Question / Help Facebook Live Auto Start Stream

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Riley Nielsen

New Member
To begin with, this may not be the appropriate section of the forums. My church is starting to stream its weekly service to Facebook Live which works well aside from starting and stopping, as it requires you to start and end the stream from the live control page. If OBS is streaming you have to click a button on FB to actually go live, likewise you must end the stream manually both from the FB page and OBS. Previously, Facebook required a unique stream key for each stream but now supports a persistent stream key, so is there any way (whether through the Facebook Live API or other means) to start a stream on Facebook as soon as it receives the stream and end it when OBS is stopped? This would make the management process much easier!
 
qhobbes

qhobbes

Active Member
With free restream.io account you can auto stream to a personal profile. With paid account amount you auto stream to page.
 
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My Living Room: Live!

My Living Room: Live!

Member
You can also schedule your stream Ahead of time through Facebook’s Live Producer and it will automatically go live at the specified time. It will give you the stream key when you schedule it.
You simply have to enter that key in OBS and you can even start the stream from within OBS ahead of that time to ensure connectivity and good connection and it won’t be live on FB until that designated time. No need to have FB open at all.

that’s what we do
 
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owenfi

New Member
Does this still work for you? It had been working for my family, but now even if we schedule an event via the live producer admin panel, and are streaming from OBS prior to the show time, we still need to press "Go Live" on the admin view. It seems like it's been that way for us for the last month or so (but was working as you describe for the 4+ months we were using it before).

If it does still work would you mind sharing details about what options you choose when scheduling?
 
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Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
As noted above - 2 ways to live stream on FB - Go Live Now, and scheduled. They behave differently as FB has documented
For our church live stream, I've been using the FB Scheduled Live Stream option since early April. I follow the directions to stream more than 10 minutes prior to actual Go Live time. At times, I've briefly streamed an hour before hand (confirm all was well), and that worked fine.
Now, as I monitor the live stream, I have Live Producer open the entire time. But that isn't necessary
- Scheduled Live Stream (requires PC, in this case with OBS, not mobile). Nice feature and reason we use Scheduled is the URL so non FB users can watch as well
- follow FB directions (start stream in advance of schedule time) and Live stream will start as scheduled... no user interaction at FB required
The one time I had an issue (late March) was my (user) error.

As @My Living Room: Live! notes, and we do the same for improved security, which is to NOT use a Persistent Stream key. In which case, yes, you Schedule event, and can get the key then (or day of event). Note, you can only schedule up to 1 week in advance

As for Schedule Options
- I recommend NOT using a Persistent Key
- and I turn off 'end stream if a disconnect' as we suffered PC/ISP induced disconnects before our new PC and we'd reconnect in seconds, so we didn't want to lose people... but that does mean I have to manually end live stream on FB Live Producer Page (non-issue as I'm monitoring comments anyway)
Lots of other options, use as they apply to you (Hosts, attendee restrictions (age, geography, etc), comment moderation, etc.
 
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Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
owenfi said:
If it does still work would you mind sharing details about what options you choose when scheduling?
Click to expand...

Are you starting the stream in advance per the big bold notes when you Scheduled (ie - FB Schedule live event will be cancelled if you haven't started streaming 10 minutes prior to scheduled start time)?
 
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Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
Commenting on a 2.5 year old thread? that was answered directly?

The real answer is Yes and No (and I know exactly what I'm talking about, and am 100% positive about this, as are the others who chimed in above.)
Can FB livestreaming auto-start IN CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES? Yes. And not in others? correct
does FB have bugs and not always do as it is supposed to (like auto-start when all is set correctly) ? yup, sometimes.
did I have auto-start stop working recently, for months, then last weekend work unexpectedly.. yup again.
 
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