Youtube API v3 - Get "Live Now" rtmp and streamkey

Question

Youtube now has a Live Streaming section that allows users to broadcast their own live stream sessions. In this "Live Streaming" section, there are 2 options: "Live Now [Beta]" and "Events".

• Live Now is a fast and easy way to start a streaming session automatically just by pointing your video encoder to te specified RTMP Url and Stream Key. It will automatically detect incomming media and start broadcasting publicly.

• Events is pretty much the same thing, but with advance settings, although it will not start automatically to broadcast, and you need to set everything pretty much manually.

I know Youtube API allows you to retrieve Event's ingestion url and streamkey, so you can broadcast to that target, but it also requires to manage many other steps manually (like publishing the stream, binding broadcasts with streams, check the status, start, stop, etc..). On the other hand "Live Now" makes everything automatically.

Question: How can I retrieve "Live Now" ingestion info (rtmp url and streamkey) from the Youtube API v3 ?

Answer 1

The default broadcast can be retrieved by livebroadcasts.list with broadcastType set to "persistent".

The default livestream can be retrieved by livestreams.list using boundstreamid.

Answer 2

You cannot retrieve "Live Now" ingestion info because the API does not differentiate between "Live Now" and "Events." Those two options are provided as interfaces on top of the API for an end user, so they don't have to write their own application that interfaces with the API.

You will have to manually set up liveBroadcast and liveStream objects, bind them with liveBroadcasts.bind, test your stream, and transition to live on the liveStream object using status.streamStatus.