Catalyst is Livepeer’s open-source, decentralized media server. It’s built from the same software stack that backs the Livepeer Studio hosted platform.

Self-hosted Catalyst is in Alpha, but we’re excited for the first group of hackers to start working on it!

Current capabilities:

  • Boots up a full-stack Livepeer experience with a single command, either locally or on a hosted server.
  • Capable of transcoding on Livepeer mainnet.
  • Facilitates easy development of various components of the Livepeer stack.
  • Allows for development of applications against the Livepeer Studio API locally that can then transfer to the hosted version at livepeer.studio when you’re ready to go to production.
  • Bundles a fully-local offchain go-livepeer broadcaster and orchestrator, so that you may test transcoding with no external dependencies.

Current limitations:

  • No usage or billing data.
  • No GPU transcoding support. We recommend using very low-bitrate test files, especially if running the box using Docker for Mac or Docker for Windows. The built-in profiles for livestream transcoding use a single 240p low-quality rendition.
  • It is currently required to run the node as a Docker image. A single-binary fully-static build is in the works.