Grace window and states

The grace window is the maximum time the channel keeps your stream open, with the offline screen up, waiting for you to come back.

Choosing it

In Failover, the Grace column. You have three options: 2 min, 5 min and 10 min. A new channel comes with 5 min. The change saves itself.

If you stream…	Pick
In places with decent coverage, and you’d rather cut than leave the screen up	2 min
Walking around the city, with short drops	5 min
Metro, tunnels, mountains, driving through dead zones	10 min

Note

You lose nothing by setting 10 min: if you’re back in thirty seconds, the stream carries on and that’s that. The only cost is that your viewers watch your offline screen —and in silence— for that long.

What happens when it runs out

1. The channel closes the broadcast on your platform. As far as Twitch (or whoever your destination is) is concerned your stream ended there: the broadcast closes and the break starts.
2. The channel goes back to Idle, ready and waiting for your signal.
3. When you reconnect, a new stream opens on your platform. It isn’t a continuation: it’s a different broadcast, with its own saved video.

That’s why you pick the grace window based on how long you’re willing to have the offline screen up, not on how long you take to come back.

Back-to-back drops

If you fully recover your signal and drop again, a fresh, complete window starts. If the signal only flickers and never really stabilises, the same window keeps running: it doesn’t reset with every attempt.

The countdown, on the dashboard

During a drop there is nothing to time yourself: the Failover card on the home dashboard shows the countdown live (Offline screen up · x min of grace left) and warns you when the window runs out. See Your home dashboard.

Stopping isn’t dropping

If you stop the broadcast cleanly from your encoder (the stop button), the channel picks that up and closes the destination instantly, without spending the grace window. The state goes to Stream ended. That’s what you want: when your stream is over, your channel doesn’t sit there for ten minutes with the offline screen up.

So to test failover, don’t use the stop button: fake a real drop (airplane mode, cover the antenna, walk out of coverage).

Channel states

State	What it means
Setting up	The channel is being created. It’s short and happens once
Idle	The channel is ready but isn’t getting your signal. It isn’t broadcasting anything to your destination yet
Live	Your signal is arriving and going through to your platform
Offline screen	Your signal has dropped. Your offline screen is going out to your destination and the grace window is running
Recovering	Your signal is back and the channel is waiting for the right moment to splice your picture in again
Stream ended	You stopped cleanly: the destination was closed without waiting for the grace window
Suspended	Your subscription isn’t active
Error	Something went wrong with the channel. Open a ticket from Support

The states update by themselves while you’re looking at the page.

Next step

• Offline screen: what’s on screen during the grace window.
• Destinations: where the stream is closed and reopened.
• Getting started with failover: the full setup.