Stream your video live on YouTube

Article2 header - Stream your video live on YouTube

Stream video to YouTube

Live video sharing is extremely popular and required everywhere, and there is no better provider of a video stream than a video management system 🙂 With CORTROL VMS, you are just a few clicks away from going live with your business presentation, making a review, turning your camera into a live street cam or ensuring online access to an ongoing conference.

Live streaming in CORTROL uses RTMP protocol, which means that you can use it with any third-party service capable of re-transmitting RTMP streams. CORTROL provides the third-party server with video from your channel in the necessary format, and then that service furnishes the broadcast, making your live stream accessible to the public audience. In this how-to, we will set up streaming to one of the most popular services – YouTube. This means you will be able to watch your CORTROL video anytime on virtually any modern device with a display – starting from laptops and phones all the way to TVs and smart fridges – without having to install any additional apps, so you can easily share CORTROL streams with your friends, colleagues, customers and public.

There are a few things you need to take care of before configuring the streaming:

  • you will need a YouTube (Google) account in order to log in and use the YouTube streaming services,
  • the channel in CORTROL, which you intend to use for streaming, must be enabled and have H.264 encoding,
  • if you plan to use the substream (secondary video stream), you need to enable it in the channel properties via CORTROL Console,
  • also, if you wish to deliver the video with sound, make sure to enable audio in the channel properties in CORTROL.

Now, let’s jump to the setup!

First, open your browser and go to YouTube live (also called Creator Studio tools): you will need to sign in to access the service. Choose Live streaming in the menu on the left and then click Stream now. Note that, if you are doing this for the first time and have never created any live casts on YouTube before, you may be asked to verify your account.

 

CORTROL1podcasts pending - Stream your video live on YouTube

 

What we need here is the RTMP URL for CORTROL to use: you will find it below the live stream preview, under Basic info: scroll down until you find the Encoder setup section. You will need to copy both Server URL and Stream name/key into CORTROL Console (press the Reveal button next to the Stream keyfield to see it and to be able to copy it), the key being the second part of the URL.

 

CORTROL2podcasts encoder settings - Stream your video live on YouTube

Configure the stream according to your needs and then go back to CORTROL Console.

 

Now, in the Console application, go to the Configuration section and then choose Live podcasts from the menu on the left: here, click the + New live podcast button on the upper panel to bring up the podcast configuration dialog box. Fill in the settings:

  • set Sharing type to YouTube,
  • select your Channel that is to be shared,
  • mark Use substream if you want to use the secondary stream (usually of lower resolution) – otherwise, the main video stream will be used,
  • mark Enable audio if you want your audience to have sound as well,
  • insert the link provided by YouTube into the RTMP URL field – copy both text strings from Encoder setup as described above to form the link.

The RTMP URL should look similar to this: rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx, where

  • rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/ is the part copied from YouTube as Server URL, and
  • xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx is the Stream name/key (consisting of digits and letters) from YouTube Encoder setup.

 

CORTROL3podcast setup - Stream your video live on YouTube

 

Save the settings by pressing the OK button: the podcast will appear in the list. Streaming will begin automatically in a few seconds (sometimes it takes a couple of minutes to start but that solely depends on the Internet connection and YouTube service availability – in any case, your YouTube page will display the streaming status).

 

CORTROL4podcasts live - Stream your video live on YouTube

 

If you decide to pause the streaming from CORTROL, use the Disable/Enable button in the upper panel in the Live podcasts section. If you choose to stop the streaming for too long, keep in mind that YouTube may change the Stream name/key for security reasons after a certain timeout, so you may need to copy and paste a new code into your URL to resume streaming. For that, use the Edit button in the upper panel or simply double-click your podcast in the list.

Now, share the link for the world to see your podcast!