In the context of media streaming services or Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS), a media server refers to a specialized server or software component responsible for performing certain processing tasks on multimedia data streams, such as audio, video, and other media content, during real-time communication sessions or streaming sessions.
Some of the important tasks performed by media servers include:
- Media encoding & decoding: Processing of incoming and outgoing media streams to encode, decode, and transcode across different codecs, and performing packetization, and format conversion to ensure compatibility and optimal quality across different devices and network conditions.
- Media mixing and multiplexing: Mixing multiple audio and video streams from different participants or sources into a single composite stream for multi-party conferences, webinars, or live broadcasts.
- Media recording and archiving: Recording and archival of media streams for later playback, analysis, or storage.