How to Stream to PeerTube or Owncast with OBS Studio
It’s never been a better time to be a streamer on the Fediverse. There are two great options available, and they’re both worth checking out: PeerTube, a community video platform from Framasoft, and Owncast, a Twitch-like streaming platform by Gabe Kangas. Left: PeerTube. Right: Owncast. Today, we’re going to talk about getting set up with OBS Studio, which has long been the gold standard for streamers. It’s cross-platform, open source, offers a ton of different plugins, and is easy to use!
If you’re looking to livestream, either choice is totally valid. A few considerations:
Owncast
Owncast is the more lightweight option: it’s easy to get up and running yourself, and is designed as one streamer per server. Chat is also a first-class citizen here, with extensive tools that are available right in the dashboard for moderation. It’s a great option if you’re just looking at hosting a single-user server that people can tune into.
PeerTube
PeerTube is a full-fledged video platform, with a catalogue, search, and channels. Live Streaming is a newer feature, built right into the system. Running your own PeerTube server is a bit more challenging than OwnCast, but you get the benefit of saving your videos after streaming, and it can coexist with other channels focused on other things.
One negative against PeerTube’s offering is that the live chat system is not officially part of the platform, but is instead a plugin that your admin has to set up. This means there’s a little bit more friction
Getting Started
The main thing you’re going to need is your RTMP Stream URL, and your corresponding Stream Key. Depending on which platform you’re going with, this can exist in two very different places.
Owncast
Owncast makes finding these things dead simple: because you only have one account and one stream, these values exist in your Home section, and the Stream Key lives under the Stream Keys tab in Server Settings.
PeerTube
PeerTube does this a little bit differently: because it’s possible to have multiple streams, these values instead exist in the entry for your PeerTube Live, which is what PeerTube refers to as a video with live streaming features.
If you haven’t created a Live yet, click on the Publish button in the top-right of the screen, and select Go Live. You will need to choose whether this is a one-time broadcast, or a recurring broadcast that you’ll be using frequently.
Plugging in OBS Studio
Once you have your RMTP Stream URL and Stream Key, open up OBS Studio. Click on Settings, and go to the Stream tab. For Service, you’re going to select Custom.
When you connect for the first time, OBS Studio will perform a brief stress test to decide the ideal settings for your stream. Whether you’re using OwnCast or PeerTube, you should be able to see yourself go live without any issue.
Setting Up Chat
A cornerstone for any live stream involves chat capabilities, and both platforms deliver different offerings. Owncast conveniently offers a built-in chat with the platform, whereas PeerTube requires a plug-in for that feature to work.
The good news is that the end result for both platforms is excellent, and can work great with your streaming setup.
Owncast
Since Owncast chat is built right in, it works automatically for your stream. You can moderate messages at admin/chat/messages/, moderate users at /admin/chat/users/, and add custom emoji at /admin/chat/emojis/ .
Additionally, you can turn off the chat entirely or add a little bit of gatekeeping at /admin/config-chat/
PeerTube
With PeerTube, you’ll need to make sure that your instance has the peertube-plugin-livechat package installed. If not, you’ll need to ask your admin to include it. Once the plugin is installed, you will be able to find the settings for your chatrooms in the sidebar. Each of your channels has a dedicated chatroom: if you have multiple live streams set up on a given channel, the config will be the same for each chat.
One last noteworthy bit is that you can set up a moderation bot for your chat that filters forbidden words, and also follow custom commands.
Embedding Chat
A lot of streamers like to incorporate a chat window into their streams! Both platforms support this in different ways, but you can capture and render them using the Browser Source in OBS Studio.
Set the bottom edge of your Chat like so.
When placing the Browser Source for your chat, we recommend giving the widget the height of your video, with the bottom edge of the widget against the bottom edge of the screen. As more messages enter the chat, your widget size will grow, so it’s important to keep the bottom edge aligned.
Before doing anything, you’re going to want to create a Browser Source in your scene. In your Scene, go to Sources, click the plus button, then pick Browser Source.
