This article is mostly designed for streamers from Russia, since most of the services mentioned are Russian. Nevertheless, I decided to translate this post into English, as here you can find useful for everyone.
In addition to the main channel on Twitch, where I perform my music live, at the end of 2021, I also created “Radio 24/7” with recordings of my best jams (a tutorial post on creating a 24/7 stream can be found here). The natural solution was to retransmit it to the maximum possible number of sites in order to have the greatest audience coverage.
I was “lucky”: an account registered back in 2020 on Restream.io it allowed you to add any number of stream platforms from their list on a free tariff! At some point, for more “fresh” accounts, they cut the free functionality to two sites.
I recently received the following letter from them:
I assume that from July 31, 2022, they will also cut functionality for old accounts.
UPD from August 2: the opportunities were not cut, everything remained as it was.
UPD from August 19: the functionality is still being cut, but from August 29:
Access to the work panel via VPN did not bother me much (Restream recently restricted access to its service in the Russian Federation): I follow the chats through the sheepChat app, and edit the titles with descriptions on the sites themselves. But the probability of complete (or partial) disconnection from Restream.io , the absence of WASD in their lists and the inability to fine-tune the VK stream (or I didn’t understand how through Restream.io install the “Infinite Broadcast” checkbox), prompted me to search for other free alternatives.
И первое, что мне пришло на ум – это стрим-платформа GoodGame.
GoodGame.ru
This platform has a built-in ability to retransmit your stream. It is enough to look into the toolbar of your channel, click “add a restream” -> give a name -> insert the server and the broadcast key -> turn on the toggle switch.
Now the stream that is launched on GoodGame will be relayed to the added resources.
*Unfortunately, the site is only in Russian
But it turned out that the stability of retransmissions was lame: individual channels fell off chaotically (especially Youtube and Nonolive) and switching the toggle switch did not always resume signal transmission.
It is possible that this is not so critical if the streams last several hours. But in the case of 24/7, it’s too much hassle and inconvenience. In general, I left this option as an auxiliary.
After Googling for a while, I came across a hitherto unseen service Looch.Tv.
LOOCH.TV
Looch.Tv this is a semi-abandoned service from Mail.Ru. Multichat is not available, technical support, apparently, does not work either, but the restreaming is fully functional! You can add up to 5 different channels.
Channel dumps, like on GoodGame, happen, but extremely rarely (VK and Youtube disappeared a couple of times). The only thing is that it will not be possible to restart the steam that has fallen off with a toggle switch: you will have to restart the main broadcast in OBS (or the script on VPS, as in my case).
You can log in via VK and Youtube (it doesn’t work through Twitch – it gives an error). And it will be two different profiles.
There are bugs too. Sometimes the service simply does not allow you to add or edit a channel: you enter the name, server, key, click “save” and you are thrown onto the Dashboard without saving. How it is treated is unclear.
I needed two profiles: one for the radio, and the second for experiments with the restream of the main channel. And if in the first profile I was able to add WASD without any problems, then in the second I was not able to attach it. Despite the fact that other platforms clung without problems.
Nevertheless, the service is good and stable. But up to convenience and stability Restream.io of course, it does not hold up. But you can add WASD (adjusted for the above) and create a broadcast in VK with the desired attributes.
*The language can be switched to English in the upper right corner!
Afterword
Eventually, I mastered the installation and configuration of an Nginx server with an RTMP module. A detailed guide is here.