- OBS Studio Version 27 or later
- A correctly set up Frameshift Instance
- HTTP Client (optional)
Stream keys for Frameshift are in the format channelid-secret where channelid is the Channel ID you wish to stream to, and secret is an HMAC derived secret key. You can acquire these keys either by calculating the secret manually, or by using the Frameshift API to calculate it for you.
The secret portion of the stream key is derived from the channel ID using an HMAC algorithm. The HMAC secret is specified via the FTL_CLIENT_HMAC_SECRET environment variable, refer to your configuration to find this value. The specific HMAC algorithm used is specified by the FTL_CLIENT_HMAC_ALGO environment variable, and defaults to SHA-1 if unset.
To calculate the secret, simply calculate the HMAC value of the channel ID (as UTF8 text) using the values mentioned above, and output as lowercase hex values. Combine that string with your channel ID in the format mentioned at the start of this section to assemble a complete stream key.
If you want to avoid calculating keys manually, you can send an HTTP GET request to /api/ingest/hmac/:channelID, where :channelID is the channel ID you wish to get the stream key for. To prevent anyone from generating stream keys, this route is protected. You will need to specify the Authorization header with the value of the FTL_SERVICE_REST_AUTH_TOKEN environment variable.
A successful response will be a JSON object with a single hmacKey property. This is the secret portion of the stream key. Combine that string with your channel ID in the format mentioned at the start of this section to assemble a complete stream key.
# Example using cURL
$ curl -H 'Authorization: <auth_token>' <api_base>/api/ingest/hmac/<channel_id>In OBS, create a new profile from the Profile dropdown, you may name it whatever you like. The rest of the configuration will be done in the OBS settings menu. Click the File dropdown and then click on Settings.
In the Stream tab, change the Service to Custom...
The value of Server will be ftl://<your_hostname>. If your FTL instance is accessible at ftl.example.com, you should use ftl://ftl.example.com. See above for generating a stream key.
In the Output tab, change the output mode to Advanced. You can either use NVIDIA NVENC H.264 (new) for hardware encoding or x264 for software encoding. Refer to the relevant sections below for configuring OBS correctly for either of these encodings.
Both encoders vary in terms of system usage, quality, and latency. Hardware encoding uses the GPU, and generally uses less system resources, but if you are streaming something GPU heavy and have CPU to spare, consider using software encoding.
Software encoding uses the CPU and should only be used if you have CPU power to spare. The x264 implementation has a maximum limit of 8 threads that it can use at any one time, so CPUs with lots of threads can benefit from CPU encoding.
For the same bitrate, software encoding will look better in terms of video quality, but this comes at a cost of latency. Hardware encoding latency from screen-to-screen on a good connection can be as low as 150ms, whereas software encoding is generally above 1000ms.
| Property | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Rate Control | CBR | |
| Bitrate | 6000 (Recommended) | You should check your upload speed to see what you can handle. Note that higher bitrates require more bandwidth for the server to process, and more for viewers to keep your stream stable. |
| Keyframe Interval | 2 | Setting to anything other than 2 will result in instability. |
| Preset | Max Quality | Turn this down to Quality if the encoder can't keep up. |
| Profile | high | Turn this down to main if the encoder can't keep up. |
| Look-ahead | Off | Setting to anything other than off will result in instability. |
| Psycho Visual Tuning | Off | Setting to anything other than off will result in instability. |
| Max B-frames | 0 | Setting to anything other than 0 will result in instability. |
| Property | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Rate Control | CBR | |
| Bitrate | Same as NVIDIA NVENC | |
| Keyframe Interval | Same as NVIDIA NVENC | |
| CPU Usage Preset | medium (Recommended) | Set this as slow as your system can handle for the best quality. Generally medium is a good balance of leaving CPU available for other applications and quality, but feel free to experiment. |
| Profile | Same as NVIDIA NVENC | |
| Tune | none | Leaving as none will be good for most scenarios, but you may want to consider changing this and see if there is any performance benefits. See this post for an explation of values. |
If Frameshift has helped you in any way, please consider supporting my work. At the top of the GitHub repo is a Sponsor button where you can find links to donate to me directly. Any donations are greatly appreciated and help me continue to work on projects like this and release them for free.