NDI is the dominant IP-based studio video transport. It encodes video with a lightweight intra-frame codec (NDI SpeedHQ, or NDI HX2/HX3 for compressed variants), runs over normal LAN at 100–300 Mbps per stream, supports audio, alpha, tally and PTZ control in-band, and discovers sources automatically over mDNS. It was launched by NewTek in 2015 and is now widely supported by switchers (vMix, OBS, Wirecast), cameras (BirdDog, PTZOptics), software (Streamlabs, Zoom NDI mode) and broadcast playout systems.
Inside a studio NDI replaces SDI cables. Where SDI runs one direction over coax with no return signal and no audio mixing, NDI runs bidirectionally over Ethernet, automatically reroutes through Layer-2 switches, and brings tally/PTZ along the same wire. A small studio with ten NDI cameras can be wired with a single managed Ethernet switch and zero SDI infrastructure — a massive cost and complexity win.
NDI is not a contribution-to-cloud protocol — its bitrate is too high for public internet and it relies on local network properties (multicast, low jitter, mDNS) that the internet does not provide. For going from a NDI-based studio out to a cloud encoder or live platform, the pattern is NDI→SRT or NDI→WHIP via a gateway product (vMix, OBS, BirdDog Cloud, Sienna). NDI 5 (2021) added bridging over SRT for site-to-site use, narrowing the boundary, but cloud contribution remains SRT/WHIP territory in 2026.
The book · Volume 2 of 7
Video Streaming: A Complete Guide to Video Delivery: From Network Protocols and Transport to Ingest, HLS, and MPEG-DASH
NDI makes studio video routing as simple as plugging into Ethernet, but its bandwidth and multicast needs collide with office networks, and feeds leave the building only through other protocols. This volume covers contribution transport for NDI-based studios in detail, with SRT, RIST and RTMP ingest, network behaviour and the latency budget from camera to platform. Written by Nikolay Sapunov, CEO at Fora Soft.
Moving NDI production feeds off-site to the cloud or a streaming platform?
Describe your studio and destination and we will design an NDI-to-cloud contribution path with protocol choice, bandwidth budget and a latency estimate. 250+ video products shipped since 2005.
