Adding destinations
Open Outputs. Every platform has a Connect button on the right of its row: sign in to YouTube, Twitch or Facebook once and the app creates the broadcast (or fetches your stream key) each time you go live — no key to copy. The key form is still there if you prefer to paste one, and Custom takes any RTMP server and key.
Instagram and TikTok have no sign-in because neither lets another app start a Live for you: Live Producer on instagram.com and TikTok LIVE Studio give you the server and key, which paste in.
You can add several and go live to all of them at once. The encode happens once and is shared, so three destinations do not cost three times the processing.
Choosing a bitrate
Run the bandwidth test first. It tells you what your connection will actually carry, which is usually less than what you pay for.
Set the bitrate to about seventy per cent of your measured upload. Leave headroom — a stream that uses every available bit will break the moment anything else on the network wants bandwidth.
For 1080p at 30 frames, 4 to 6 Mbps is a reasonable target. For 720p, 2.5 to 4.
When the connection struggles
Adaptive bitrate drops quality rather than dropping the stream. A degraded picture is always better than a stopped one.
Per-destination health tells you which platform is struggling rather than only that something is. If one destination reconnects, the others are unaffected.
The delay buffer
The broadcast delay buffer puts a gap between the room and the internet. Useful when something might need to be caught before it goes out.
Vertical output
A 9:16 output can run alongside the landscape one, framed independently, so one event feeds both a normal stream and a phone-shaped one.
Pre-flight
Run the pre-flight check before every event. It looks at the connection, the destinations, the disk space and the sources, and tells you what is wrong while you can still fix it.