Stream didn't show error or load to Youtube

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sahuggins

New Member
I have used a youtube stream for the past two weeks and the stream worked fine. This week the stream showed as working in OBS, but I didn't see it go to youtube. Where should I look for errors?

I'm new to OBS, so please be patient with me.
 
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sahuggins

New Member
I did find the logs and confirmed that there were no errors. It said it successfully streamed to youtube (but it never showed up in youtube). Any ideas?
 
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hoffmeis

New Member
Same problem here. Starting the the stream in OBS works fine for month. Now it is not possible to start the stream without open the youtue live dashboard just before starting the stream in OBS.
 
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giuseppemazzini442

New Member
Problem solved!
Something has changed on youtube in the last few days, but the solution to manage a real streaming reconnection is this: from the youtube control room from the manage icon, you need to create a scheduled streaming. Start the encode on this stream and everything will work fine. If the connection drops, youtube will say streaming offline; when the connection is re-established, streaming restarts.
 
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Mango

Member
We had this problem too. I suspect it was due to the migration from the old Live Dashboard to the new YouTube Studio, since at the same time I could no longer access the Live Dashboard. The fix was to re-generate my keys.

It is mildly annoying that they could not just migrate our old keys over.
 
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giuseppemazzini442

New Member
No, youtube has not changed our keys, it has only changed the management of the streaming event. In fact, if you enter the youtube control room and click on the transmit icon, you will see that your key has not changed and, if you start your encoder now, the new video will start on your channel.
 
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Macnrayna

New Member
giuseppemazzini442 said:
No, youtube has not changed our keys, it has only changed the management of the streaming event. In fact, if you enter the youtube control room and click on the transmit icon, you will see that your key has not changed and, if you start your encoder now, the new video will start on your channel.
Click to expand...
I appreciate your input, as I am troubleshooting the same issue. Can you answer this for me, perhaps? If I setup a scheduled stream, can that key be reused? I want to reuse a stable stream key and don't want to setup a scheduled one every time I want to use it. Thanks.
 
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Mango

Member
Here is what we have found:

You must have the live streaming control room open before you start your stream in OBS. If you do it in the wrong order, the control room will say "Excellent", but your stream will never appear. In that case, you must stop your stream, wait for the control room to say "Start sending us your video from your streaming software to go live.", and then restart your stream.

You need to do nothing in the control room, just have it open in any browser window. This is problematic because we do not want really want operators to have access to our channel nor be able to change live stream settings.

We have another problem. The URL https://www.youtube.com/channel/channelname/live does not work properly. Anyone who goes there before we start the stream will never see the stream. The "waiting" counter will go up, and the live chat will work, but the video will never play. After we start the stream, we cannot get back to that live chat, so cannot tell the people waiting for a stream that will never appear to reload.

Here is our process for a stream that should start at 10:30:

9:45 - schedule Facebook stream for 10:30.
9:45 - Start recording in OBS, sound check, play recording, verify recording has audio.
10:00 - load https://www.youtube.com/channel/channelname/live and DO NOT EVER CLOSE THIS because you won't be able to get it back
10:01 - YouTube stream start.
10:02 - in another tab, load https://www.youtube.com/channel/channelname/live . Verify the stream is running, then switch back to your first tab and use Live Chat to tell everyone to refresh.
10:12 - Facebook stream start (must be between 10:10 and 10:20; DO NOT start outside these times).
10:13 - Use cell phone to verify YouTube stream is running and has audio.
10:14 - Use desktop to verify Facebook stream is running.
10:15-10:30 troubleshoot anything non-working. If you have time, check to see if anyone hasn't yet refreshed YouTube and is waiting for a stream that will never appear.
10:30 - Show starts.

This is a whole lot more complicated than it needs to be. As a bonus, if you screw it up and do something at the wrong time or in the wrong order, THERE WILL BE NO ERRORS to tell you that you're doing it wrong.
 
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M

Macnrayna

New Member
Mango said:
Here is what we have found:

You must have the live streaming control room open before you start your stream in OBS. If you do it in the wrong order, the control room will say "Excellent", but your stream will never appear. In that case, you must stop your stream, wait for the control room to say "Start sending us your video from your streaming software to go live.", and then restart your stream.

You need to do nothing in the control room, just have it open in any browser window. This is problematic because we do not want really want operators to have access to our channel nor be able to change live stream settings.

We have another problem. The URL https://www.youtube.com/channel/channelname/live does not work properly. Anyone who goes there before we start the stream will never see the stream. The "waiting" counter will go up, and the live chat will work, but the video will never play. After we start the stream, we cannot get back to that live chat, so cannot tell the people waiting for a stream that will never appear to reload.

Here is our process for a stream that should start at 10:30:

9:45 - schedule Facebook stream for 10:30.
9:45 - Start recording in OBS, sound check, play recording, verify recording has audio.
10:00 - load https://www.youtube.com/channel/channelname/live and DO NOT EVER CLOSE THIS because you won't be able to get it back
10:01 - YouTube stream start.
10:02 - in another tab, load https://www.youtube.com/channel/channelname/live . Verify the stream is running, then switch back to your first tab and use Live Chat to tell everyone to refresh.
10:12 - Facebook stream start (must be between 10:10 and 10:20; DO NOT start outside these times).
10:13 - Use cell phone to verify YouTube stream is running and has audio.
10:14 - Use desktop to verify Facebook stream is running.
10:15-10:30 troubleshoot anything non-working. If you have time, check to see if anyone hasn't yet refreshed YouTube and is waiting for a stream that will never appear.
10:30 - Show starts.

This is a whole lot more complicated than it needs to be. As a bonus, if you screw it up and do something at the wrong time or in the wrong order, THERE WILL BE NO ERRORS to tell you that you're doing it wrong.
Click to expand...
Having spent a week troubleshooting this, I can confirm everything you said. A few additions:

The control room window has to be open for the livestream to properly connect (imagine not being able to start your car unless the glove box is open). However, this can be on any computer, not just the one OBS is streaming from. That way the operators can't accidentally change something, however, an administrator has be be on duty at the commencement of every livestream.

We are now having to stream a generic "LiveStream will begin shortly" slide 10-20 minutes before we actually need to, in order to troubleshoot and hope people only join in the few minutes before the actual time.

What has been a fairly simple process for the past several years, and an essential process in COVID times, is now laborious and complicated.

Is this an error on YouTube's end? Our Facebook seems stable.

I should also note, we use Castr.io to redistribute to two streams. However, this problem persists whether we go directly to YouTube from OBS or to Castr and then split to YT and FB.
 
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Mango

Member
After much experimenting, I have found that scheduling a broadcast gives you access to the Auto Start feature so that - so far - the browser window doesn't need to be open and no early viewers get lost. I suggest you try it and see if it would be satisfactory for you too.
 
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Macnrayna

New Member
Mango said:
After much experimenting, I have found that scheduling a broadcast gives you access to the Auto Start feature so that - so far - the browser window doesn't need to be open and no early viewers get lost. I suggest you try it and see if it would be satisfactory for you too.
Click to expand...
funny, the auto-start option only showed up mid-way through my testing. Is it a new feature that is causing this glitch?
 
disconnect0414

disconnect0414

New Member
where is that autostart thing? I can't find it.
This studio.youtube.com is extremely slow, newer see slower web page than that. google quality continues to freefall...
 
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