Simulcast to Facebook and YouTube With Wowza Streaming Engine
For broadcasters looking to get their message out through every medium possible, Wowza Streaming Engine supports simultaneous streaming to multiple sources using the Stream Targets functionality. Called simulcasting, this enables broadcasters to stream across multiple social media networks at once.
Simulcasting is a great way to expand your reach, without over-complicating your streaming workflow. Find out how to simulcast to Facebook and YouTube with Wowza Streaming Engine by watching the video above.
Full Video Transcript:
Justin Miller:One great feature of Wowza Streaming Engine is its ability to simultaneously stream to multiple targets. We’ll be doing this with a live stream already running from OBS Studio into Wowza Stream Engine. You can see it’s currently being played back in JW Player’s Stream Tester. Back in Wowza Streaming Engine we can go to the application being used for this stream, and then locate the incoming stream, which is aptly named, live_shoot. We’ll need to know this for setup.
Under Stream Targets we’ll be adding a stream target, but notice first that stream targets has not been Enabled. We’ll enable this now, but generally we’ll want to have this enabled first, before even starting our stream. Doing so during a stream will cause a disruption when you restart the application.
For our first Stream Target, we have many destination setups you can choose from. In most cases you’ll probably end up using the Generic RTMP, but for this stream we’ll be simulcasting to Facebook Live and YouTube Live. We’ll create targeting to Facebook Live first, making the Stream Target Name a reference to the Facebook Page. The Source Stream Name will be our incoming stream. And we’ll finish things off with a good title and description. The connection to Facebook is simple if you’re already logged into your account within the browser you’re using. Then just pick your destination, and the page if that’s required. When you’re ready, add the target.
Since stream targets is enabled and the stream is already running, the newly created stream target to Facebook will connect immediately and once active, will start streaming on Facebook. If you go to the Facebook page, we’ll see it’s already running. We can shut this down by going back to Wowza Streaming Engine and selecting the icon for disabling this stream target. But I’m going to let it continue to stream to Facebook, while we add our second stream target, this time to YouTube Live.
We’ll give this stream target a name once again, and as before, The Source Stream Name will be our incoming stream. The rest of the information we’ll need from YouTube, which means creating the live stream. Once you have everything on YouTube Live setup, We’ll first copy the main URL. This information gets divided with LIVE2 as the destination application name, and the rest as the Destination Host, well, minus the prefix. Last we’ll need the Destination Stream Name which from YouTube is the Stream Key. Just copy that over. Once you’re done, you’ll add the target like before. And then when you see it’s active, that means it’s working, and you should be live on YouTube Live, So now we’re simulcasting to YouTube Live, Facebook Live, and possibly our own website, as shown with the playback on JW Player’s Stream Tester.
To shut down each stream target, just use the option to disable them, and then confirm it. You can do this individually, or just disable all stream targets in the same way you enabled them. Okay, we’ll that’s it for simulcasting. Everything should be shut down that was targeted, but your incoming stream, which will still be running to your website.
Thanks for watching this video. For more help with Wowza Streaming Engine, please contact us at wowza.com.