How to monitor cameras and live video sources from a web browser with sub-second delay.
When you're monitoring live video — whether it's camera feeds in a production gallery, confidence monitors in a control room, or remote venue feeds during an event — latency is everything. A 10-second delay means you're reacting to something that already happened. A 200ms delay means you're watching in near-real-time.
Traditional streaming methods like HLS and DASH deliver video in segments, adding 5–30 seconds of latency. That's fine for content delivery to viewers, but useless for live monitoring where you need to see what's happening now.
WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) was designed for video calls — where latency must be imperceptible. It delivers video frame-by-frame rather than in segments, achieving latencies under 500ms and often under 200ms on local networks.
The key advantage: every modern browser already supports WebRTC. No plugins, no apps, no Flash. Just open a URL and the video plays.
5–30 second latency
Segment-based delivery. Great for scalable VOD and live content delivery. Not suitable for real-time monitoring.
< 200ms latency
Frame-by-frame delivery. Designed for real-time communication. Ideal for live monitoring and production use.
Most professional video sources — cameras, switchers, media servers — don't output WebRTC natively. They use protocols like SDI, NDI, SRT, or proprietary formats like OMT (Open Media Transport). You need a gateway that receives these sources and transcodes them to WebRTC.
If your infrastructure uses OMT, the OMT WHEP Gateway bridges the gap. It's a Linux appliance that:
What's WHEP? WebRTC-HTTP Egress Protocol. It's the standardised way for a client (browser) to request a live WebRTC stream from a server. It complements WHIP (the ingest protocol) and means any WHEP-compatible player can watch your streams. Learn more about WHEP.
Production gallery — Open a multiview grid of all camera feeds in a browser tab. One WHEP Gateway replaces a rack of hardware monitors. Any screen in the building becomes a monitoring display.
Remote producer — Share a watch link with a producer who's off-site. They open it on their laptop and see the live feed with sub-second delay. Enable Cloudflare Tunnel for secure access without VPNs or port forwarding.
Client preview — Give your client a link to watch the live event from their office. They see the same feed your director sees, in near-real-time. No software to install, works on any device.
Multi-site event — Stream venue feeds to a remote production hub. The low latency means talkback and cue lights stay in sync. Run multiple channels on a single gateway — one per source.
Full setup instructions are in the setup guide.
30-day free trial with full functionality. Then £15/month or £250 lifetime (includes 1 year of updates). No per-viewer fees.