution, the initial video stream is unencrypted and DRMtoday is applied directly on the server. Red5 Pro will also feature a special application, BREW, for their Cauldron media engine. As Cauldron allows the programmatic manipulation of video streams, BREW will act as a transcoder running inside this engine.

“DRM in WebRTC is a game changer – we can now bring our low latency streaming solutions to a whole new set of customers who were, until now, unable to satisfy their needs for end-to-end encryption because what is provided by WebRTC is not sufficient. New opportunities in industries like sports betting have been hindered without DRM,” says Mark Pace, CTO at Red5 Pro. “Integrating with castLabs went quickly and we’re now bringing this technology into our Cauldron media engine so that we can encrypt on cluster allowing you to use a standard encoder.”

“As a leader for content protection in multiple industries, castLabs is committed to helping our customers protect their videos over all of their platforms,” comments James Hynard, Sales Manager at castLabs. “Innovating alongside Red5 is an exciting opportunity to open the door to secure WebRTC streams and allow operators to expand ever deeper into distributing premium low latency content”.