Live Streaming Pack

The JSON Nightmare of OBS Scenes and Fragile FFmpeg Chains

We built the Live Streaming Pack because manually orchestrating a multi-platform broadcast is a recipe for disaster. If you've ever tried to manage OBS scene transitions, FFmpeg encoding flags, and RTMP ingest endpoints by hand, you know the pain. OBS scenes are JSON files that look like a developer's nightmare—nested objects, transform bounds, source references, and group hierarchies that break silently if a single property is malformed. We've seen engineers spend hours debugging why a scene doesn't load, only to find a missing obs_sceneitem_set_pos coordinate or a typo in a source type.

Then there's FFmpeg. The command line for a robust encoding pipeline is long, fragile, and unforgiving. You're juggling -c:v libx264 with specific codec options, -map 0 for stream handling, and -f flv for the output format. One wrong flag and your stream goes black or audio desyncs. When you add multi-platform broadcasting to the mix, you're either running OBS Multi-RTMP (which shares CPU with the main process) or setting up a local FFmpeg relay. Both approaches require precise audio channel mapping and bitrate scaling to avoid choking your machine. Without a structured workflow, you're flying blind.

What Dropped Frames and Audio Drift Cost Your Audience

Ignoring these technical debt issues doesn't just annoy you; it costs you viewers and revenue. RFC 9317 outlines the operational considerations for streaming media, highlighting how transport protocol issues directly impact the quality of experience (QoE) ^[3]. When your FFmpeg relay drops packets or your OBS scene fails to render, your audience sees frozen frames or hears audio lagging behind video. In live streaming, trust is fragile. A viewer who tunes in to find a broken stream won't come back.

The financial impact is real. A single hour of downtime during a peak event can mean lost donations, missed sponsorships, or churned subscribers. Audio drift is particularly damaging; even a 500ms desync can make content unwatchable and drive viewers away. Furthermore, if you're not managing your VOD metadata and engagement triggers properly, you're leaving discoverability and interaction on the table. The Live Video API from Meta shows how integrated streams can cross-post and interact with viewers, but only if your ingestion pipeline is stable ^[4]. Without automated health checks and validated configurations, you're gambling with every stream.

A Simulcast Disaster: CPU, Audio, and the Multi-Platform Trap

Imagine a solo streamer running a 6-hour charity broadcast. They want to simulcast to Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook to maximize reach. They fire up OBS and enable the Multi-RTMP plugin. Within 20 minutes, their CPU hits 100%. The main stream starts dropping frames, and the secondary streams disconnect one by one. Worse, the audio on the YouTube stream drifts by a second, making the commentary unintelligible. The streamer tries to fix it by restarting OBS, but the scene state is corrupted, and they lose 15 minutes of content. Chat alerts stop firing because the engagement overlay crashed. By the end of the stream, they're exhausted, and the technical issues overshadowed the cause.

This isn't hypothetical. It's a common pattern we see in the wild. The CPU contention between OBS and the relay is a classic bottleneck. Audio channel mapping is often misconfigured, leading to silent tracks or mono-stereo mismatches. Scene validation is rarely done until it's too late. Even platform-specific requirements, like Twitch's embedding dimensions or YouTube's bitrate limits, can trip you up if you're not following a strict schema ^[6]. Without a validated workflow, you're relying on luck.

Production-Grade Stability: Validated Scenes, Efficient Relays, and Automated Checks

With the Live Streaming Pack installed, you shift from guessing to engineering. We provide a complete workflow that covers setup, multi-platform broadcasting, engagement, and VOD management. The skill.md orchestrator guides the AI agent through every step, referencing precise templates and validators. Your OBS scenes are no longer JSON black boxes; they're validated against a strict schema that checks for required sources, valid transform bounds, and reference integrity. The validate-scene.py script runs before every stream, ensuring your scene loads correctly.

For multi-platform streaming, we replace fragile manual commands with the ffmpeg-multi-rtmp.sh script. It handles concurrent streaming via a local relay, featuring dynamic bitrate scaling and audio remuxing. You get graceful restart logic that keeps your stream alive even if a platform endpoint flaps. The rtmp-multi-stream-arch.md reference details CPU sharing strategies and audio channel mapping, so you can stream to Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook without melting your CPU.

Engagement is automated via engagement-config.yaml, defining alert triggers, chat moderation rules, and VOD metadata injection. You can integrate with platform APIs like Twitch's Live API or Meta's Live Video API to create interactive experiences ^[5]. For post-stream workflows, you can pipe your VODs into the video production pack for editing or use the youtube channel pack for SEO optimization. If your stream includes audio-heavy segments, the podcast production pack offers complementary tools for cleanup and distribution.

What's in the Live Streaming Pack

• skill.md — Orchestrator skill that defines the live streaming workflow, explicitly references all templates, references, scripts, validators, and examples by relative path to guide the AI agent through setup, multi-platform broadcasting, engagement, and VOD management.
• references/obs-scene-api.md — Canonical reference for OBS Studio scene composition API, embedding exact C API signatures (obs_scene_create, obs_scene_add, obs_sceneitem_set_pos, obs_frontend_set_current_scene), reference counting rules, and JSON scene structure.
• references/ffmpeg-encoding-guide.md — Canonical reference for FFmpeg video encoding & VOD management, embedding exact flags (-c:v libx264, -c:a copy, -map 0, -f flv), codec options, and stream handling syntax.
• references/rtmp-multi-stream-arch.md — Canonical reference for multi-platform RTMP architecture, detailing OBS Multi-RTMP plugin vs FFmpeg local relay, CPU sharing strategies, and audio channel mapping for Twitch/YouTube/Facebook.
• templates/obs-scene-production.json — Production-grade OBS scene JSON template with pre-configured sources, transitions, groups, and item transforms (position, scale, crop, bounds) ready for import.
• templates/ffmpeg-multi-rtmp.sh — Production-grade FFmpeg script for concurrent multi-platform streaming via local relay, featuring dynamic bitrate scaling, audio remuxing, and graceful restart logic.
• templates/engagement-config.yaml — Production-grade configuration for engagement tools, defining alert triggers, chat moderation rules, VOD metadata injection, and platform-specific overlay parameters.
• scripts/validate-scene.py — Programmatic validator that parses OBS scene JSON against the schema, checks for required sources/items, validates transform bounds, and exits non-zero on structural or logical failures.
• validators/obs-scene-schema.json — JSON Schema definition for OBS scene validation, enforcing required fields, valid source types, numeric bounds ranges, and reference integrity.
• scripts/stream-health-check.sh — Executable health-check workflow that verifies FFmpeg/OBS binaries, tests RTMP endpoint reachability, validates codec compatibility, and exits non-zero if critical stream prerequisites fail.
• examples/multi-platform-worked.json — Worked example demonstrating a complete multi-platform stream configuration, integrating OBS scene references, FFmpeg relay parameters, and engagement triggers for a live broadcast.

Ship Your Stream Without the Guesswork

Stop wasting hours on scene debugging and FFmpeg flags. Upgrade to Pro to install the Live Streaming Pack and ship a stream that works. We built this so you can focus on your content, not your config files. Get validated scenes, efficient relays, and automated checks out of the box. Install it, run the health check, and go live with confidence.