Stream on twitch.tv from the shell

Important : make sure that whatever you're streaming is compliant with twitch.tv's terms of service and community guidelines.

Prerequisites

• Linux distro or WLS2 (debian 12 recommended)
• GNU Bash shell (version 5.2.15 recommended)
• Docker (version 27.0.2 recommended)
• FFmpeg (version 5.1.5-0+deb12u1 recommended)
• FFmpeg provides officially supported packages for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and Red Hat

1 - Install the program

• Get the twitch.tv stream key for your account.
• Select up a twitch.tv ingestion endpoint near your location.
• Run the following commands :

# install ffmpeg if necessary (required for video sources preparation)
dpkg-query -l ffmpeg > /dev/null 2>&1 || sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

# clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/mulekick/stream-from-the-shell

# cd into the cloned repository
cd stream-from-the-shell

# create container name configuration file (lower / uppercase letters, numbers and dashes allowed)
echo "STREAMING_CONTAINER_SAMPLE_NAME" > .container.name

# create endpoint configuration file (append your stream key to whatever URL you selected)
echo "rtmp://{TWITCH_ENDPOINT_ID}.contribute.live-video.net/app/{YOUR_STREAM_KEY}" > .twitch.endpoint

# pull the docker image
docker image pull mulekick/stream-from-the-shell:latest

2 - Prepare videos to stream

• Select some videos you want to broadcast and add them to video.sources/.video.sources.list :

# sample .video.sources.list file (all containers formats, resolutions, framerates etc ... are permitted)
# you can write comments into this file as well using the bash syntax
# always use absolute paths and enclose in single quotes as in the following examples :
'/home/myusername/video files/series/breaking bad season 1/season 1 episode 1.mp4'
'/home/myusername/video files/series/breaking bad season 1/season 1 episode 2.mp4'
'/home/myusername/video files/series/breaking bad season 1/season 1 episode 3.mp4'
# etc ...
# IMPORTANT NOTE : FILE PATHS MUST NOT CONTAIN SINGLE QUOTES, RENAME IF NECESSARY 

• Once done, run npm run prepare to format your videos sources and ready them up for streaming.
• You can run ./utils/prepare.sources.sh to the same effect if you don't have npm installed.
• Formatted video files will be saved in .flv format in video.sources.

Note : It is best to not store anything in video.sources besides the sources list and the processed files.

3 - Stream on twitch.tv from the shell

• You're all set up now, so run npm run stream or ./commands.sh stream to start your twitch.tv stream.
• Once the docker container has started, run npm run console or ./commands.sh console.
• At this stage, the streaming console should show on your TTY and display the 40 program slots :

4 - Broadcast your videos on stream

• Congrats ! Your stream is now live on twitch.tv and will loop 24/7 over the 40 available program slots.
• Any formatted video file copied to stream.queue will be queued to be broadcasted on stream.
• Each queued file will show up in the TTY console with its slot number, start time, title and duration.

# IMPORTANT : COPY FORMATTED VIDEO FILES TO THE STREAM QUEUE ONE AT A TIME
# if you copy multiple files at once, only the first one will be added
cp "video.sources/beaking_bad_season_1_episode_1.flv" stream.queue/.
# IMPORTANT : ALWAYS WAIT FOR THE COPIED VIDEO TO APPEAR IN THE CONSOLE BEFORE COPYING THE NEXT ONE
# it is even better to wait a few seconds between copy operations, especially when working with large videos
cp "video.sources/beaking_bad_season_1_episode_2.flv" stream.queue/.
# etc ...
cp "video.sources/beaking_bad_season_1_episode_3.flv" stream.queue/.
# ...

• Once the video has been transcoded into the outgoing stream, its slot is reset and becomes available again.

5 - Restream an ongoing stream

• You can also use the program to restream an ongoing live stream by typing the following command :

# pass the url to the master playlist of the live stream you want to restream
npm run restream "https://video.website/live-stream-master-playlist.m3u8"

# if you don't have npm installed
./commands.sh restream "https://video.website/live-stream-master-playlist.m3u8"

6 - Once done, stop the stream

• The stream can be stopped at any point by running npm run stop or ./commands.sh stop.
• Twitch.tv may automatically terminate the stream after 48 hours (I'm unable to 100% confirm that).
• As a result, if twitch.tv terminates the stream, the streaming container will exit and have to be restarted.