A dialog will pop up in OBS Studio. Use the link that you got from the last step as your URL value, then set the width and the height. My video capture is 1920 x 1080, so I set the Height value as 1920. I also set the FPS value to match my camera’s capture rate, which is 60FPS.
Using Owncast Chat
Create your Browser Source, and use your equivalent to this Chat URL: http://localhost:8080/embed/chat/readonly, substituting localhost:8080 for whatever domain you’re broadcasting from.
The theme system for Owncast Chat feels a little bit obtuse, but here’s my best attempt to make it look better with Custom CSS and transparency. When I have more time, I may write a few different custom styles for it. body { background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) !important; margin: 0px auto; overflow: hidden !important; }.ChatContainer_chatContainer__jj1A1 { flex: 0 0 auto; display: flex; flex-direction: column; background-color: #0000; height: 100%; font-size: 20px !important;}.ChatUserMessage_root__wl4Pw .ChatUserMessage_message__JJiP9 { overflow: hidden; overflow-wrap: anywhere; font-weight: 800; position: relative; font-size: 20px;}
Using PeerTube Chat
Create your Browser Source, then get the link from the PeerTube Live chat from where you’re broadcasting. You’ll see this with the little “link” button in the chatroom. Afterwards, a dialogue will appear with some options: we recommend setting a transparent background for OBS Studio. There’s also a Custom CSS section to customize the output. The chat plugin uses ConverseJS, which is a little bit harder to theme. I managed to bang out a very basic user theme to make it look a bit better, but struggled to change the color of user names.
Here’s a copy of the Custom CSS I used for mine: body { background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); margin: 0px auto; overflow: hidden; }.conversejs .show-msg-author-modal a { color: #7c71ff !important; text-shadow: 1px 1px 2px #737272;}.conversejs .message.chat-msg .chat-msg__content { text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #000; color: #fff !important;}.conversejs .message.chat-msg .chat-msg__text { color: #fff; font-weight: 800; font-size: 20px;}.conversejs .align-self-center, .conversejs .align-self-center image { width: 60px; height: 60px;}.conversejs .message.chat-msg { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;}.conversejs .chat-msg__author { font-size: 140% !important;}
In Conclusion
We hope that this guide was helpful in getting you started with streaming on the Fediverse! We will periodically update this guide with more info and resources as we continue to explore, but this is a solid starting point for getting up and running.
If you have any questions, ask in the comments, and we’ll look at incorporating your feedback!
A free software to take back control of your videos! With more than 600,000 hosted videos, viewed more than 70 millions times and 150,000 users, PeerTube is the decentralized free software alternative to videos platforms developed by Framasoft
I'mma just copypasta your hashtag line below ;) Let's not forget, in #Misskey parlance: #ReNotes - which arguably, might be the most etymologically correct of all of them, since most (at least masto) posts are 'notes', rather than 'articles'.
And in fact, quote-posts in the Fediverse are about six years older than Mastodon
That might be a good tidbit for Yuki to expand upon in his Fediverse history doc at Codeberg ?
As more and more people are asking me about Mastodon I felt a need for a picture to point at, showcasing how the software known as Mastodon fits into the much larger concept of the Fediverse.
If you aren't aware, the BlueSky-Fediverse bridge known as BridgyFed is live now.
Back when it was announced, there was a small window of time when it was added to the Oliphant's Tier 0 blocklist.
If you are using this blocklist and WANT to be federated with BlueSky, please double check to make sure you don't have the version of the list that it appears on. You may have blocked the bridge and not even know it.
The domain you want to look for is: brid.gy
Please boost for reach, so your admin knows of this possible issue. Thanks. 🙏
Hallo #Fediverse, wir berichten nun auch hier auf #mastodon über unsere Arbeit, unsere Projekte und unser Programm.
Die Stiftung Mitarbeit unterstützt das bürgerschaftliche #Engagement und die #Bürgerbeteiligung u.a. durch Publikationen, Fachtagungen, Methodenseminare sowie Projekte und Modellvorhaben.
So...now that BridgyFed is live, how about if those who don't want an open platform (like we currently have) block the bot. Then after a reasonable enough time (a month?) We make it opt-out like the rest of the platform?
