Broadcasting with any other encoder

Your encoder doesn’t have to be on our list. If it speaks RTMP or SRT and you can type a URL into it, it broadcasts with us.

You need: any plan with a stream key · your encoder · 10 minutes

What you have to give it

Item	Where it comes from	What it looks like
Publish URL	Publish button on your key, in Stream Keys	rtmp://…, srt://… or srtla://…
streamid (SRT and SRTLA only)	It’s inside the publish URL	publish: followed by your key
Bitrate cap	Your plan (table below)	A number in kbps
Region	Region selector on your key	Changing it changes the publish URL

Don’t type the URL: copy it from the dashboard. One character off and the encoder retries in a loop without telling you why.

What to fill in for each protocol

RTMP. The publish URL already ends in your key and the playback URL is the same one. If your encoder has a single URL field, paste it whole. If it has two fields (server and key), cut it at the last slash: what’s on the left is the server, what’s on the right is the key.

SRT. The URL carries the server, the port and your key inside the streamid, with the publish: prefix. If your encoder has a separate streamid field, put publish:<your-key> there and only the rest in the server field. If it has a latency field, more latency means more room to recover lost packets and more delay on screen.

SRTLA. Same as SRT, but the URL starts with srtla:// and uses its own port. Only encoders built for bonding support it; if yours doesn’t name it, it doesn’t have it. Playback for an SRTLA key goes over SRT, like all the others.

The protocol in the dashboard and the one in the encoder have to match

The key is on one protocol at a time. If the Protocol selector says SRT and your encoder sends RTMP, it won’t connect. Change the selector, copy the new URL with Publish and paste it again.

Bitrate caps

Plan	Key cap
Stream Key Lite	9,000 kbps
Stream Key	9,000 kbps
OBS Basic	6,000 kbps
OBS Standard	6,000 kbps
OBS Pro	10,000 kbps

Set your encoder below the cap. If your key feeds a Cloud OBS, what that server puts out towards your platform has its own cap, different from this one: Going out to your platform.

Checking that the feed is arriving

Don’t trust the encoder saying “connected”. Look at the dashboard:

1. In Stream Keys, your key has to go from No signal to Streaming.
2. On the home dashboard, the Live signal card shows the Current bitrate. That number has to look like the one you set in the encoder, and stay flat.
3. If you want to watch the video, use the playback URL in a player.

States you can run into and what they mean:

You see	It means	What you do
No signal	Nothing is reaching us from your encoder	Check URL, protocol and region
Streaming	Your feed is coming in	Nothing, you’re done
No subscription	That key’s subscription isn’t active	Check Billing
Revoked	That key is no longer valid	Use the current one and copy its publish URL

Not working?

The encoder retries and the dashboard doesn’t move. Old URL. It happens every time you change the Region or the Protocol, and after you Rotate the key: the previous one stops working instantly.

It connects and cuts after a few seconds. Bitrate above what your upload can take. Halve it and climb back up slowly.

It stutters even at a low bitrate. Your network is losing packets. Switch the key to SRT: it recovers what gets lost, and RTMP doesn’t.

Next step

• Choosing a protocol — which one suits your network.
• What the publish URL is — how to read each piece of it.
• My feed isn’t arriving — the full run-through.