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Amar Thodupunoori
Amar Thodupunoori

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Streaming Made Simple: RTMP with OBS in 5 Minutes

If you’ve ever wanted to broadcast your video feed to a streaming server or platform, chances are you’ll come across RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol). It’s one of the most common ways to send live video from an encoder like OBS Studio to a media server.

Here’s a quick guide to setting it up.

Step 1: Install OBS Studio

Download and install OBS Studio — it’s free, open-source, and works on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Step 2: Grab Your RTMP Server URL & Stream Key

You’ll need an RTMP endpoint to stream to. This could be:

  • A live streaming platform (YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, etc.)
  • Your own media server (e.g., Ant Media Server, Wowza, Nginx-RTMP).

Usually, you’ll get something like:
rtmp://your-server-ip:1935/live

and a Stream Key, which uniquely identifies your broadcast.

Step 3: Configure OBS for RTMP

In OBS:

  1. Go to Settings → Stream
  2. Set the Service to Custom
  3. Enter your RTMP URL in Server
  4. Paste your Stream Key

Step 4: Start Streaming

Click Start Streaming in OBS. Your feed will now be sent over RTMP to your target server/platform.


💡 Pro tip: If you’re streaming to your own RTMP server, make sure port 1935 is open in your firewall/security group.

That’s it — you’ve just set up RTMP streaming with OBS!

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