At the core of your live stream is your encoder. If your encoder is not set up properly, your stream will never make it to Subsplash, resulting in your users not having a live stream to view. Follow along in this article to learn how to set up your encoder so that you can be up and running with live streaming!
You can stream to Subsplash Live from any encoder that supports H.264 compression and RTMP or SRT streaming, but our favorite option is a macOS or Windows computer running Open Broadcast Software (OBS). For detailed encoder-specific setup instructions, try searching through the knowledge base for your encoder.
There are many encoder solutions out there on the market, and we try to offer guides and knowledge for as many as we can. If you can't find an article on our end, have run into issues with setup, or just want to consult with us on the kind of system you need for your circumstances, let us know!
Subsplash Live supports two different streaming protocols: RTMP and SRT. RTMP is older and more traditional, but can struggle with stability issues; SRT is much newer and not as widely supported, but solves many of RTMP's weaknesses. How you set up your encoder will likely differ depending on which protocol you choose to use. If you're setting up Subsplash Live for the first time, start with RTMP and then give SRT a try!
Standard Setup with RTMP
Once you've signed up for Subsplash Live, you can follow these steps to set up your encoder for RTMP.
Navigate to the Live section in your Subsplash Dashboard.
The first time you visit this page, you will be prompted with 3 steps to get you up and running. Copy the Server URL and Stream name/key from step 2.
If you have been through setup before and are looking for your credentials again, you can find them in your Media settings.
This URL/key combination is unique to you as a Subsplash Live client and never changes; once it is saved into your encoder's settings, you shouldn't ever need to update it!
Once you've acquired these details, you will head over to your encoder of choice, configure it to use the RTMP protocol, and enter both the Server URL and Stream name/key. This step will look different depending on your encoder, but the result should always take you to enter the URL/key and configure it according to our encoding settings.
Next, you must start a live feed from your encoder to verify that Subsplash is receiving the stream (but don't worry, this feed won't be publicly available anywhere). After a delay of up to 60 seconds, you should see your live feed appear in the stream preview monitor on the Subsplash Live dashboard page. If you're going through first-time setup, you'll also see a Continue button which you can use to complete the first-time setup process and proceed to the full Subsplash Live experience.
That's it! Your encoder is now connected to Subsplash Live, and any live feed you start from your encoder will be automatically routed to your Subsplash Live ingest point. The next step would be to learn how to schedule a live stream using Subsplash Live.
Considerations for SRT
When setting up an encoder to stream with SRT, the overall process will be very similar but some key details will differ:
When retrieving your SRT destination info from the Media settings page of your Subsplash dashboard, you'll notice that we provide only a URL, rather than both a URL and a key. SRT refers to keys as "stream IDs", and if you look closely, you'll see that your stream ID has already been pre-filled into your SRT server URL!
Because SRT is very new, there isn't much of a standardized approach for how it should be set up within the many different encoders that support it. So, if you are trying to set up SRT streaming in your encoder and it seems to want more info than a single server URL, please check the Subsplash Support Site for an SRT setup article specific to your encoder. If you can't find one, reach out to us and we can help!