I'm still SO confused by the fact that a lot of you want a closed platform, while being on an open one, yet here we are.
What say you? Can we ACTUALLY get back to the goal of this platform? to be open and allow those on other platforms to follow and interact with us freely? Or are we still wanting our "open walled garden" concept?
ActivityPub is built on being an open platform for engagement across social networks. However, what we have here with BridgyFed, does not build on that goal, because you all asked it not to.😔
you don't work with the devil in any capacity and somehow the world gets better. you kill the devil. #socialmedia gets better when #Facebook, #Twitter, #Tiktok, etc die. and the #Fediverse's role in that is to help kill them by providing a better #decentralized future without #privacy defilement and #algorithm manipulation. obviously it needs more features. people are working on that
das hab ich mal installiert (allerdings nen jahr her), aber postet im prinzip nur die ersten x zeichen hierher, und verlinkt den rest.
Das ist ein kombiniertes Feature von a) WriteFreely, b) ActivityPub und c) Mastodon.
WriteFreely sendet Posts nicht als Note-Objekte (= Tweet = Mastodon-Tröt), sondern als Article-Objekte (= lange, formatierte Blogposts). ActivityPub unterscheidet dazwischen.
Mastodon könnte Blogposts mit allen Schikanen bis hin zu irgendwo im laufenden Text eingebetteten Bildern sowieso nicht darstellen. Also versucht es das gar nicht erst und zeigt Article-Objekte als:
Title, so vorhanden
Zusammenfassung, so vorhanden (= Mastodon-CW; auf WriteFreely sind das entweder die automatisch gewählten ersten Zeichen oder alles bis <!--more-->
das hab ich mal installiert (allerdings nen jahr her), aber postet im prinzip nur die ersten x zeichen hierher, und verlinkt den rest.
Das ist ein kombiniertes Feature von a) WriteFreely, b) ActivityPub und c) Mastodon.
WriteFreely sendet Posts nicht als Note-Objekte (= Tweet = Mastodon-Tröt), sondern als Article-Objekte (= lange, formatierte Blogposts). ActivityPub unterscheidet dazwischen.
Mastodon könnte Blogposts mit allen Schikanen bis hin zu irgendwo im laufenden Text eingebetteten Bildern sowieso nicht darstellen. Also versucht es das gar nicht erst und zeigt Article-Objekte als:
Title, so vorhanden
Zusammenfassung, so vorhanden (= Mastodon-CW; auf WriteFreely sind das entweder die automatisch gewählten ersten Zeichen oder alles bis <!--more-->
Link zum Original
Die Alternative wäre gewesen, in Mastodon von Anfang an Anzeigefeatures einzubauen, die mit Microblogging und Twitter-Nachäffen nichts zu tun haben, und den Mastodon-Nutzern damit zu zeigen, daß es im Fediverse andere Projekte als Mastodon gibt, die ganz viele coole Sachen können, die Mastodon nicht kann.
sowas wie ne kommentarfunktion gibt es nicht, oder übersehe ich was?
Ist geplant, aber noch nicht implementiert.
Plume hat Kommentare und sogar einen eingebauten Bildhoster, wird aber so langsam weiterentwickelt, daß die Plume-Entwickler selber WriteFreely vorschlagen, obwohl das weniger kann.
I just want to say for my first post to the #Fediverse that I've already seen more #alttext in the last couple of days than I've literally seen in my entire life. I don't know what it is, but as a blind user it's making me emotional to be able to actually interact with content. Think I'll write an introduction soon. #accessibility #Mastodon #redditMigration
I had a few ideas on how an app you'd log into would show you these posts, but they all have different drawbacks, and it might just not be worth my time. Maybe we'll get mutuals-only posts soon!
If not, feel free to run with this, see if you can make something.
