Setting Up External Server for 24/7 stream

[Geek Remix]

Hello.  First I would like to say that I am not amazing at tech. I only know as much as I need to to get my job done. So I apologize if I am asking really obvious questions. 

 

I would like to set up some kind of rented server, or cloud service, to stream my own youtube content to a 24/7 live stream on youtube. I can either download all the videos onto the server and set something up, or just like... stream my own videos from youtube playlists. I have thousands of hours of content and I want to test out my idea of having a 24/7 "channel" where my viewers can watch scheduled content together and hang out. 

 

I don't want to/cannot set up a streaming computer in my own home because I don't want to use up all my bandwidth because I still need to do other streams on twitch and upload daily videos. Also I share my bills :).

 

If you have any suggestions on how to do this, I would really appreciate it. After some google searching I have not found any tutorials on how to do this. 

[komar]

The way I would do this is download everything on some shitty computer and let it run everything on loop with something like VLC player (or anything else in which you can set a loop of videos) and let it stream.

[Geek Remix]

1 minute ago, komar said:

The way I would do this is download everything on some shitty computer and let it run everything on loop with something like VLC player (or anything else in which you can set a loop of videos) and let it stream.

Thank yo ufor the suggestion. However I do not want to do it from my home as I don't want to burn up all my bandwidth. I have other jobs i need to do using the internet. It's also not very dependable.

[komar]

Just now, Geek Remix said:

Thank yo ufor the suggestion. However I do not want to do it from my home as I don't want to burn up all my bandwidth. I have other jobs i need to do using the internet. It's also not very dependable.

Who said to do it in ur house? You can do that from everywhere you want/can.......

[Geek Remix]

1 minute ago, komar said:

Who said to do it in ur house? You can do that from everywhere you want/can.......

 

I am unsure what you are trying to suggest.

[komar]

2 minutes ago, Geek Remix said:

 

I am unsure what you are trying to suggest.

I'm suggesting some weak/old machine somewhere to run media player and streaming software 24/7 with possibly something like teamviewer so you can control it without physical access.

Where you set it up it's up to you - not my problem.

Renting out other peoples server for this would be expensive (at least where I live) and would be quite costly just from electricity to run it on your own. If it was for example me, I would charge you over 250 USD/euro a month for full 1080p stream with 24/7 support in case of fails and crashes.

What I'm really suggesting is don't bother doing this - if someone wants to watch your content they can do it, no need for live streams...

[Theguywhobea]

You can buy an Azure instance, or an Amazon AWS instance and install Windows then stream from there. The bandwidth will probably get expensive pretty quickly though. I don't think there are any other cloud services that offer what you want that will be cheaper though.

[Geek Remix]

8 minutes ago, Theguywhobea said:

You can buy an Azure instance, or an Amazon AWS instance and install Windows then stream from there. The bandwidth will probably get expensive pretty quickly though. I don't think there are any other cloud services that offer what you want that will be cheaper though.

Thank you very much. This is just going to be a test. 

 

I know that what I'm wanting to do might not make sense. But from a youtube perspective I want to try something new. I do youtube full time and trying new things all the time has helped my career a lot in many ways. I'd rather try something early and fail than try to jump on an idea late.

[Spotty]

If you want to stream 24/7 then you are going to have to pay for the bandwidth at some point, either through a cloud server data or your home internet data. You can't avoid it.

Check what ISPs are available in your area and what plans are available. You may be able to find an ISP that offers unlimited data, or does not meter uploads. If you can't find one that offers either of those, phone them and ask if they offer any package upgrades to provide unmetered upload data - sometimes they will offer it for a small additional fee. My ISP (before they went unlimited) offered a package upgrade for unlimited uploads for an additional $10/month.

The easiest and probably cheapest way to do this would be at home on a dedicated PC that runs 24/7. It shouldn't need to be too fancy since it will only be playing back videos and not playing games as well, but you will still want something with a somewhat modern quad core processor.

1. Download your videos to a local drive.
2. Use OBS to capture the videos using "VLC Video Source" with all the files you want to play added to the playlist.
3. OBS will then stream the content to youtube on your channel live.

