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Backup Livestreaming Servers?
Rank: Newbie
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Joined: 3/19/2024(UTC) Posts: 1  Location: Vancouver Island
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Hi folks,
I mainly use vMix to produce 24/7 live broadcasted wildlife camera streams to YouTube.
It seems to be a lesser known fact (I've found out the hard way many times) that when a YouTube Studio stream receives "No Data" for 4 hours, the "Scheduled Stream" ends and the URL to the stream page well, changes.
My clients house their end-user livestreams on their websites and viewers often bookmark the livestreams to their browsers. Suffice to say, it is not a good look when the URL changes!
Currently, the way I've gotten around this is to host a "backup" source on a VPS that sends a "Stream Down" slate message when the primary stream is not receiving any data.
YouTube (and ReStream) both provide the logic for automatically switching to the backup stream RTMP if there is "No Data" received from the Primary.
Unfortunately, YouTube Studio does not house any logic that switches back to the Primary RTMP or checks that the Primary stream is back to functional. I'm using somewhat buggy Node-Red logic to get around this that calls the vMix API. This only works on one of my systems that has external access (port-forwarding/Static WAN) to the vMix API. Moreover, on the systems that do not have external access to call the vMix API, there is merely a simple logic: FFMPEG stream to the backup YouTube RTMP, then kill FFPMEG and start over every 15 seconds.
My question:
Do you folks know of any service in which:
-I can push my RTMP output to the hosting service -The hosting service can then push out to my YouTube Studio (providing them with a stream key of course) -The hosting service monitors my stream health -When the primary stream is down it switches to a Backup slate screen (a simple image that I've provided the hosting service with, removing the need for an external VPS) -It checks the status of the primary stream and switches back to it when it becomes available.
I have been desperately looking for a service which does all of this to take the overhead and bugginess off of my current solution. Ideally a plug and play hosting service that I can just pay a monthly fee to and all the rest is figured out. I would appreciate any help with this!!
Maybe this Node-Red server is my only solution.
Thanks so much for any and all suggestions!
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Rank: Newbie
Groups: Registered
Joined: 10/17/2026(UTC) Posts: 6  Location: Scotland
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Late to this, but did you ever find something better than the Node-RED VPS? Your write-up matches what I keep hearing: YouTube's backup ingest takes over but never hands back to the primary, and after 4 hours of no data the event ends and the URL changes, which is fatal for a 24/7 stream with bookmarked embeds.
One thing that helps a bit: create the broadcast in YouTube Studio with a persistent stream key and auto-stop turned off, so short drops don't close the event. It doesn't solve the "show a slate while I'm gone, then switch back" problem though. For that you really do need something sitting between vMix and YouTube, like your VPS.
Full disclosure: I'm a developer who works on live video ingest (RTMP/SRT), and I'm researching whether a hosted version of exactly what you built is worth making. Not selling anything. I'd just love 20 minutes to hear how your setup has held up and what breaks. If you're up for it, PM me. Either way, hope the wildlife streams are running smoothly.
Liam
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