How to Live Stream Pre-Recorded Video on YouTube with OBS

Live video is one of the most prominent forms of online entertainment, with video content making up over 82% of all Internet traffic in the past few years. It’s clear that audiences prefer the video content format, with many people enjoying live streams the most. The global live-streaming market is now worth $99.82 billion, showing that the industry has seen an immense growth, and the estimates say this number will continue to grow.

The revenue-making opportunities with streaming are evident, but what if you’re unable to go live on a consistent schedule? Or, maybe your audience expects highly polished content that’s hard to achieve with live streams. Don’t worry – there’s a solution! By live streaming pre-recorded content, you can still have regularly scheduled live videos with high production value and no errors.

In this article, we’ll show you how to stream pre-recorded video on YouTube with the help of OBS, the go-to streaming software. And we won’t leave it at that. We’ll also cover the benefits of Dacast OBS integration for a more efficient workflow and smooth streaming. Dacast is a leading live streaming platform you can use to monetize and manage your video content.

Let’s learn more about how creators and companies can broadcast pre-recorded video as live content without compromising the live experience for their viewers.

Table Of Contents

• Why Stream Pre-Record Videos Instead of Going Live?
• Setting Up OBS for Broadcasting Pre-Recorded Streams to YouTube
• How to Stream Pre-Recorded Videos to YouTube Using OBS with Dacast
• Dacast’s Benefits Over YouTube Direct Streaming
• Best Practices for Streaming Pre-Recorded Videos Like a Pro
• Technological Advancements in Pre-Recorded Video Streaming
• FAQs
• Pre-recorded Streams For Real-Time Results

Why Stream Pre-Record Videos Instead of Going Live?

Live streaming is a powerful tool you can use to build a massive audience and get significant viewer interaction. More than 83% of marketers say it helps drive viewer engagement across all platforms. But live streams can be fickle. You never know if the frame rate might go down or if unexpected audio and video issues pop up, causing your viewership to plummet.

On the other hand, a pre-recorded livestream won’t have any of those quality issues, leading to a significantly lower drop-off rate. Some other benefits include:

• Greater Reliability and Control: Live broadcasts are unpredictable and can have technical difficulties, connectivity problems, or unexpected content errors. With pre-recorded videos, you can edit everything perfectly and adjust the settings beforehand to get a polished final product.
  
• Optimized Quality: While bandwidth and resolution limitations can affect live streams, pre-recorded content is fully optimized before broadcasting. You can stream higher-resolution videos with better audio without unexpected technical issues.
  
• Scheduling Flexibility: You can schedule pre-recorded videos to stream at peak engagement times, even if those times are in the middle of the night for you. Whether your audience is across different time zones or you simply want to reach them at a strategic time, you can put your streams on a schedule to broadcast without needing to be live. You can even automate video scheduling and going live with AI.
  
• Global Reach: You can even stream pre-recorded video to YouTube to take advantage of the platform’s massive audience to grow an international viewership.

Setting Up OBS for Broadcasting Pre-Recorded Streams to YouTube

Asking why exactly would you want to stream your pre-recorded videos on YouTube? Because it’s one of the best live streaming platforms, with over 2.5 billion active monthly users, translating into billions of daily views. There’s no reason why you wouldn’t share your OBS pre-recorded video streaming content on your YouTube channels as well.

The question is how exactly to do that. Let’s go over the technical side of a YouTube live streaming setup. Just follow the five easy steps below, and you’ll be good to go.

Step 1: Create a YouTube Account

You can’t upload videos or go live on the platform unless you have a user account. Open up the YouTube site and click the Sign In button in the top right corner. This will prompt you to either log into your account or create a new one.

Next, go to settings and in the “Account” tab select “Create a Channel”. Now that you have your very own channel, you’ll see a “+ Create” button every time you open up the site. When you click it, you’ll get the option to either upload a video or start a live stream.

Step 2: Install OBS onto your Streaming Setup

Next, you need to install OBS on your streaming PC or laptop. OBS is a streaming software many creators use for professional-level broadcasting. It’s open source, which means it has an active user base that constantly develops new plug-ins and add-ons to improve its functionality. It’s so popular because it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.

