Streaming

A self-hosted livestream platform for conventions. It takes RTMP from the encoders in your rooms, transcodes an adaptive ladder, delivers HLS through edge servers you can add and remove during the event, and gives the video team one panel for the whole thing: programme, chat, moderation, recordings and infrastructure.

Nothing about any one convention is baked in. Names, copy, links, logo, login background and accent colour live in the database and are edited in the admin panel.

What it does

Watch. A browse grid with a live hero, per-channel filters, hover previews and a programme guide. The player is HLS with a quality ladder, a seekable live window, theatre mode, a pop-out chat and an external-player link for VLC and friends. It works on a phone.

Chat. One channel per source, so chat survives the handover from one show to the next. Timeouts, bans, purge, clear, announcements, slow mode and per-message actions, plus chat commands for moderators. Custom emotes are uploaded by users and approved by staff.

Programme. Shows are planned on a drag-and-drop timeline, imported from pretalx, or created by hand. Auto mode starts a show when its source comes online and stops it at a hard stop, so nobody has to sit on the button at 2am.

Archive. Every source is recorded continuously to object storage. A recording is a time range over that archive, cut in a timeline editor with in and out markers, and rebuilt from the current markers whenever you move them. Published recordings are grouped by year and can require a role to watch.

Infrastructure. Edge servers are provisioned on Hetzner Cloud from the panel, get their DNS record, run a generated install script, and are handed viewers by the assignment job. Health checks, viewer counts, capacity and alerts sit on one dashboard.

Access. Sign-in goes through OpenID Connect. Roles carry permissions, and shows and recordings can require one. With AUTH_REQUIRED=false the public pages are open to guests and only chat stays behind sign-in.

Screenshots

Player, live chat and moderator badges	Programme guide across channels and days
Archive, one collection per year	Cutting a recording out of the continuous archive
Capacity, server health and what is on air	Planning the programme on a timeline
Shows, with stream control per row	Branding, colours and links, applied without a rebuild
Sources, one per room, each with its own stream key	Sign-in, with what is on air next to it

The demo content in these screenshots is Big Buck Bunny (CC BY 3.0, Blender Foundation).

How it works

OBS / encoder
   |  RTMP, one stream key per source
SRS ingress ──DVR──> uploader ──> S3 ──> archive playlists ──> recordings
   |
ffmpeg ABR ladder (480p / 720p / 1080p, aligned GOPs)
   |
origin (nginx + caddy)
   |
edge servers (njs verifies playback tokens)
   |
viewers

The Laravel app never carries video. It hands out signed playback tokens, assigns viewers to an edge, and proxies playlists so a viewer only ever talks to its own domain. Segments come from the edges. Archive segments come from the bucket as presigned URLs, which is why a recording playlist is rendered per request rather than stored.

Stack

Laravel 12 on PHP 8.2, Inertia 2 with Vue 3 and Tailwind 4, Vidstack and hls.js in the player, Reverb or Pusher for websockets, Horizon on Redis for queues, MySQL or PostgreSQL, S3-compatible object storage, SRS and ffmpeg for the video path, Hetzner Cloud for servers.

Running it locally

You need PHP 8.2+, Composer, Node 20+, a database, Redis or Valkey, ffmpeg, and Docker if you want the full video path.

composer install
npm install
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate
php artisan migrate --seed
npm run dev
php artisan queue:work
php artisan reverb:start

Video is optional for UI work, and comes in two flavours:

# fake channels written straight to disk, no Docker
php artisan db:seed --class=DevStreamChannelsSeeder
./scripts/dev-streams.sh          # then set DEV_STREAMS=true in .env

# the real path: SRS, ABR ladder, origin, edge, S3, DVR
./scripts/dev-stack.sh up

docs/dev-stack.md covers both, including the switches that keep five channels running on a laptop without melting it.

Configuration

The settings that matter live in .env:

Variable	What it controls
OIDC_URL, OIDC_CLIENT_ID, OIDC_SECRET	Identity provider
AUTH_REQUIRED	Whether guests can watch
CHAT_ENABLED, CHAT_*	Chat, rate limits, slow mode, link handling
HLS_VIEWER_SECRET, HLS_EMBED_SECRET	Playback tokens the edges verify
AWS_*, DVR_AWS_*	Archive and DVR buckets
HETZNER_TOKEN, DNS_*	Server provisioning and DNS records
STREAM_SYSTEM_STREAMKEY	Shared secret between the app and the video stack

Branding is not an env var. Convention name, copy, footer links, logo, login background and accent colour are stored in the branding_settings table and edited at /manage > Settings, or scripted:

php artisan branding:set convention_name="Example Con" primary_color="#7c5cff"

The accent colour is applied as CSS custom properties at runtime, so changing it takes effect without a rebuild.

Deployment

The root Dockerfile builds the app image. docker/ holds the images for the video path: origin SRS, origin and edge nginx and caddy, the ABR transcoder, and the DVR uploader. Queues run under Horizon, websockets under Reverb, and the scheduler needs php artisan schedule:run every minute.

Documentation

• docs/dev-stack.md: the local video stack
• docs/admin/pretalx-import.md: importing the programme
• docs/admin/auto-mode.md: starting and stopping shows without a human
• docs/dvr-archive-plan.md: how the archive and cutting work

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. For anything larger, or for help running this at your own convention, contact @Thiritin on Telegram.

Licence

GPL-3.0. See LICENSE.