streamers haven

A Glimmer of Hope – Glimesh, a New Live-Streaming Platform

I have been following Glimesh (glih-mesh) ever since a friend informed me about them on Friday, July 10th in a private message on discord. He told me that there is a new live-streaming platform in the works, and was uncharacteristically excited about it. Curious as I was, I needed to see what the fuss was all about. See, this friend of mine is…or I guess, was, one of the moderators for the r/mixer community. For as long as I’ve known the guy, I never have seen him so excited about something, so I joined this mysterious discord server, trusting my friend’s word.

I was not disappointed.

Since then, I have been chatting regularly with Luke Strickland, better known as Clone1018 in the discord community, one of the founders of the platform. He has a strong belief in open-source technology and has ensured me that the entire project will be available on Github as Open-Source. For this article, Luke has also spared some time to answer a few questions in an interview, and here is what I can share with you from it:

Glimesh originally started out as “Project Recode” in 2015, a passion project for Luke to challenge himself. The man is a code monkey at heart and loves a good coding challenge. His public GitHub has a number of projects he has worked on, for reference. While speaking to him, he expressed keen enthusiasm about a number of goals he had in mind, and features he felt that existing streaming platforms struggled with.

One of the big goals, he stated, was to make streamer discovery a major priority. And he has stated this multiple times both within the interview and within the discord.

Notable Features of the Glimesh Platform

One of the main features being added to the platform is streaming communities. His excitement was positively oozing over, the sound of a smile coating each word as he explained this feature in detail. Similar to Twitch’s Stream Teams, but more along the lines of the old system abandoned by Twitch, these communities would have the opportunity to apply tags to themselves. This creates filter points to be utilized by the search bar, allowing streamers to find communities that match their interests.

Another closely related feature was talk of an integrated multi-stream feature, where streamers can stream to a “community channel” using special stream keys.

Discovery Related Features

  1. Random Streamer Button
    • You heard that right. There is a plan to include an unweighted “Discover” button that will randomly select a streamer who is currently live on the platform. The going idea is that it would take you to a page with 6 randomly selected streams, to which you can hover over to preview. Then you can decide on who you want to watch, and join the fun.
    • There may be a filter for the category that you can set a preference for to narrow things down a bit, but that is unconfirmed, and more of a personal hope of mine.
  2. VOD Appearance in Search Results
    • This next one has to do with VOD’s. Luke is playing with the idea of including VODs in search results, perhaps as a filter option to help viewers find new streamers. This would make naming streams significantly more important than it is on other platforms, as things like keyword research come into play.
  3. Twitch Migration Button?
    • There was also mention of having a “Twitch Migration” button of sorts, which would, in theory, copy-paste followers from a Twitch account over to a Glimesh streaming account. Luke was understandably uncertain whether or not something like that would be possible, but hey, they are considering it. At the very least, they intend on making the process as painless as possible.

Platform Technology Features

Proposed infrastructure of the new streaming platform.
One of the features is that the platform will be a sort of distributed server load.
  1. FTL-Like Protocol capable of ultra-low latency streams
    • As one of the features that are confirmed, this next one is a technology for ultra-low latency. No specific name was given, but he stated that it would be a protocol comparable to Mixer’s FTL. Like FTL, though, you need to set your b-frames=0 in your x264 options and other video encoders.
  2. User-Defined Stream Thumbnail
    • Rather than just picking any old timestamp, streamers on the Glimesh platform will be able to upload and curate their stream’s thumbnails, like you can do on YouTube. About time somebody does.
  3. Big-Head Tech
    • A fun little chat encouragement game. Underneath the stream, your audience’s icons will appear in a bar. The more they chat, the bigger their icon becomes. Once one head reaches max size, a game of “Pop the head” begins, where the heads shift positions at random. Users can click on the heads, which throws a “dart” at it. The head with the most darts gets “popped” and the size gets reset, and the game can begin again. If a user does not actively engage in chat, then their head will deflate, and eventually “Wink out” of existence.
    • This feature has been placed on the back burner for now, as the development team is focusing on getting other important features in place.
  4. Multiple Audio Tracks Support (May not be possible without the help of OBS/XSplit team)
    • Since Vods have a higher value, there is a proposition to include the ability to stream multiple audio tracks to the platform. Doing so will allow the audience to mute and unmute tracks at their whims, maybe to listen to their own music, or whatever, and additionally, open up some streamer protections against DMCA. If the system detects copyright material, it simply mutes the track, instead of the whole stream. This allows streamers to salvage moments that would otherwise be ruined by a VOD mute.

What Wont Be on Glimesh

Unfortunately, due to the costs involved, transcoding for everyone will not be a thing, at least not any time soon. This is saddening to hear, but understandable. Though he hasn’t dismissed this feature as a possibility in the future, at the very least, it will not be a launch feature.

To my understanding, Partners will get access to transcoding (Yes, there is a partner/affiliate program), but he is also playing with the idea of a subscription to the platform that may or may not include transcoding as one of the incentives.

Speaking of Affiliate programs, What kind of cut do streamers on the affiliate program get?

Nothing is officially set in stone in this department, but the team has been bouncing around the idea of 90% to the streamer, with 10% going to the platform. Whether or not this is the final share value is yet to be determined, but this is certainly an interesting fact worth considering. At the moment, they are also not including an exclusivity streaming clause in the program.

What Spurred the Creation of Glimesh in Earnest?

Luke was pretty honest with me here. The fact that Mixer went under was one thing, but ultimately, the main factor in his decision to pursue this was the ridiculous levels of hype that WatchBrime generated, and their sheer unprofessionalism in handling the situation. He felt that he could do better, and so he invested into the idea thoroughly.

What kind of Investment?

Oh, not much, just a Hot $5,700 a month in server costs. Youch.

He is being extremely transparent with everybody within the discord on everything going into the platform.

I’ve got a post that covers some commonly asked questions about Glimesh, and its a bit more up-to-date than this article. I recommend giving it a read if you’d like a closer look of how phase 2 of the alpha launch is coming along.

Some Early Previews of Glimesh

Glimesh profile preview

I am very much a fan of this layout here. I will mention that I suggested the ability to add custom links to the Social links area, in case users had a blog or something else that they wanted to link.

Chat preview of the Glimesh streaming platform

This chat has a fairly nice design, though the background image is a bit busy. But hey, it is a super early WIP. I’m definitely not complaining.

And that’s about all I have for now. If you’re interested in learning more about the platform, join their discord server and ask away!

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