Set-up Guide for the BATC Streamer

The BATC Streamer at https://beta.batc.org.uk/live/ (temporary address) will have an account for every member. Once the site is live (not yet!), you can activate your account from your membership account dashboard. Please contact a member of the Committee if you would like a stream set up for a Repeater or a special event.

Activating Your Account

Log-in to the BATC website with your username (callsign) and password. On the Membership Summary page, select "Account dashboard" from the list on the left hand side. Scroll down to "Streaming Details" and you should see this section:

You can enable your stream by ticking the "Stream Listed" box. The "Chat On" box is ticked by default; if you untick this, there will be no chat window associated with your stream. If you tick the "Guest Chat Log In" box, it means that non-BATC Members will be able to post in your chat window; all they need to do is type "/nick display-name" and their chat will appear labelled with "display-name" or whatever they have entered. It is recommended that you normally leave this box unticked to prevent abuse of the service and limit chat access to logged-in BATC members.

Configuring Your Account

You can edit your Chat Nick Name, and your Stream Title. The Chat Nick Name appears against your entries in all the BATC streamer chat windows (not just your own stream). The stream title is what is displayed in the Stream Listing and at the head of the page of your stream; it does not affect your stream address or url.

The Stream Type is set by the administrators and simply determines which page your stream is listed on.

The Streaming Type can be set to Flash or HTML5. Flash has the advantage of minimal delay, but is not compatible with the stock browser on some devices. (Text about enabling in Chrome, Firefox and Edge required here). HTML5 works with all modern browsers, but is subject to a 10 - 20 second delay.

The Stream Description can be edited and is displayed in a box beneath your stream.

Settings for Streaming and Viewing

Your stream input and output URLs are set by the administrators; if you want your stream input URL changed (perhaps because it has been compromised) please contact the administrators.

The output URL is https://batc.org.uk/live/ followed by your username in lower case (as shown in the grey box and referred to as your streamname). So in this example https://batc.org.uk/live/g8gkq.

The input URL that should be entered into your streaming application is rtmp://rtmp.batc.org.uk/live/ followed by your streamname, then a hyphen and then the 6-character key displayed in the grey box. So, in this example it would be rtmp://rtmp.batc.org.uk/live/g8gkq-abcxyz. The 6-character key is what controls access to your stream so should be kept secure.

Many streaming applications separate this string into 2 fields: the streamer address "rtmp://rtmp.batc.org.uk/live" and the stream name "g8gkq-abcxyz". Detailed instructions for a number of popular streaming applications are provided below.