8.4 KiB
Stream Sprout
Restream a video source to multiple destinations such as Twitch, YouTube, Owncast and Peertube
Made with 💝 for
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Introduction
Stream Sprout 🌱 is a simple, self-contained, and easy-to-use solution for streaming to multiple destinations such as Twitch, YouTube, Owncast and Peertube 📡
It uses FFmpeg to receive the video stream from OBS Studio (or anything that can publish a RTMP stream) and then restreams it to multiple destinations; providing similar functionality as services like Restream.io and Livepush.io but without the need to pay 💸 for a third-party service or run something like nginx with the RTMP module.
Stream Sprout is configured with a simple YAML file and designed to be run on the same computer as your OBS Studio instance (it can be run remotely too) and does not require root privileges.
There is no transcoding or processing of the video stream 🎞️ The stream is received and then restreamed to the destinations you configure without modification. Optionally you can also archive the stream to disk 💾
While the restreaming process is lightweight, your bandwidth requirements will increase with each destination you add. 📈 Ensure you have sufficient bandwidth to support the number of destinations you intend to stream to ⤴️
Stream Sprout is developed on Linux 🐧 and should work on macOS 🍏 or any other platform that supports bash and ffmpeg 👍️
Get Started
- Install Stream Sprout 🧑💻
- Configure Stream Sprout 🧑💻
- Configure OBS Studio 🎛️
- Start
stream-sprout⌨️ - Click the Start Streaming button in OBS Studio 🖱️
- Do you your thing 🎥
- Click the Stop Streaming button in OBS Studio 🖱️
- Ctrl + C to stop
stream-sprout⌨️
Installation
Debian
- Download the Stream Sprout .deb package from the releases page 📦️
- Install it with
apt-get install ./stream-sprout_0.1.3-1_all.deb.
macOS
Install the Stream Sprout requirements using brew:
brew install bash ffmpeg
Now clone the project:
git clone https://github.com/wimpysworld/stream-sprout.git
cd stream-sprout
Nix & NixOS
Stable releases of Stream Sprout are published to FlakeHub for Nix users ❄️ See the flake on FlakeHub for more details:
Ubuntu
- Download the Stream Sprout .deb package from the releases page 📦️
- Install it with
apt-get install ./stream-sprout_0.1.3-1_all.deb.
From source
You need to have FFmpeg on your system.
git clone https://github.com/wimpysworld/stream-sprout.git
cd stream-sprout
Configure Stream Sprout
Copy the example Stream Sprout configuration and edit it to suit your needs 📝
Stream Sprout will look for a configuration file in the following locations, in this order:
- Current working directory
./stream-sprout.yaml - XDG configuration directory
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/stream-sprout.yaml(Linux) or~/.config/stream-sprout.yaml(macOS) /etc/stream-sprout.yaml
Server
The server: section is used to configure the RTMP server that Stream Sprout creates; it must be an RTMP URL.
The default port for RTMP is 1935, but you can use any port you like.
If you remotely host Stream Sprout, you should use an IP address in the url: that accessible by your computer that runs OBS Studio and also set key: to a secure value to prevent unauthorized access.
Running uuidgen will generate a suitable value.
If archive_stream: is true Stream Sprout will archive the stream to disk in the directory specified by archive_path:.
If archive_path: is not accessible, Stream Sprout will fallback to using the current working directory.
Here's an example configuration for the Stream Sprout server: section.
server:
url: "rtmp://127.0.0.1:1935"
key: "create your key with uuidgen here"
archive_stream: false
archive_path: "${HOME}/Streams"
Services
services: are arbitrarily named.
Just create an entry for each RTMP destination you want to stream to.
The example configuration includes entries for Trovo, Twitch, and YouTube but any RTMP destination can be added.
services:
my-rtmp-destination:
enabled: true
rtmp_server: "rtmp://rtmp.example.com/live/"
key: "my_super_secret_stream_key"
Twitch
Here's an example configuration for Twitch.
services:
twitch:
enabled: true
rtmp_server: "rtmp://live.twitch.tv/app/"
key: "your_twitch_stream_key"
Ingest servers
The example configuration uses the primary Twitch ingest endpoint, which is rtmp://live.twitch.tv/app/.
If you want to optimize your stream latency, you can use a Twitch ingest endpoint closer to your location.
A short list of recommended endpoints, based on your whereabouts, is available from Recommended Ingest Endpoints For You.
You can find a complete list of Twitch ingest endpoints from https://twitchstatus.com/.
Testing
If you want to test streaming to Twitch without going live, you can use the ?bandwidthtest=true query parameter.
Add ?bandwidthtest=true to the end of your Twitch stream key, this will enable bandwidth testing, which you can monitor using https://inspector.twitch.tv/, and the stream will not go live on your channel.
YouTube
Here's an example configuration for YouTube.
services:
youtube:
enabled: true
rtmp_server: "rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/"
key: "your_youtube_stream_key"
Configure OBS Studio
- Open OBS Studio
- Go to
Settings>Stream - Select
Customfrom theServicedropdown - Copy the server
url:from your Stream Sprout configuration to theServerfield:rtmp://127.0.0.1:1935(default)
- Copy the
key:(if you specified one) from your Stream Sprout configuration to theStream Keyfield
Limitations
- Stream Sprout does not support secure RTMP (RTMPS) at this time.
- At least I don't think it does, but I haven't fully tested it.
- Each destination you add will increase your bandwidth requirements.
References
These are some of the references used to create this project:
- https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/EncodingForStreamingSites
- https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-protocols.html#rtmp
- https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-formats.html#flv
- https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-formats.html#tee-1
- https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-studio-stream-to-multiple-platforms-or-channels-at-once.932/
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16658873/how-to-minimize-the-delay-in-a-live-streaming-with-ffmpeg
