I need to find a way to have hosts on my OBS for an online music event

[ndorlparialorl]

I'm holding an online music event in a few weeks and some artists will send me a pre-recorded set, while some others will play live.
I haven't found any solution for setting up a scene that will receive someone else's stream. Is this possible in any way?

Thanks in advance <3

 

[qhobbes]

VDO.Ninja

Bring live video from your smartphone, computer, or friends directly into OBS Studio or other. 100% free.

obs.ninja

 

[mynameistrance]

OBS Ninja is definitaly a wise choice. In fact what is asked in this topic, we do quite often on stream. There are a couple of parameters you need to consider:
- Do not use this with WiFi. This is a P2P application. That means it does not use a server in between to manages the connection between all parties. Also, this is close to zero latency and in order to uphold that, it needs the most stable connection you can give it.
- You need quite a hefty computer to run it, especially when you have more then 3 guests since your video needs to be encoded for every guys if you want them all to see your feed. Also, you'll probbably be streaming from the same machine so take that into account too.
- You will need to do extensive testing before using it. All might be ok at your end but nothing is certnain at your guests end. We had guests before that wenf fine during testing but had some hickups during the actual broadcast.
- This application is browser based. You will need to hear the audio from that browser seperately. For some guests, this is not easy to do. It involves quite a bit of setup in some cases. For our latest stream, our guest had to use two sources. one for his mic and cam and one for his DJ audio. You will need to write-up how users can connect to your setup.

Other then that, this product is great! The only thing that will compete with it for now is NDI5. Steve is doing an excellent job with VDO ninja.

 

[AaronD]

...That means it does not use a server in between to manages the connection between all parties....

From VDO's website:

VDO.Ninja relies heavily on WebRTC, a secure peer-to-peer streaming technology that exists in most modern web browsers. Most of the VDO.Ninja code runs completely within your browser, although some server-side components are hosted to help facilitate an initial ‘handshake’ between connecting peers.

As video data is streamed directly from one peer to the other, extremely low-latency and very high video quality is possible. If both peers are on the same Local Area Network (LAN), data transfer will stay local to your network, saving your bandwidth.

So yes, it does "use a server in between to manages the connection between all parties" [sic]

The server does the logistics, and configures all of the clients, and then the clients talk directly to each other without the server being involved anymore. But the server is required to set it all up.

So I don't use it for what I do. Needing a cloud service *at all* is a deal-killer for me. *I'll* do the logistics, and point OBS's browser source to my phone camera's URL, which comes from an app on the phone that "just does that":

IP Webcam - Apps on Google Play

Turn your phone into a wireless camera!

play.google.com

Then I don't even need internet to set up either. Only a local network, which could even be a hotspot from the same phone, with no cell service.

If I were streaming someone across the internet, *then* VDO.Ninja might be the way to do it. Right tool, right job. But also keep in mind that the internet itself is not reliable. In order to keep it smooth with packets being dropped all over the place and resent, you need a pretty long buffer so that those resent packets can slot in before they're needed. The size of that buffer translates directly to latency. No way around that, except to get a dedicated, guaranteed connection, which is expensive.

And of course, it also depends on the time of day and how many other people are clogging the same connection. I did a weekly program for a while in the evening in a small-ish town. The leadership insisted on playing YouTube videos live, and they worked just fine in the afternoon, having finally listened to my insistence to test everything beforehand...but then they'd buffer during the live show, in the evening when all the rest of the town was home from work and watching YouTube too.

(Don't use YouTube beyond your living room at home. Ask the owner for permission, and if you get that permission, ask for the file. Get that file onto the production machine, and play it from there. If you can't do that - if you can't do it above board, correctly - then don't use that content at all. Figure out something else to do there.)