Open Live guides

Practical guides to producing live shows with Open Live, the open-source live broadcast production platform. Each guide covers one job from start to finish, whether you run Open Live on Open Source Cloud or on your own infrastructure.

Which Open Live guide should I start with?

If you are new to Open Live, start with your first live show. If you are deciding whether to run it yourself, read the self-hosting guide. To see what the vision mixer can do before you sign in, read the vision mixer overview. To plan a show with the cameras at a venue and the crew somewhere else, read the remote production over SRT overview. To put HTML graphics on air, read the OGraf graphics overview. To run the show from a Stream Deck, read the Stream Deck and Companion overview. To bring a remote guest into the show from a browser, read the remote guests overview.

• Your first live show on Open Live

  From an empty account to a production on air: which plan you need and why, how sources, templates, productions and flows fit together, getting feeds in over SRT or WHIP, and a rehearsal checklist.

  Guide · 11 min read

• Self-hosting Open Live

  Run Open Live on your own infrastructure: components and licences, requirements, the configuration that matters, the authentication decision self-hosting hands you, what the repositories ship for Kubernetes, and a comparison with the managed option.

  Guide · 13 min read

• Open-source browser vision mixer

  What the Open Live vision mixer does: program and preview, transitions, picture-in-picture, keyers and graphics, which sources it switches, multiview and audio, Stream Deck control, and where the mixing actually runs.

  Overview · 5 min read

• REMI remote production over SRT

  How venue cameras reach Open Live over SRT, what the open-source ingest gateway does at the venue, which end of the link needs an open port, how the crew sees feed health, and how a remote crew runs the show from a browser.

  Overview · 6 min read

• OGraf graphics for live production

  How Open Live renders an OGraf template or any HTML graphic in the cloud pipeline, how you register it and assign it to a keyer, how the operator takes it on air, and what Open Live does not do with OGraf yet.

  Overview · 5 min read

• Stream Deck and Companion control

  How the open-source Open Live module for Bitfocus Companion puts cuts, transitions, keyers and audio on a Stream Deck, how the buttons show what is on air, how you set it up, and what it does not do yet.

  Overview · 5 min read

• Remote guests in a live show

  How a remote guest joins an Open Live show from a browser link, what they see and hear, how the crew takes them to air from Studio, and what guest calling does not do yet.

  Overview · 5 min read

Should I use Open Live on Open Source Cloud or host it myself?

Both run the same open-source software. On Open Source Cloud you sign in, pick a monthly plan and start producing; each plan includes production hours on shared Strom, the engine that runs the media pipelines. Self-hosted, Open Live is free: you run the backend and its CouchDB database, the studio and Strom yourself. The two guides above describe each path in detail, including the trade-offs.

Where is the Open Live reference documentation?

These guides cover workflows. Reference material for each component lives with the code and in the community wiki:

• Open Live Setup: setting up Open Live on Open Source Cloud.
• Open Live Studio user guide: the browser-based production controller.
• Companion module guide: Stream Deck control through Bitfocus Companion.
• REST API (OpenAPI), controller WebSocket protocol and graphics documentation in the open-live repository.