It’s also completely free to download OBS and use it without limitation. After you download it, the pop-up wizard will guide you through the installation, which should only take a minute or two.

Step 3: Configure OBS

Once you install OBS, it’s time to configure it properly so your streams always have good resolution and audio quality. To access and change the settings to your preference, open OBS, go to the “File” tab in the upper bar, and choose “Settings”. Navigate to “Output”, where you can change the values of the video and audio bitrate, video and audio encoder, etc.

For even more customization options, change the Output mode from Simple to Advanced. This will give you access to manually modify the keyframe interval, the CPU usage, and more. To adjust the audio, go to the “Audio” tab, and you can alter the resolution settings under the “Video” tab in “Settings”. The best OBS settings for live streaming professional broadcasters should use are:

Step 4: Load Pre-Recorded Video into OBS

Now, it’s time to get your pre-recorded video into OBS and prepare it for broadcasting. First, find the “Sources” box at the bottom of the OBS window. This is where you add content that will be part of your stream, like images, video, or text. Click on the “+” icon and select “Media Sources” from the menu to add a pre-recorded video file.

Name your source, then click “OK” to keep going. In the next window, you’ll see an option labeled “Local File” with a checkbox next to it. Make sure this box is checked. Click ” Browse ” to find the computer folder containing the pre-recorded video. Select the file to add to your stream with OBS.

Now, you should adjust the video’s looping, buffering, and timing settings:

• Video Looping: This keeps the pre-recorded video on a loop as many times as you want. It automatically restarts the video once it finishes. You can adjust this setting by going to “Sources” > “Media Sources” and ticking the box next to where it says “Loop”.
• Video Buffering: This setting can prevent interruptions or stutters during playback. It’s especially useful when dealing with network delays, high-quality media files, or performance issues. OBS generally manages buffering automatically, and you only need to adjust for performance issues. You can do this in two ways. In “Media Sources,” check the “Use hardware decoding” box, or in “Settings” > “Output”, lower the bitrate.
  
• Video Timing: Timing adjustments help control the synchronization and delay of media playback. It keeps the video and audio in sync and prevents any playback delays. It’s also possible to add a delay in the stream itself. You can do that by opening “Settings” > “Advanced” > “Stream Delay” > Enable.

Step 5: Connect OBS to YouTube Live

After you configure your OBS software and input the pre-recorded content, it’s time to connect it with your YouTube Live account. As we mentioned, you can only go live and post videos on YouTube if you have an account with a channel. If you don’t have this set up already, go back to Step 1 and return here after it’s done.

You’ll need a YouTube stream key to connect the streaming software to the platform. To find this, follow these steps:

1. Open YouTube Studio.
2. Select the “Go Live” option in the top right corner of the screen.
3. Select the Start Right Now option in the YouTube Live Control Room Window that pops up.
4. Click Go in the Streaming software box in the following pop-up window.
5. In “Streaming Settings,” click the “Copy” button.

Next, go back to OBS and open “Settings”. Navigate to the “Stream Tab” and open the “Service” drop-down menu. Here, you’ll find two options: YouTube HLS and YouTube RTMPS. Here is the difference between the two:

• YouTube HLS: A protocol that uses adaptive bitrate streaming to adjust the quality of the stream based on the viewer’s network conditions.
  
• YouTube RTMPS: This protocol secures the connection between OBS and YouTube by encrypting it. It’s also good for low latency live streaming. 

Select the one you prefer, select “Use Stream Key,” and paste the key you copied from YouTube Studio.

That’s it! Now you’re ready to use OBS and stream pre-recorded content on YouTube.

How to Stream Pre-Recorded Videos to YouTube Using OBS with Dacast

You can take your pre-recorded videos to the next level by using OBS with Dacast. Dacast seamlessly integrates with OBS and uses a high-performance CND to deliver your content securely anywhere in the world. It allows you to record your streams, which you can then upload and broadcast on YouTube as live videos. When using Dacast and OBS to stream, you can also expect:

• Several Monetization Opportunities: You can monetize live streams with the AVOD, SVOD, and TVOD monetization options.
  
• Auto-scaling: Dacast delivers your content without buffering, even if your audience size fluctuates.
  
