Red5 Cloud RTMP Proxy: Simulcast to Any Platform

Use the Red5 Cloud RTMP proxy to re-stream live content to YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, and other RTMP destinations simultaneously from a single source stream.

The Red5 Cloud RTMP proxy lets you simultaneously re-stream a live broadcast to one or more external platforms — YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Twitch, LinkedIn Live, or any destination that accepts an RTMP ingest URL. Instead of publishing separate streams from your encoder to each platform, you publish once to Red5 Cloud and the proxy handles forwarding your stream to every configured destination.

How it works

When the RTMP proxy is enabled for a deployment, Red5 Cloud intercepts the published stream and forwards it as a new RTMP connection to each destination URL you configure. Your encoder connects to Red5 Cloud as normal; the re-streaming happens server-side, so there is no additional bandwidth load on your encoder or local network.

The RTMP proxy re-streams the stream as received. If you need platform-specific bitrates or resolutions, configure those in your encoder before publishing to Red5 Cloud, or use Transcoding to produce multiple quality levels first.

Configure the RTMP proxy

1. Open your deployment settings

   In the Management Console, go to the Deployments page. Open the context menu for the deployment you want to configure and select Edit.

2. Navigate to the RTMP Proxy section

   Within the deployment editor, locate the RTMP Proxy settings section.

3. Add a destination

   Enter the RTMP URL and stream key for your destination platform. Most platforms provide these in their live streaming or encoder settings pages.

   Common destination formats:

   YouTube Live

   URL:        rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2
   Stream Key: <your-youtube-stream-key>
   
4. Add more destinations (optional)

   Repeat the previous step to add additional re-stream destinations. You can configure multiple targets within the same deployment.

5. Save and deploy

   Save your changes. The RTMP proxy becomes active the next time a stream is published to this deployment.

Using the RTMP proxy endpoint

The RTMP proxy also exposes a single, stable ingest URL you can give to your encoder — no need to look up a node IP address. Retrieve it from the Pub/Sub Details of your deployment:

1. Open the context menu for your deployment.
2. Select Pub/Sub Details.
3. Copy the RTMP Publishing Endpoint.

Point your encoder at this URL with your stream name as the stream key.

Common use cases

Live event simulcasting

Broadcast a single live event to your own Red5 Cloud player and multiple social platforms at the same time without duplicating encoder effort.

Platform redundancy

Send your stream to a backup RTMP destination alongside your primary one, so viewers have an alternative if any single platform experiences an outage.

Content syndication

Distribute a corporate webinar or news feed to partner platforms or CDN endpoints without changing your production encoder workflow.

Testing and staging

Proxy streams to a private RTMP ingest on a staging environment to validate quality and settings before a live event goes public.

Each re-stream destination consumes upstream bandwidth from the Red5 Cloud node. For deployments with many simultaneous re-stream targets or high-bitrate streams, account for this when sizing your Origin node capacity.