Failover destinations

A failover channel broadcasts to one destination: Twitch or a generic RTMP destination (Kick, YouTube or any other platform that gives you a URL and a key). There’s no multistream.

The destination isn’t typed inside the failover channel: you pick it from your streaming channels, which live in Account. That way the same destination serves several things and you only set it up once.

1. Create the streaming channel

1. Go to Account → Streaming channels → Add channel.
2. Pick the Platform: Twitch, Kick, YouTube or Otro.
3. Type the Channel name (your handle on that platform).
4. Paste that platform’s RTMP server (optional) and Platform stream key (optional).
5. Leave Channel active on and hit Create channel.

The URL and the key go in separate fields

Plenty of platforms show you the URL and the key together so you can paste them into a single field. Not here: the URL goes in one field and the key in the other. If you stick the key on the end of the URL, the destination won’t work.

2. Where each value comes from

Platform	Ingest URL	Stream key
Twitch	The dashboard suggests rtmp://live.twitch.tv/app as an example	In your Twitch creator dashboard, under the stream settings: the primary key
Kick, YouTube or another	The RTMP server URL that shows up in their stream settings	The stream key on that same screen

Every platform calls this roughly the same thing: stream key, broadcast key, primary key. It’s the one you normally paste into your OBS.

Treat it like a password

With your stream key, anyone can broadcast on your channel. Don’t show it on screen and don’t paste it into a chat. If it gets out, regenerate it on your platform and update the streaming channel.

3. Assign it to the failover channel

1. Open Failover in the side menu.
2. In the Destination column, pick the channel you just created. If you leave it on — no destination — failover has nowhere to broadcast to.

If the destination is half set up you’ll see The channel … is missing its stream URL or key. Fill them in and try again. If you turned it off in Account, you’ll see The output channel is disabled. Enable it to go live. Both are fixed by editing the streaming channel.

4. Check that it’s arriving

1. With the destination picked, broadcast from your encoder to the URL in the Ingest column.
2. The failover channel goes to Live.
3. Open your platform: you have to see yourself live there, with your video and your audio.
4. If the channel is Live but your platform never starts, the URL or the key is wrong. Fix them in Account → Streaming channels, stop the encoder, wait for the channel to go back to Idle and try again.

Note

The same streaming channel is also used for the Cloud OBS output and for the chat behind automatic scene switching. If you change its key, you change it for everything.

Next step

• Offline screen: what your destination sees when you drop.
• Grace window: how long the stream is held open.
• Getting started with failover: the full setup.