| Plan Availability | Starter | Pro | Premium | Enterprise |
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For customers with contracts starting March 2024 or later, feature availability is based on your pricing tier. If interested, contact your CSM or our Sales Team to discuss pricing options.
Overview
The RTMP In feature allows speakers and event organizers to broadcast live streams from an external platform into a Goldcast event. This process happens in real-time and is ideal for situations in which an event is being hosted somewhere other than the Goldcast platform (i.e., Zoom), but the event organizer would still like to provide virtual attendees with an interactive experience.
Recommended streaming specs for RTMP sessions
| Video Size | 16:9 aspect ratio |
| Video Resolution | Ideal resolution is 720p or 1080p |
| Video Bitrate | 8 - 10 Mbps |
| Video Frame rate | 24 - 30fps |
| Video codec | H.264 |
| Video Profile | Any |
| GOP | 10-15 |
| Audio Codec | AAC |
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Audio Bitrate |
128 Kbps, stereo |
| Audio Sample Rate | 44.1 KHz |
| Buffer image prior to the video | 1920 x 1080 |
Limitations of RTMP sessions
You cannot use the following audience engagement features for these sessions:
| What’s unavailable? | What’s available? |
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Creating an RTMP session
You need to create an RTMP channel as part of your RTMP session creation.
Points to Know:
- Events can have up to five RTMP channels.
- The RTMP feeds will not broadcast to your event before the event start time.
- Once an RTMP channel has been connected to a stream and the channel is live, it cannot be deleted.
To create an RTMP session and channel:
- Log in to Goldcast Studio with your credentials and select the Events tab to get a list of all your events.
- Click Program → Agenda on the left menu to open your event Agenda.
- Click the +Add Session button.
- Select RTMP session type
- Enter a session title, start time, and end time (Heads up: The session time must fall during the event’s start and end time).
- Select an RTMP channel. If you’ve previously created channels for this event, you can select one from the dropdown. If you have no channels, you can add one by entering the channel name and clicking Save to the right. Once the channel is successfully saved, you can continue editing your session.
- Click Save to save the session.
- You will receive a pop-up saying Broadcast session created successfully.
You can use the same RTMP channel for multiple sessions. This is helpful, when your event has multiple sessions with each using the same source stream. To learn more about the attendee redirection experience between sessions, see here.
Heads Up! You can also change the RTMP channel to which a session is assigned to at any time.
Editing an RTMP session
- Log in to Goldcast Studio with your credentials, and select the Events tab to get a list of all your events.
- Click Program on the menu on the left side of your event and click Agenda.
- Click on the session name you’d like to edit.
- Scroll to the RTMP Channel section and open it by clicking the arrow on the right.
- Click the dropdown to change the channel selection or create a new one.
- Click Save in the upper right corner of the window.
Connecting an RTMP channel to an external streaming platform
Pro Tip: If you plan on connecting your RTMP Channel to a Zoom live stream, please review the platform's live streaming documentation in addition to the information provided in this section.
After you've created an RTMP session, you will have access to the Stream URL and Stream Key that will be used to connect the channel to your live stream. Click the Link and Key icons on your agenda to copy your stream URL and stream key from the session. We recommend storing them in a note or document for later reference.
While the exact location will vary depending on your platform, you will typically paste this information into fields provided in the Stream Settings for your streaming platform.
Heads Up! To complete the setup process, particularly on Zoom, you may need to bring the Channel live first.
Testing an RTMP session
Before your event begins, you will want to test your RTMP channels to ensure the connection has been established correctly.
RTMP Channel testing can be performed from the Agenda section on the menu on the left side of your event.
- Find the session you would like to test. Before starting the test, the channel name will be listed on the left side of the tile with a red dot, indicating the channel is not running.
- Click the Test Rtmp In button.
- The button will display Connecting…
- Once the channel loads, it will be live for 2 hours. The red dot will turn green, and the status will say, Channel active until xx: xx time
- Click the Watch button and then click Watch Live to view the stream
Now you can confirm that your stream is set up correctly and is visible inside Goldcast.
Adding a failover key
Failover is a backup operational mode in which the functions of a system component are assumed by a secondary component when the primary component becomes unavailable - either through failure or scheduled downtime.
Pro Tip: We recommend adding a failover key for your events, as it helps prevent service disruption.
To get the failover key for your RTMP stream:
- Open your preferred event in Goldcast Studio and navigate to Program → Agenda.
- On the agenda page, navigate to your RTMP session and click the info
icon to its right.
- Copy the Failover Stream URL and Key from the popup.
If the stream goes down, you can start streaming to the failover key, and our service will automatically detect that data has stopped on stream 1 and switch to stream 2.
