Adaptive Bitrate Information Not Available in Client SDK

[kimPongsakorn]

Issue: Adaptive Bitrate Information Not Available in Client SDK

Description

When using Ant Media Server's WebRTC playback, the client SDK doesn't receive or expose current bitrate information. When playing adaptive streams, users can't see what quality/bitrate is currently being used, which makes debugging streaming issues difficult.

Current Behavior

• The client successfully connects to streams and can switch between different quality levels
• However, when using "Auto" quality setting, there's no way to know what bitrate/resolution is actually being delivered
• No adaptiveStreamingStatistics or similar events with bitrate information are being received by the client

Expected Behavior

• The client SDK should receive and expose current streaming statistics
• This should include: current bitrate, resolution, codec, and other relevant metrics
• This information should update in real-time as network conditions change and ABR adjusts quality

Steps to Reproduce

1. Connect to an Ant Media Server stream using the Flutter SDK
2. Set quality to "Auto" (adaptive)
3. Attempt to retrieve current bitrate information via events or API calls
4. Log all incoming events from the server to confirm no bitrate information is being sent

Technical Details

• Ant Media Server version: [version number]
• Flutter SDK version: [version number]
• WebRTC version: [version number]
• We've attempted to capture this information by:
  • Logging all incoming events from the server
  • Examining WebRTC statistics directly
  • Looking for documentation on how to enable this feature

Impact

This missing functionality makes it difficult to:

• Debug streaming quality issues
• Optimize streaming configurations
• Provide users with information about their current streaming quality
• Create analytics about stream quality experienced by users

Possible Solutions

1. Add a new command/event type that regularly sends current adaptive bitrate statistics to clients
2. Expose WebRTC statistics in a more accessible way through the SDK
3. Add a specific API endpoint to retrieve current stream quality information
4. Document existing methods for retrieving this information if they already exist

Additional Information

We've already implemented workarounds to extract some information directly from WebRTC, but a proper solution integrated in the SDK would be much more reliable and complete.

[burak-58]

Thanks for creating the issue. I am putting this issue to backlog for now. We can take it to implement when we have enouhgh bandwith. If it is urgent for you we have some criteria to increase priority

If you promise to get some number of licenses after we've fixed it, we can increase its priority.
If you already an enterprise user and using a good number of licenses, we can increase its priority
If you get a support package from us, we can increase its priority.
If you some kind of another idea to make the game win-win, we can increase its priority.
If it does not match anything above, we still do our best to implement it according to your availability.

Reach out to contact@antmedia.io to discuss possible win-win collaborations

Let us know if you have any questions.