Live Stream to Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and Periscope Simultaneously Using Wowza Streaming Engine

Justin Miller:

Looking to stream live video to multiple social media networks at the same time? With Wowza Streaming Engine, you can. We call it simulcasting and it requires the addition of a stream target for each network. Generally, a social media network gives you a server URL and stream key to stream to their network. Sometimes these are merged together as one long URL. We take this information and divide it for the stream target destination. We divide it into host, port, application name, and the stream key becomes the stream name.

Let’s look at setting up some stream targets by adding YouTube, Twitch, Periscope, and Facebook for simulcasting. Before we can do anything, we’ll need to get the server URL and stream key from these different social media networks. In YouTube, you’ll need to go into creator’s studio and then under live streaming, you’ll find the server URL and the stream key. On Twitch, they have multiple servers, which are listed on this page. Choose the server that’s closest to you. To access the stream key, you’ll need to go into Twitch and access your Dashboard. On the left side, select the Channel under Settings. There, you’ll find the stream key.

Periscope requires you to use the app itself and get your server URL and stream key. Under people, use the top-right icon, then scroll down to Settings and use the Periscope Producer option. The information shown is what you’ll need. Facebook does things a little different with Wowza Streaming Engine, so we’ll look at them last. Now, in Wowza Streaming Engine, go to Applications to locate your Live Application. In this case, we’ll use the default “live.” Right now, we have no incoming streams, but we’ll assume the incoming stream would be named Denver. Now, let’s go under Stream Targets and choose to Add Stream Target.

Facebook and YouTube are both listed under third-party target destinations. For Twitch and Periscope, you’ll need to use RTMP as the generic target destination. Let’s start with YouTube. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll call the stream target “YouTube” and add the Source Stream as “Denver.” Now you can take the server URL and stream key and divide them through the required destination fields. Once you’re done, you can Add the Target, then return to Stream Targets. Let’s repeat this process using the generic RTMP target destination for Twitch and Periscope. Now, in most cases the destination port by default is 1935, unless otherwise specified, such as, well, with Periscope.

You may also notice that RTMP:// isn’t required when adding information into the host name. Now, once you’re done with both Twitch and Periscope and have returned to Stream Targets, you can see that all of these stream targets are on a waiting status. You can always disable the stream targets directly. Now, for our last stream target, we’re going to add Facebook. Facebook is different because it requires you to log in and authorize your account. Therefore, there’s no server URL or stream key necessary. You’ll need to continue using your account, allow posts to be Public, and then click okay out of both windows. Once you’ve done that, you can choose options for video destination, like a specific page on Facebook.

All right. That’s it. If you want to test simulcasting, you’ll still need to set up a source with that stream name of “Denver.” If you want to test this with an RTMP encoder, be sure under Server you’ve created a source authentication. If you have an encoder like OVS Studio on the same system that Wowza Streaming Engine is installed, you can go under settings and under streams you can add a custom stream server with the settings below. Be sure to use authentication referencing that source authentication we just looked at. Once that’s set up, you’ll be able to start streaming. Once you have started your stream, you will be live on all your stream targets that are now enabled. That means, you’re simulcasting. Thanks for watching and happy streaming.