Meljoann · hyperjack arthole

Owncast for Twitchers

Owncast is an ethical, community-run, open-source alternative to streaming platforms like Twitch. It's a welcoming, growing community of lovely weirdos. We are out here on the open web, creating unique, independent spaces to share our art with each other.

Meljoann in studio, performing on New Year's Day Fedi Parade, bending over the laptop, keyboard in front.

Finding a friendly server

Owncast is not like Twitch: there's no one place like twitch.tv to get an account. Instead, lots of people are running their own versions of it on their own websites.

If you want to try running it yourself, take a look at owncast.online and their excellent guide on your options. However, there are a few of us running community servers who will be really happy to have you stream with us!

You can contact us anytime -- Jnktn and LABR have emails on their sites, and gravitons have various contact methods on our website -- and we'll help get you started.

How to stream to Owncast with OBS

How to simulcast to Owncast and Twitch

Option 1: OBS, Prism, or Streamlabs

If you use Streamlabs or Prism, you can simulcast right away: these let you add multiple stream destinations already.

If you're on OBS, you need the Multi-RTMP Plugin. To install it:

To use the plugin in OBS:

For the Twitch side: you've probably connected OBS to your Twitch account already. But if not:

A note on bandwidth

If your internet service is a bit slow, so that you're struggling to stream to ONE destination already, you might want to look into Streamster.io (more instrucitons below).

If you want to make sure your settings are optimal for a smooth stream, I recommend running the auto-configuration wizard on OBS. You can find it in the Tools menu. For example, I'm on a good fibre internet connection. So, the auto-config wizard said I can stream at a video bitrate of 9000 Kbps, but I left my settings on 2500 kbps for safety.

The Multi-RTMP plugin works great for me, with these settings:

Option 2: Streamster.io and similar

There are lots of services that you can use to simulcast, such as Restream.io. However, the only one I've found so far that lets you stream to Owncast for free (i.e., using "Custom RTMP") is Streamster.io.

To use Streamster:

Owncast chat

If you're like me and love vibing with the witty people, you'll want keep an eye on all the wonderful compliments flooding in from the chat. You can find our gravitons chat here:

https://stream.gravitons.org/embed/chat/readwrite/

As you can see, it's just your server's web address with "/embed/chat/readwrite/" at the end.

To display an overlay of this on your stream, you can add this to your OBS as a "Browser Source":

Optionally, you can add this nice custom CSS. If the font is the wrong size, you can fix it by adding the below and adjusting the percentage:

html {
font-size: 200%;
}

Chat moderation

Your Owncast server admin can add moderators and ban IP addresses from their admin panel. If they can add you as a mod, you will be able to hide messages and ban users by hovering over a message, clicking the button that appears on the right, and selecting "hide" or "ban".

I don't want to jinx it, but so far I've never needed to do this.

Why Owncast?

Owncast is an ethical, open source, community owned, billionaire-free, VC-free alternative to twitch & the like. Aside from wanting to avoid world-destroyingly awful corporations like Amazon (who own Twitch) and other Big Tech companies, here are some other great reasons to try it:

Cold, hard CASH

Twitch takes a big bite out of what you earn in subs and bits — a comically enormous bite if you aren’t based in the US. It's especially galling when the pittance you earn as a musician is being funnelled straight to billionaires like Jeff Bezos.

In contrast, Owncast takes 0% of streamers' income. It's completely free to use, because of the kind work of its creator Gabe Kangas, and a community of contributors and volunteers. Like musicians, open source developers rely on donations and grants. You can donate to Owncast here if you can.

No ads

As these enshittified Big Tech companies struggle to turn their monopolised user base into actual profit, they always ramp up the ads. With Owncast, your audience isn't put off by increasingly intrusive ads blasting at them, and as a streamer you don't have your music performance interrupted by random terrible companies and their obnoxious bullshit.

No Megacorp

Twitch can change its policies on a whim, suspend your channel, and mute your videos whenever its automated music copyright system hallucinates that prog epic jam is actually Ed Sheeran's IP. As small streamers, we most likely haven’t even read that coercive “terms of service agreement”. What would be the point?

Owncast servers are decentralised, community-run and community-owned. If you can't find a crew to stream with, you can roll your own. Jeff Bezos doesn't have to be the King of you! He WISHES.

Owncast's challenges

Small vs Big

There are more people on Twitch, but I would argue that this isn't an issue for most small streamers, as discoverability is very poor for most of us.

Like all real-life electronic music communities: not many of us can make a living from art alone. It's all about us supporting each other.

Payment tools

Financial support is important for artists. Owncast lacks a "one-click-payment" type of system for subs and bits, so presently it is more difficult to use than Twitch in this regard.

However, Owncast is very extensible: you can add whatever bots, widgets, webhooks and payment options you want. So I think this ecosystem is only going to grow in the future.

In the meantime, we are mostly sharing our donation links the old-school way. Like dis: https://ko-fi.com/meljoann

Discoverability

The Owncast community is working on building tools for discoverability. Already, we have:

See you on Owncast, buddies

Well. I think it comes across that I'm super into Owncast. We are building a real community out here on the Fediverse, and I hope more friends will join us.