Stream Webpage Container

A containerized application to stream a webpage live over RTMP. Just pass a WEBPAGE_URL and a RTMP_URL and the container will open a browser, capture the video and audio, and send it to the specified location. It can even be configured to automatically restart the stream for supported services when the service stops the stream.

Uses

• Quickly spinning up a test stream without needing to install anything other than a container runtime.
• Setting up a long running stream for a Twitch Extension Review when a test stream is needed.
• Setting up a way to broadcast an overlay like YarpBot does for its status page without a GUI client.
• Other.... stuff (you figure it out).

Dependencies

1. Docker (or some other container runtime like containerd)
2. .....That's it. Why did we make this a list?

Quick Start

Start A Stream Using Default Settings (720p 30 FPS)

docker run -e WEBPAGE_URL=https://url-of-website-i-want-to-stream.com -e RTMP_URL=rtmp://rtmp-endpoint.to/stream/to ghcr.io/zozman/stream-webpage-container

Start A Stream At 1080p 60 FPS

docker run -e WEBPAGE_URL=https://url-of-website-i-want-to-stream.com -e RTMP_URL=rtmp://rtmp-endpoint.to/stream/to -e RESOLUTION=720p -e FRAMERATE=60 ghcr.io/zozman/stream-webpage-container

Available Image Tags

Note

All available images can be found on the repo's container package page.

• latest
  • Represents the latest release and should be what you use if you don't know what to use.
• v*
  • Example: v1.0.0
  • Represents a specific release and is the right choice if you want to update versions manually.
• edge
  • Represents the latest commit to main and is not recommended for daily use unless you want the latest build NOW.
• sha-*
  • Examples: sha-df87ff2ac624eb2de65861dfa3b09844a3f0f3db, sha-df87ff2
  • Every commit to main will have a tag corresponding to that commit's long and short SHA.

Running From Source

Note

For the following make commands, you should have Docker installed since they use docker and docker compose under the hood.

Using Docker Compose

1. Clone the repository

2. Set environment variables (through copying .env.example to .env or other methods)

3. Start just the application:

make run

Local Development With RTMP Test Server

To test with a local RTMP server:

# Start with the included RTMP server
make dev

# The RTMP server will be available at:
# rtmp://localhost:1935/live/stream

You can then use a program like VLC to view the stream to ensure it works (use Media -> Open Network Stream and use the address rtmp://localhost:1935/live/stream for this example).

Run Unit Tests

To run unit tests within a dockerized environment, run the following:

make test

This command will save coverage results to the coverage directory.

Note

If you have go installed, you can also run go test -v -coverprofile=coverage/coverage.out ./... && go tool cover -html=coverage/coverage.out -o coverage/coverage.html to do the same thing locally.

Using Docker Only

# Build the image
docker build -t stream-webpage .

# Run the container
docker run -e WEBPAGE_URL="https://example.com" \
           -e RTMP_URL="rtmp://your-server/live/stream" \
           -e RESOLUTION="1080p" \
           stream-webpage

Warning

While you can run this locally by compiling the go code and executing it, I wouldn't recommend it as you need to make sure all the dependencies such as Chrome and ffmpeg are there and reachable. Plus, having this be a container's kind of the point.

Status Checking

If an environmental variable such as TWITCH_CHANNEL (see below) is set, then the container will check that channel to make sure the stream is live and attempt to restart the stream if it is not. This is so the stream can automatically be restarted for platforms that have maximum stream lengths (such as Twitch's being 48 hours per stream).

Twitch

To enable status checking for Twitch, provide a TWITCH_CHANNEL, TWITCH_CLIENT_ID, and TWITCH_CLIENT_SECRET environmental variable (see below for details).

Note

Currently Twitch is the only supported platform but you can always file a PR if you want another platform.

Environmental Variables

• FRAMERATE
  • Enum
    • 30
    • 60
  • Default: 30
  • Sets the framerate of the stream. Currently supports 30 or 60 frames per second.
• LOG_FORMAT
  • Enum
    • json
    • console
  • Default: json
  • Sets the format for logs printed.
• LOG_LEVEL
  • Enum
    • debug
    • info
    • warn
    • warning
    • error
    • dpanic
    • panic
    • fatal
  • Default: info
  • Level of logs that are printed. Defined by zap log levels.
• PORT
  • String
  • Default: 8080
  • Port to run the health and metrics endpoint on.
• STATUS_CRON_SCHEDULE
  • String
  • Default: */10 * * * * (every 10 minutes)
  • Cron string to define how often to check the status of the stream if status checking is enabled.
• RESOLUTION
  • Enum
    • 720p
    • 1080p
    • 2k
  • Default: 720p
  • What resolution the RTMP stream should be.
• RTMP_URL
  • String
  • Default: rtmp://localhost:1935/live/stream
  • RMTP endpoint to send the stream to. If using a service such as Twitch, be sure your stream key is at the end of it.
• TWITCH_CHANNEL
  • String
  • If provided a value, the application will attempt to check the status of the stream at the provided channel as per the STATUS_CRON_SCHEDULE and will restart the stream if it is detected to not be live.
  • Requires the TWITCH_CLIENT_ID and TWITCH_CLIENT_SECRET to be defined to work properly.
• TWITCH_CLIENT_ID
  • String
  • Twitch Client ID obtained from the Twitch Developer Console for checking stream status if the TWITCH_CHANNEL environmental variable is set.
  • Checking for the stream status on Twitch will not work without this and TWITCH_CLIENT_SECRET being set.
  • For more information about registering an app on Twitch, see the developer documentation.
• TWITCH_CLIENT_SECRET
  • String
  • Twitch Client ID obtained from the Twitch Developer Console for checking stream status if the TWITCH_CHANNEL environmental variable is set.
  • Checking for the stream status on Twitch will not work without this and TWITCH_CLIENT_ID being set.
  • For more information about registering an app on Twitch, see the developer documentation.
• WEBPAGE_REFRESH_INTERVAL
  • String
  • If set to a positive integer, the browser will automatically refresh the webpage at the specified interval in seconds. This can help prevent issues with stale content or memory leaks during long streaming sessions, as a memory usage can build if the WEBPAGE_URL location has memory leaks.
  • If not set or set to an invalid value, automatic refresh is disabled.
• WEBPAGE_URL
  • String
  • Default: https://google.com
  • The webpage to stream.

About

Cobbled together by Zac Lovoy (aka BigZoz on Twitch). If you're interested in some of other streaming adjacent stuff, check out YarpBot or the Filters Extension for Twitch.

Or whatever; I'm not your dad.