Benefit of using OBS is you can add in overlays and if you feel like it you could add in overlays such as a webcam and do some live commentary and talk to the audience while they are watching if that's your thing.

 

4 hours ago, Geek Remix said:

I have thousands of hours of content and I want to test out my idea of having a 24/7 "channel" where my viewers can watch scheduled content together and hang out. 

 

However, this won't play things to a certain time schedule. Once one video is finished it will immediately start playing the next in the playlist queue.

This means if some of your videos are 13 minutes long and others are 21 minutes long and others 17 minutes long, and so on, you may have trouble organising and sticking to a time schedule. If your videos are all pretty strict on their run time, like all 30 minutes in length, then you will have a much easier time managing a schedule.

If you're okay with videos just playing one after another without sticking to a certain time schedule, then you don't really need to do anything else. You just hit play and let them run through the playlist which will then loop back to the start (or even random shuffle).

If you are set on having your videos stick to a certain schedule, then it will be a bit more difficult.
One way to help fix this, which will take a lot of work, is to create some 'filler' footage. So if your average video length is 30 minutes, but there's a 26 minute video, create a 4min filler video to play after. Perhaps an ad spot for a sponsor and/or a quick message to your viewers ("Hey thanks for watching, don't forget to hit like and subscribe. Stay tuned because another video will be playing soon").

This would be considerable work as you would need to make a filler video for each gap, though to make things easier you could make a long version of a filler spot and just trim it down to whatever time length is required for each filler slot rather than making an entirely custom video for each slot.
So for example you will make an original filler video of 10min in length, which quickly states your message or sponsor spot in the first 30 seconds or so, then maybe for the remainder is just some soft background music with some info or graphics displayed on the screen. This way you can cut that 10min length down anywhere between 30s - 10min to fill however much time you need to before the next video starts to keep things on their schedule.
 

You say you have 1000s of hours of footage you want to use. I'd recommend starting out simple with a 12 or 24 hour loop of content first with your most popular videos. This will also be easier to set up the playlists. If it's successful then you can expand your programming to a full week worth of scheduling.

 

I wish you luck and it is an interesting idea, but for a number of reasons I don't think it will be successful.

Your videos will need to have a lot of re-watch-ability to the point where your subscribers who have already seen the videos will want to watch them again and stay tuned to watch more videos that come up next in the play list. A web series TV show or something that people will want to watch, continue watching, and go back and watch old episodes of; will get more interest than a "top 10 greatest things you won't believe about stuff" channel. Likewise gameplay videos aren't going to have much re-watch factor. Even with a channel like LTT with millions of subscribers and viewers, I believe the novelty of a 24/7 stream of their old videos will wear off pretty quick.

With how easy it is to stream what you want to watch on demand at the click of a button, the days of watching scheduled content is dying. If someone wants to watch Episode 10 of a web series, they aren't going to wait potentially hours for it to come up on your live stream - they will simply just search Episode 10 in youtube and watch the original video.

The only appeal people would have to watching it live via this scheduled set up would be the live chat with other viewers. Your audience is the biggest drawcard to this feature, and you will need a really strong and engaging audience for this to work. How engaging your audience is will be what is going to make or break the live stream for you.

 

Edit:
I'd recommend testing the waters before you invest too much time or money in to this plan. Using the steps I outlined earlier with OBS (just run it off your PC), run a live stream on your current channel with a few of your more popular videos, and see how much audience engagement you're getting in viewership and chat engagement. Dedicate a few hours to it to see how things go.
It will also be a good opportunity to set up a webcam and do a live Q&A/AMA with your audience in the chat over the top of your videos. See what they think of the idea of having a 24/7 live streaming of your old videos and whether or not they would tune in.

[Geek Remix]

26 minutes ago, Spotty said:

If you want to stream 24/7 then you are going to have to pay for the bandwidth at some point, either through a cloud server data or your home internet data. You can't avoid it.

--- lots of stuff ---

Thank you for all the suggestions. Those are some good tips. I live in the US so data is not capped. I have about 100-200 down and 10-30 up depending on how my internet feels that day. I wish I could like... segment off a certain amount of that to an all the time stream. 

 

Sadly I still need to do daily uploads, download content, give my editors their raw footage video cloud stuff, and stream to twitch. So testing audience desire seems like a good idea. But streaming from my home is not a long term solution (unless there is a way to like... divide my internet?)

