Streaming

Playout provides a private live streaming solution powered by Mux. The video feed is protected by authentication — only signed-in users can access the stream, making it ideal for internal events and broadcasts that should not be publicly available.

WARNING

The Streaming feature can only be activated by the Playout team. Contact us at contact@playout.studio to get access.

Overview

When you open an event, the Streaming section appears in the sidebar (if enabled). It provides tools to start and stop your broadcast, monitor connected viewers, and manage VOD recordings.

Going Live

To start a broadcast:

1. Configure your encoder (e.g. OBS) with the RTMPS ingest URL and stream key from Settings → Production Units.
2. Start the stream from your encoder. Playout detects the incoming signal automatically.
3. On the event dashboard, click Start to take the event live.

To end the broadcast, click End on the event dashboard and confirm. Your encoder can then be stopped.

TIP

You can verify the ingest is active before clicking Start — the production unit's stream status in Settings updates in real time once your encoder connects.

The Streaming Workflow

The Streaming page guides you through the life of a broadcast as a connected sequence of steps. A flow indicator across the top shows where the event currently is and what comes next; hover any step for a short description.

The stages are:

Stage	What's happening
Idle	The event isn't live yet. Configure your stream settings and wait for your encoder's signal.
Live	The broadcast is on air. The page shows the player, a live status strip, and the chapter list.
Recording	The stream is being recorded for later replay.
VOD / Replay	The broadcast has ended and the recording is being prepared (and, once ready, published) as video-on-demand.
Archived	The event has been archived and removed from the active list.

The main panel always reflects the current stage, so you only see the controls that are relevant right now.

Stream Settings

Access rules and the auto-archive policy are reached from the settings summary toolbar on the Streaming page, which shows the current configuration at a glance. Click it to open the settings dialog, where you can edit:

• Access rules — who is allowed to watch (see below)
• Auto-archive — whether and when the event archives itself automatically
• Title and description — shown to viewers of the stream and its replay

The dialog scrolls if you add many rules, so a long configuration stays manageable.

Access Rules

Access rules decide which authenticated viewers may watch the stream. A rule set is built from one or more conditions, combined with a match mode:

• Match all — a viewer must satisfy every condition.
• Match any — a viewer must satisfy at least one condition.

Each condition tests a property of the viewer:

Field	Example use
Church	Restrict the stream to viewers from a specific church
Country	Restrict the stream to viewers in particular countries
Age	Restrict by the viewer's age

Add conditions with the add action and remove them individually. With no conditions, any authenticated viewer can watch.

INFO

Access rules are one of the settings bundled into an event preset, so a tenant's standard access policy can be applied to every event at once.

Auto-Archive

Auto-archive moves an event's replay out of the active list automatically. Enable it and set a delay in days — the replay is archived that many days after it's published. Leave it disabled to archive events manually from the event dashboard.

Chapters

While live, you can mark chapters in your broadcast from the chapter panel beside the player. Each chapter records a title and a timestamp, giving viewers navigation points in the replay.

• Add a chapter — Use the Add chapter action below the list to mark the current point in the stream.
• Name a chapter — Type a title directly into the chapter's row.
• Keep a chapter — A small toggle on each row controls whether the chapter is retained.
• Remove a chapter — Use the delete action on the row.

Connections

The Connections tab shows a real-time view of connected viewers and devices.

Key information displayed:

• Number of connected viewers — shown as a card on the event dashboard and in detail here
• Connection status — whether each connected client is active and receiving the stream

Use this tab to verify that your stream is reaching its intended audience before and during a broadcast.

VOD & Replay

When an event ends, the recorded stream can be made available as a video-on-demand (VOD) asset:

• Once the broadcast stops, Playout begins processing the recording via Mux.
• When processing is complete, the event transitions to Replay status and the VOD becomes available to authenticated viewers.
• If needed, the recording can also be clipped to a shorter asset using an external ffmpeg server — contact the Playout team for details.

INFO

Archiving an event also archives its associated VOD asset. Archived events and replays can still be viewed but are removed from the active list.

Production Units & Streaming

Each event is tied to a production unit that determines which Mux stream endpoint is used. Production units are configured in Settings → Production Units.

If a production unit does not have a stream configured, a warning will appear on the settings page indicating how many units are missing stream configuration.