Discovery Service

Overview

In modern networked media environments, efficient discovery and management of NDI® audio and video sources are essential for scalable, low-latency workflows. The NDI Discovery Service is a centralized, server-based protocol designed to replace automatic mDNS-based discovery. It provides a more predictable and scalable method for registering and locating NDI sources and receivers. It is especially valuable in networks where multicast traffic is restricted or discouraged, such as cloud-hosted or enterprise environments.

Why Use Discovery Service?

Traditional NDI discovery uses mDNS, which works well on smaller networks but can cause congestion or fail in multicast-restricted environments. The Discovery Service introduces a centralized registry model that:

• Reduces unnecessary network chatter.

• Enables reliable operation across subnets and firewalled segments.

• Offers real-time updates and visibility into connected NDI sources and receivers.

• Supports enhanced monitoring and control features introduced in NDI 6.2.

Flexible Deployment

Discovery Service is flexible. You can run it as a background service on Windows or Linux or as a standalone application. All with minimal resource usage. Additionally, it can be run on a local machine or hosted remotely to serve multiple clients.

It supports both 32-bit and 64-bit environments (64-bit recommended). Installation packages are available from ndi.video.

Client Configuration

NDI clients, including senders, finders, and receivers, can be configured to use the Discovery Service in place of or alongside mDNS. This ensures broader compatibility across different segments of the network. It also means users will have greater control over which sources are visible to specific devices. As part of the 6.2 update, seamless integration using Access Manager or the new NDI Discovery Tool, are both included in the NDI Tools suite.

Developer Integration

The NDI SDK includes new APIs that allow developers to query available NDI sources via the Discovery Service and subscribe to real-time updates. You can now also monitor and control receiver connections.

These capabilities unlock tighter integrations with third-party applications and more sophisticated media control workflows. For implementation details, see the SDK documentation under NDI-Recv Discovery, Monitor, and Control.

Click here to view the full Discovery Service documentation in our SDK which includes instructions, configuration options, and command-line usage on both Windows and Linux.