Open Source Meets Broadcast:

OMT Challenges NDI in Low-Latency Video

Many have already heard of the OMT protocol—an open-source alternative to the proprietary NDIprotocol developed by the vMix team.

Both protocols are designed for low-latency video transmission over local networks.

At the core of NDI and OMT compression lies a variant of the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT)—the same mathematical foundation used, for example, when saving images in the JPEG format. This approach allows the original gigabit video stream to be compressed 8–10 times with no perceptible loss in quality.

You might reasonably ask: why use a specialized compression scheme when universal codecs like H.264 or HEVC exist—and can transmit video not only over local networks but also over the internet?

The answer is straightforward: H.264 and HEVC do not tolerate multiple encode–decode cycles well. Each round of re-encoding introduces artifacts and irreversibly degrades image quality.

In contrast, NDI and OMT are specifically engineered for repeated use in production environments. You can route video signals between multiple devices and applications—without accumulating compression artifacts or noticeable quality loss.