[Spotty]

16 minutes ago, Geek Remix said:

Thank you for all the suggestions. Those are some good tips. I live in the US so data is not capped. I have about 100-200 down and 10-30 up depending on how my internet feels that day. I wish I could like... segment off a certain amount of that to an all the time stream. 

 

Sadly I still need to do daily uploads, download content, give my editors their raw footage video cloud stuff, and stream to twitch. So testing audience desire seems like a good idea. But streaming from my home is not a long term solution (unless there is a way to like... divide my internet?)

Ah, I misread. I thought you didn't want to stream from home 24/7 due to data costs.

There is a way you can segregate your internet connection and divide it up among devices.

Some routers have functionality to limit the bandwidth to a device through QoS settings. You can usually set the min/max speed that a device will get on the network.
For example, if you get 30mbps upload, then you could set the stream PC to be limited to use minimum 5mbps upload, maximum 10mbps upload which will be reserved for use by the streaming PC. The remaining 20-25mbps upload will be available to be utilised by the other devices. This should mean if you try to upload a video, it won't interfere with the stream. This will mean that your video upload may take 20-30% longer than usual to upload as some of the upload bandwidth is reserved for the streaming PC.

You're going to do some of your own research on this function to find out how it works for your own specific router, how advanced its functionality is (some are basic, others more advanced) or potentially buy a new router that has the capability if your current router does not support it.

Alternatively if you find that you need additional speed to maintain the stream, then you may have to provision an additional service to the address, as in get a 2nd internet line installed. The 2nd line can be run entirely independently from the other. You will be paying 2 monthly internet bills, plus you may have to pay the cost of installation, or at least an upfront service connection/technician/provisioning fee. This is a much more expensive option, but if your channel is your full time job then you might be able to register it under the business and claim it as a business expense for tax. I'd only go this route if you know for certain that you can easily recover the cost of it through income from the 24/7 stream (along with other costs).

[Pixel5]

8 hours ago, Geek Remix said:

Thank you very much. This is just going to be a test. 

 

I know that what I'm wanting to do might not make sense. But from a youtube perspective I want to try something new. I do youtube full time and trying new things all the time has helped my career a lot in many ways. I'd rather try something early and fail than try to jump on an idea late.

i would say you are already late with that idea because there are channels who do nothing else but live stream stolen content to collect the ad revenue.

Not saying you will stream stolen content but its already happening and people hate it, some people go to a live stream thinking they are really just watching what is happening right now only to realize that this is not the case and its old stuff.

 

This is mostly done with thing that actually were a livestream before so people dont notice it so quickly but im making sure to report every channel when i see this happening.

 

Generally speaking when you stream "old" videos from yourself it will not make for a good livestream experience simply because the structure and format of a video and a livestream are very different.

 

It would be easier and less annoying for your followers to setup a discord server and host regular "lets watch this thing" events on there and everyone can simply watch the video with others if they want to.

 

Doing this as a livestream on youtube might get you some views but it will piss of people who think you are actually live streaming something original.

 

TL:DR if you have a community that interested in this it would work without faking a live stream.

[Geek Remix]

9 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

i would say you are already late with that idea because there are channels who do nothing else but live stream stolen content to collect the ad revenue.

 

So i just tested it with my audience and they really seemed to enjoy it a lot! I think what I'm going to do is mess with my router a bit to have dedicated bandwidth to the constant uploading and use one of my emergency back up computers to do 24/hour streaming and see how that works. 

 

I made it clear in the description and title that is was reruns and no one seemed to mind and were excited to have a place to hang out and watch stuff together. There was a lot of audience engagement and everyone was behaved very well. 

 

Thank you to everyone for the helpful suggestions. I wouldn't have been able to think of most of this without you.

[Mikensan]

Just one idea, you can lookup co-location solutions in your area. Or ship it out to something like https://joesdatacenter.com/colocation/.

[TotallyLegitimateandSafe]

use an rtp server.

[djslof]

On 6/24/2018 at 3:24 PM, TotallyLegitimateandSafe said:

use an rtp server.

isnt RTP a protocol...