🎥 YouTube Live Broadcaster

Turn local video files into a 24/7 YouTube Live stream — playlists, looping, auto-detected encoding (up to 4K), and a real-time control dashboard. Built with Node.js + FFmpeg.

A self-hosted web app that streams desktop videos to your YouTube channel over RTMP. It probes your machine's FFmpeg capabilities, auto-detects the best encoding settings for each source video, and gives you a live dashboard with metrics, logs, and pre-stream warnings. Ideal for 24/7 looping channels (music, ambience, radio).

✨ Features

• Multi-stream — create and run several streams at once
• Playlists & looping — sequence videos and loop forever (great for 24/7 channels)
• Adaptive resolution — 720p / 1080p / 1440p / 4K (2160p), auto-detected and overridable
• Auto-analysis — ffprobe reads each video and recommends encoder, bitrate, fps, and resolution
• Hardware encoding — auto-detects NVENC / QSV / AMF, falls back to libx264
• Real-time dashboard — live bitrate / fps / speed metrics and logs over WebSocket
• Pre-stream warnings — silent video, upscaling, CPU-bound 4K, aspect-ratio mismatch, and more
• Upload estimate — shows the recommended minimum upload bandwidth for your bitrate
• Resilient — ingest handshake detection and auto-reconnect with backoff
• Scheduled auto-stop — end the stream automatically at a set time of day or after a duration (changeable while live)
• Cross-platform — Windows, macOS, Linux

🖼️ Screenshots

Auto-detected settings with resolution-aware bitrate presets and live pre-stream warnings:

🧠 Tech highlights

The interesting engineering, for the curious:

• FFmpeg capability probing at startup — runs real encode tests to discover which encoders and AAC options actually work on the host, then adapts. No hard-coded assumptions across machines.
• Source-aware recommendations — ffprobe → resolution tier + YouTube-range bitrate + frame rate, applied automatically unless you override a field.
• Dynamic scale/pad filter — letterbox/pillarbox to any target resolution while preserving the source aspect ratio.
• CPU-decode + GPU-encode pipeline — offloads the heavy encode to the hardware encoder while keeping a portable filter chain.
• Live warnings engine — cross-checks the chosen settings against the probed source to flag risky/suboptimal setups before you go live.
• Crash-safe persistence — atomic writes of stream configs and a graceful shutdown that stops active FFmpeg processes.

🏗️ Architecture

Browser (SPA)  ──HTTP──▶  Express REST API ──▶ StreamManager ──spawn──▶ FFmpeg ──RTMP──▶ YouTube
      ▲                                              │
      └──────────────────── WebSocket ◀─────────────┘   (live metrics, logs, status)

• server.js — Express REST API, static UI, WebSocket broadcast, filesystem/probe endpoints
• StreamManager.js — stream lifecycle, FFmpeg command building, retry/handshake logic, persistence
• capabilities.js — one-time FFmpeg capability detection
• public/ — vanilla-JS single-page dashboard (no framework)

📦 Requirements

• Node.js v14 or later
• FFmpeg on your system PATH (ffmpeg -version)
• A hardware encoder (NVENC / QSV / AMF) is recommended for real-time 4K
• Live streaming enabled on your YouTube channel

🚀 Quick start

npm install
npm start
# then open http://localhost:3000

Windows users can also just double-click start.bat. For a step-by-step walkthrough see QUICKSTART.md.

Installing FFmpeg

Windows

1. Download a build from https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/ (ffmpeg-release-full.zip)
2. Extract it to C:\ffmpeg (so you have C:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe)
3. Add C:\ffmpeg\bin to your system Path environment variable
4. Open a new terminal and verify with ffmpeg -version

macOS

brew install ffmpeg

Linux

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ffmpeg

🎬 Usage

1. In YouTube Studio → Go Live → Stream, copy your RTMP URL and Stream Key.
2. In the app, click + New, name the stream, and paste the RTMP URL and Stream Key.
3. Click Select Video and pick a file — the app auto-analyzes it and fills in the recommended settings.
4. Adjust resolution / encoder / bitrate if you like (warnings guide you), then click ▶ Start.

🔌 API

The web UI is a thin client over a REST API + WebSocket, so you can script it too:

GET    /api/streams              # list streams
GET    /api/streams/:id          # stream detail
POST   /api/streams              # create  { name, rtmpUrl, streamKey, playlist, loop }
PUT    /api/streams/:id          # update  { name, rtmpUrl, streamKey, encoder, bitrate, fps, width, height, loop,
                                 #           autoStopMode ('off'|'clock'|'duration'), autoStopTime 'HH:MM', autoStopMinutes }
PUT    /api/streams/:id/playlist # set playlist  { playlist: [paths] }
POST   /api/streams/:id/start    # start
POST   /api/streams/:id/stop     # stop
DELETE /api/streams/:id          # delete

POST   /api/probe                # ffprobe a file + recommended settings  { path }
GET    /api/videos?path=...      # list videos in a directory
GET    /api/directories?path=... # list subdirectories
GET    /api/capabilities         # detected FFmpeg version / encoders / filters

⚠️ Notes & limitations

• Videos are read from the server's filesystem (the machine running the app) — there is no upload. It's designed to be self-hosted by the person who owns the videos.
• No built-in authentication — run it locally or behind your own access control / tunnel.
• Real-time 4K is CPU/GPU intensive; a hardware encoder is strongly recommended (libx264/CPU may not keep up).

🛠️ Troubleshooting

• "FFmpeg not found" — make sure ffmpeg -version works in a fresh terminal; the app also auto-detects C:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe.
• Stream won't start — check the RTMP URL and Stream Key, confirm the stream is enabled in YouTube Studio, and check your connection.
• Stuttering / falling behind — watch the Speed metric; if it drops below 1.0x your encoder can't keep up. Lower the resolution/bitrate or use a hardware encoder.

📄 License

MIT © Atakan Sarıkoç — see LICENSE.

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Made with ❤️ by Atakan Sarıkoç