Highlights
- Enhance the functionality of your ViewShark website with live streaming (including vods), as well as a fully featured live chat system.
- Live streaming is scalable and supports multiple servers for broadcasting and streaming. Load balacing support is also available.
- Live chat supports the following features: moderators, bans, ignores, timeouts, message deleting, nickname badges (broadcaster, moderator, subscriber), nickname colors, emotes/emoticons, subscription notifications, follow notifications, slow mode, subscriber-only mode, followers-only mode, timestamps, /me actions, @username addressing, settings menu, viewers list, clear chat, popout chat, hide chat
- Live streams can be accessed from any device. Live chat is responsive.
- Vods and vod previews can be generated after every live stream. Paid subscribers can access full length vods.
Requirements
- OBS Studio (or other similar software)
- one or more servers running NGINX with module support for: ssl, rtmp, http stub status, mp4 module, ts module, secure link module, ngx devel kit, misc nginx module, xslt module
- one or more servers running NODE for load balancing
- We recommend at least 3 or 4 additional servers to start with: one server for streamers, one server for viewers, one server for vods, one server for live chat.
Details
- Define unlimited servers, easy management of available servers.
- Every server will need to run a custom nginx configuration and crontab actions, depending on its purpose or type.
- The following types of servers can be added: broadcast servers, streaming servers, VOD servers, chat servers, load balancer servers.
- Broadcast servers are the servers which receive the data from the streamers.
- Streaming servers are the servers which receive the data from the broadcast servers and process it, making it available for the web.
- VOD servers are the servers which will store the VODs from all the live streams.
- Chat servers are the servers used by users for chatting in real-time during live streams (or vods).
- Load balancers are the servers used to determine the optimal (most free) broadcast or streaming server for the client's connection. If no load balancers are available, then random servers will be assigned.
- After every live stream, the system can create a vod and a 30 second preview of it. Paid subscribers will have access to full length vods.
- Registered users can chat in real-time during every live stream or vod. The live chat is responsive, can be detached and ran in its own window and has many other features.
- Every user account can be specifically permitted or denied to run live streams, live chat or vods.
- Followers and subscribers are notified by email about every new live stream.
- We recommend using OBS for recording and streaming, although other software would work as well.
OBS Setup Example
- A very important OBS setting is the Keyframe Interval, which needs to be set to 1 (this step must be done just once, not every time you stream).
- The setting is available at Settings > Output > Output Mode > Advanced
- Starting a Broadcast/Live Stream
- Go to Media Library (Uploads) and add a new broadcast. After submitting you will see the "Stream Setup" page.
- Open OBS and click Settings > Stream
- Select "Custom Streaming Server"
- At "URL" add the "Stream Server" from your "Stream Setup" page
- At "Stream key" add the "Stream Name/Key"
- click OK and then click Start Streaming
- If you see the green square, then your stream is live!