• Robust Security Features: The platform offers password protection and token authentication, among other security measures.

OBS and Dacast Integration: Technical How-To

We already figured out how to get and use the YouTube stream key, and finding the Dacast one is even easier. Once again, make sure you have a Dacst account and log in. Go to the “Live Streams” tab and select “Create Live Stream”.

Once you have a new live stream, go to the “General” tab and click “Encoder Setup”. A new window will pop up, showing the stream’s URL and key. This is also where you can select OBS as your RTMP encoder from the drop-down menu.

Now, go back to OBS, open “Settings” > “Stream” > “Custom Streaming Server”. As the RTMP server, you can enter the stream’s URL and paste the Dacast stream key. Now that you’re done with the OBS stream key setup, you can choose to go live whenever you’re ready.

Dacast’s Benefits Over YouTube Direct Streaming

Dacast is a leading online video platform, which, unlike YouTube, doesn’t restrict user branding options. Dacast gives you full control over your branding, from customizing your stream with your logo and colors to adding personalized graphics for a more cohesive experience for your viewers.

The security is enterprise-grade, with features like geo-blocking, DRM, access control, IP Whitelisting, and RTMP streaming. YouTube, while still a secure site, lacks some of these functionalities. Another advantage of streaming on Dacast is the lower latency. The platform uses a CDN optimized for faster broadcasting and fewer delays. With Dacast, your viewers will experience almost no lag during streams. This makes real-time audience interaction more engaging and fun.

Best Practices for Streaming Pre-Recorded Videos Like a Pro

The Dacast OBS integration makes it easy to always provide high-quality streams to your audience, even if they are pre-recorded. But to maintain consistency across all of your broadcasts, try following these pre-recorded live streaming best practices:

Technological Advancements in Pre-Recorded Video Streaming

Live broadcasting of pre-recorded streams is getting increasingly popular, bringing new innovations and technological advancements to the table. AI has found a way to be useful here as well.

You can use AI tools to automatically adjust video playback or automatically go live on a set schedule. AI tools can also help you integrate interactive elements into the pre-recorded streams, such as audience polls and real-time feedback. You can even set up multiple pre-recorded streams dynamically, with triggers that adjust stream timing based on audience behavior.

You can also try cloud-based streaming software and cloud-based encoding to reduce processing loads and increase efficiency. As your audience grows, the cloud infrastructure can dynamically adjust to accommodate increased demand without affecting video quality or stream stability.

FAQs

1. Can I schedule multiple pre-recorded live streams at once?

YouTube and Dacast both allow users to schedule multiple pre-recorded live streams in advance. This feature automates content delivery, helping broadcasts go live without a manual trigger. It’s ideal for managing time-sensitive content or running regular programming.

2. What’s the best bitrate for high-quality pre-recorded streaming?

For high-quality streaming, the recommended bitrate for 1080p video is between 4500 and 6000 kbps. For 720p, a bitrate range of 2500-4000 kbps is typically sufficient. These bitrates balance quality and bandwidth usage, maintaining smooth playback for viewers.

3. Does Dacast offer better monetization than YouTube?

Dacast offers more flexible monetization options than YouTube. It provides ad-free streaming, along with pay-per-view and subscription-based models, allowing you to generate revenue without relying on ads.

4. Can I multi-stream to YouTube and Dacast at the same time?

It’s possible to multi-stream to both YouTube and Dacast simultaneously. You can stream to multiple platforms by using OBS with the Multi-Output Plugin or third-party services like Restream.io.

Pre-recorded Streams For Real-Time Results

The future of professional broadcasting lies in pre-recorded streaming. By using pre-recorded live streaming software, you can start a stream during peak engagement hours regardless of the time of day. Now, you don’t have to dedicate large portions of your time to go live. As long as you have a rich backlog of video content, you can schedule your pre-recorded stream whenever you want to.

While using YouTube and OBS makes this method accessible, switching to Dacast and taking advantage of its OBS integration will give you superior stream control and open up new monetization opportunities. Our pricing options fit all budgets, and we offer a free 14-day trial – no credit card needed!

For seamless broadcasting solutions and professional broadcasting features, start streaming with Daccast!

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