Help! I mistakenly did a "test" broadcast to the "real" link. Can I change it?

Father Tim

New Member
I scheduled a livestream of a church service on YouTube Studio, then distributed the video link to the whole congregation. Doing a test today, I mistakenly broadcast to the scheduled program. Is there a way to stream to that same URL? If I start from scratch, it will be a new URL and the link I sent out wont work. Help me!
 

Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
Yours is a YouTube question not OBS, and I stream to Facebook not YT, so you are forewarned about the following
- you should be able to delete the 'test' video or mark it private, etc so others won't try to watch/stream it
- OBS streams to you target provider (YouTube in this case). OBS knows nothing of scheduled programs/events/livestreams
- What you do configure in OBS is a Stream Key {I recommend following good security practice of NOT using a Persistent Stream key}
- I change to a new Stream Key for each Facebook Scheduled service, and I load the stream key the morning of the service. The stream key is tied, in FB's case, to the the specific scheduled video livestream. I don't know if YouTube works the same (but would suspect yes)
My recommendation
- check if you scheduled event is still listed in YouTube Studio as an upcoming event/stream? if yes, then you should be able to stream to it. Otherwise, YouTube probably considers the event over, and you have to create a new one.. sorry. but again, I'm not a subject matter expert on YouTube, so don't take my word for it

Good luck

__House of Worship livestreaming__
Folks have really good reason for NOT using Facebook (I don't and won't get an account with FB. I have an IT security background, and the data mining Facebook and YouTube both do is offensive / problematic in my opinion, but the cost of using such 'free' services. That said, streaming via Facebook made a lot more sense for our congregation (mentioning for anyone who comes across this thread)
- by using Facebook's scheduled livestream events (and NOT streaming from a mobile device) means we have a static URL than folks not logged into FB can also watch. So audience would be any Internet connected user with a browser (or smart TV/Roku, etc). We do NOT have to publish a unique URL each service. Facebook also doesn't require as large a subscriber base for certain functionality
in our case, the URL is in the format of facebook.com/{Church_Organization_page_name}/live and any current livestream and our history of every livestreamed service are all at that URL, for Facebook and non-Facebook users
- What you gain with YouTube is 1080p vs 720p resolution. But even our folks who watch on large TVs say the 720p is fine. For liturgical, non-concert type services, 720p is most likely more than adequate. And subscribing to a YouTube channel makes watching video easier on Smart TV and the like if one leaves device signed into YouTube. There are other technical differences, but which 99%+ of congregations are likely to never notice
- What we wanted a year ago was to maintain community, and with large portion of congregation already bein on Facebook, having a single platform for discussion/community was important
So for us, even though I personally detest Facebook, it was a no-brainer for me to recommend we stream to Facebook and it has worked out as desired.
 

twindux

Member
If you actually took the stream live in YouTube Studio, NO, you cannot re-use that URL. You can schedule as many livestreams as you want using a single YouTube key, however.

For exactly this reason, what I do is just tell people to go to our church's YouTube Channel page, where i have configured my scheduled livevents to be at the very top of the page. I usually have only one live event scheduled at a time. I don't give them the exact event URL just in case something goes wrong I can always schedule a new lifestream and they'll get there from the channel home page.

We use YouTube Live because A. I HATE FACEBOOK and B. many of our members are not facebook members. If folks are not a facebook member, FB is constantly nagging you to join
 

Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
If folks are not a facebook member, FB is constantly nagging you to join
Only if a non-FB users does the foolish [PEBKAC] thing of going to FB in normal browser mode. Someone who cares about privacy/security should at a minimum only go to FB [and most other website sites, actually] in Private/InCognito mode [as I do to monitor livestream, and I never get nagged]
 

twindux

Member
Only if a non-FB users does the foolish [PEBKAC] thing of going to FB in normal browser mode. Someone who cares about privacy/security should at a minimum only go to FB [and most other website sites, actually] in Private/InCognito mode [as I do to monitor livestream, and I never get nagged]
Agree with you in principle, however 90% of my parishioners have zero clue about that. Try telling an 80 year old widow she has to go to Incognito mode (while not knowing what browser/version/etc she has) to get to FB to find our livestream!

We've been about trying to minimize obstacles to my parishioners seeing our livestreams, and YouTube Live is by far IMHO the easiest/less difficult/fewest downsides for the largest numbers of folks. Go to the same URL every week, and click on the name of the service you want to watch. OBTW, I usually have only one livestream scheduled at any given time...so they literally can't choose the wrong one.
 
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