Stream Sprout

Restream a video source to multiple destinations such as Twitch, YouTube, Owncast and Peertube

Made with 💝 for &

           

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 any encoder that can produce RTMP) and then restreams it to multiple destinations. This provides 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, with appropriate security measures, 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_0.1.5-1_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:

• https://flakehub.com/flake/wimpysworld/stream-sprout

Snap

For Linux distributions that support snap packages, Stream Sprout is available from the Snap Store 🛍️

sudo snap install stream-sprout

Ubuntu

• Download the Stream Sprout .deb package from the releases page 📦️
• Install it with apt-get install ./stream-sprout_0.1.5-1_all.deb.

Docker & Podman

Pull the container

The Stream Sprout container image is available from the GitHub Container Registry for amd64 and arm64. To pull the latest container image:

docker pull ghcr.io/wimpysworld/stream-sprout:latest-alpine

Or if you want a specific version:

docker pull ghcr.io/wimpysworld/stream-sprout:0.1.5-alpine

Run the container

The stream-sprout.yaml configuration file will be on the host computer so you need mount a volume to access it from the container.

If you have already pulled the container image, you can run Stream Sprout with:

docker run -p 1935:1935 -it -v $PWD:/data stream-sprout --config /data/stream-sprout.yaml

If you have not pulled or built the container image, you can run Stream Sprout with:

docker run -p 1935:1935 -it -v $PWD:/data ghcr.io/wimpysworld/stream-sprout:alpine-latest --config /data/stream-sprout.yaml

• The -p 1935:1935 part will expose the RTMP server port 1935 on the host computer.
  • If you have configured Stream Sprout to use a different port, you should change the port number here too.
• The -it options will run the container in interactive mode.
• The -v $PWD:/data part will mount your current directory $PWD as /data within the container, allowing you to access your files using the /data path.

Build the container

Build the Stream Sprout container image:

docker build -t stream-sprout .

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 📝

You can specify the configuration file to use with the --config <path> option. If you don't specify a configuration file, 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

Here's an example configuration for the Stream Sprout server: section.

server:
  ip: 127.0.0.1
  port: 1935
  app: sprout
  key: create your key with uuidgen here
  archive_stream: false
  archive_path: ~/Streams

The server: section is used to configure the RTMP server that Stream Sprout creates.

• The default ip address is 127.0.0.1. Use 0.0.0.0 to allow connections to any network interface.
  • If you remotely host Stream Sprout, use an IP address that is accessible by your computer that runs OBS Studio.
• The default port for RTMP is 1935, but you can use any port between 1024 and 65535.
• The default app name is sprout, but you can use any name you like.
• Set key: to a secure value to prevent unauthorized access. Running uuidgen will generate a suitable value.

The IP address, port, app name and key are composed to create the RTMP URL that you will use in OBS Studio. For example, rtmp://ip:port/app/key.

🚨 FFMPEG WILL ACCEPT ANY RTMP STREAM ON THE CORRECT PORT 🚨

FFmpeg does not currently enforce app or key paths for its incoming RTMP server. Regardless of the app or key you set in the Stream Sprout YAML FFmpeg will accept any incoming stream on the correct port

⚠️ Do not expose the Stream Sprout RTMP server to the public internet without additional security measures ⚠️

• Consider using a VPN or SSH tunnel to secure the connection 🔐
• Or firewall the RTMP port to only allow connections from trusted IP addresses 🔥🧱
• See the Limitations section section below for more information.

Archive streams

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.

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 Custom from the Service dropdown
• Copy the server url: from your Stream Sprout configuration to the Server field:
  • rtmp://127.0.0.1:1935/sprout (default)
• Copy the key: (if you specified one) from your Stream Sprout configuration to the Stream Key field

Limitations

• Protecting the Stream Sprout RTMP server with a key does not work
  • FFmpeg does not currently support enforcing RTMP stream app paths or keys
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/ffmpeg/comments/s4keuu/enforce_rtmp_stream_keys_and_strict_paths/
  • https://patchwork.ffmpeg.org/project/ffmpeg/patch/[email protected]/

  [rtmp @ 0x2ca9be80] Unexpected stream STREAMBOMB, expecting c5b559b2-589d-4925-a28e-20d1954fd6c5
    Last message repeated 1 times

• Stream Sprout does not support restreaming using secure RTMP (RTMPS).
  • At least I don't think it does, but I haven't fully tested it.
    • Kick only appears to support rtmps:// URLs and Stream Sprout restreams do not appear on Kick.
  • https://superuser.com/questions/1438939/live-streaming-over-rtmps-using-ffmpeg
• 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
• https://dev.to/ajeetraina/run-ffmpeg-within-a-docker-container-a-step-by-step-guide-c0l
• https://github.com/jrottenberg/ffmpeg