Amber ist eine freundliche Stute von 165cm Stockmaß. Sie ist seit 1,5 Jahren bei mir. Laut...,Irish Sport Horse Stute 15J. in Nordrhein-Westfalen - Petershagen
»We Need To #Rewild The Internet« – Rewilding zielt darauf ab, gesunde Ökosysteme wiederherzustellen, indem wilde, biodiverse Räume geschaffen werden. Auf's Ökosystem des Internets umgelegt: Wechselt ins #Fediverse! Pflegt eure eigenen #Webauftritte! Gründet und betreibt dezentrale #Diskussionsforen und interaktive Medien!
We're excited to share that the Flipboard community team is kicking off this new account to celebrate and amplify Magazines curated by passionate enthusiasts and experts, publishers, and organizations on Flipboard.
Follow along to get recommendations for Magazines to follow in news, tech, science, history, culture, travel and more. A Magazine is a curated feed of posts about a specific topic or interest that is followable, just like a profile.
To get this party started, here are 10 Magazines to follow in tech from trending news to AI and EVs:
We're excited to share that the Flipboard community team is kicking off this new account to celebrate and amplify Magazines curated by passionate enthusiasts and experts, publishers, and organizations on Flipboard.
Follow along to get recommendations for Magazines to follow in news, tech, science, history, culture, travel and more. A Magazine is a curated feed of posts about a specific topic or interest that is followable, just like a profile.
To get this party started, here are 10 Magazines to follow in tech from trending news to AI and EVs:
We ran a webinar on April 18 for creators and curators who are curious about the fediverse, have a federated Flipboard account, and don't know what to do next. Here's a link to the recording, plus the TL;DR bullet points if you don't have time to watch it.
We recently announced that we federated 400 of Flipboard’s top creators and curators, meaning that their Flipboard activity is now syndicated out to fediverse platforms like Mastodon and eventually…
Dieses Video ist eine überarbeitete Version des Videos "Die Welt nach Facebook, Twitter & YouTube- Potenziale und Probleme zentralisierter und dezentraler Dienste", meinem Vortrag auf dem #FediverseFachtag am 20.09.2023 in Köln.
Bild und Ton wurden bearbeitet und die Folien ins Video integriert.
Ückück und das Fediverse - meine neue Kolumne bei @gnulinux
Ein neues Projekt steht an und ich freue mich sehr. Ab diesem Monat werde ich regelmäßig für GNU/Linux.ch über das Fediverse schreiben, mal spezielle Projekte vorstellen, mal von Veranstaltungen berichten, mal einen Blick auf die Meta-Ebene vagen - es gibt jedenfalls genug zu berichten, dass ich eine Weile beschäftigt bin 😁
Je treft het dat het vandaag #followfriday is Hieronder komt een draadje met volg tips.🧵
Paar algemene tips: 1️⃣ Volg eerst @FediTips voor nog veel meer tips.
2️⃣ Vergeet de #Alttext niet om toegankelijk te zijn voor #slechtzienden. Volg @alt_text voor automagische reminders. de #fediverse is inclusief, willen we graag zo houden.
3️⃣ Vind je iemand@super_interessante_specifieke_server? check dan super_interessante_specifieke_server/directory bijv https://eupolicy.social/directory
4️⃣ gebruik #tags , dan kunnen mensen je toots over dit onderwerp ook vinden.
This is a Mastodon instance for the EU policy bubble. We aim to be a friendly and respectful discussion space for people working in EU policy and to contribute to the growth of the Fediverse.
New features for Newsmast: We are so excited to announce a release we have been working on for more than a year - The Amplifier. 🧭
We believe curated timelines let you discover more. But only if you are the one in control.
Our Amplifier will be able to:
✅ Opt-in or out of posts from Bluesky & Threads ✅ Choose whether to include Posts, Reposts or Replies ✅ Cycle back through time and pick up where you left off with a version of Phanpy’s “Catch-up” feature
Für mich ist das Fedi weiterhin sowas von positiv durch Menschen wie Dich und bitte - nicht bange machen lassen. Tipp - den hier 🖕 zügiger nutzen, Quengler und Konsorten verdienen's nicht besser. Du bist zu gutmütig und das nutzt dieses Pack aus.
Set the bottom edge of your Chat like so.
Hieronder komt een draadje met volg tips.🧵
