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Streaming in Development

Now that you have a Streamplace node running locally, you’ll probably need to stream into it. While you can use OBS or browser streaming like Streamplace users will, there are also some techniques for streaming from the command line to save yourself some time.

streamplace whip

Section titled “streamplace whip”

Streamplace itself has a built-in WHIP client, capable of streaming in MP4 files with H264 video and Opus audio. To be properly processed by Streamplace they’ll also need a regular keyframe interval and no B-Frames. Here’s a copy of Big Buck Bunny that may work well. Once you have an appropriate file, you can stream in using streamplace whip:

Terminal window
./build-darwin-arm64/streamplace whip \
  --stream-key [obs-stream-key-from-dashboard] \
  --file BigBuckBunny_1sGOP_4kp60_NoBframes.mp4

There are also versions of ffmpeg that have a WHIP muxer; something like this can work if you don’t have a copy of Streamplace locally

Terminal window
docker run -it --rm \
  -v $HOME/videos:/videos \
  docker.io/ggtoms/ffmpeg-webrtc \
  /usr/local/ffmpeg-webrtc/ffmpeg -re -i \
  /videos/BigBuckBunny_1sGOP_4kp60_NoBframes.mp4 \
  -c copy -f whip \
  http://[LAN IP ADDRESS]:38080/api/ingest/webrtc/[STREAM KEY]

Streaming without the relay

Section titled “Streaming without the relay”

By default, Streamplace will be watching the public Bluesky relay at wss://bsky.network — this keeps your node informed about new stream keys and chat messages and whatnot. However, in some cases this may be undesirable — you probably wouldn’t want to stream the firehose to an airplane, for example. So, you can disable the relay and allow ANYONE to stream in to your Streamplace node using:

Terminal window
./build-darwin-arm64/streamplace --no-firehose --wide-open

This should not be used in production, as it disables all filters on who is allowed to stream into the node, but it can be useful in development. If you do this, you can also use streamplace whip without the --stream-key parameter; it will randomly generate one. This can be useful for stress-testing the node; the following command will simulate 10 livestreams streaming into your local node with 20 viewers each:

Terminal window
./build-darwin-arm64/streamplace whip \
  --file=BigBuckBunny_1sGOP_4kp60_NoBframes.mp4 \
  --count=10 \
  --viewers=20