Welcome to Livepeer.com's first video tutorial. In the following video clips, you'll learn how to create an account on livepeer.com, create your first stream object, install and setup OBS, stream into Livepeer.com, and watch your Livepeer.com-transcoded video. We'll be following our 

. It is recommended you have that open as you go through the video clips below.

Step 1: Create an account on Livepeer.com


Step 2: Verify your Livepeer.com account


Step 5: Stream into Livepeer.com using OBS


Select RTMP ingest and playback URL pair on livepeer.com stream page:

Thanks for watching our streaming video tutorial! We'd love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to us at 

 with thoughts, suggestions, and any questions you might have.


In a world in which live video is expected to account for 

17% of all web traffic by the end of 2022

 you'd be hard-pressed to find a portion of our modern society that hasn't been altered by it. Coupled with the staggering growth in popularity of social media, live streaming has become highly accessible to anyone with a phone, social media account and good internet connection. Today, 

more than half the world's population uses social media

 and has the ability to broadcast at any moment, from anywhere, within seconds.

People choose to stream for a variety of reasons - to broadcast their daily lives to friends, promote events, promote their brand, generate revenue, create supportive communities, or amplify their impact. In fact, research shows that live streaming is a more effective way to attract larger, loyal audiences than pre-recorded videos. Live videos get watched 

We at Livepeer.com believe in the power of live streaming in the social media sector to continue shaping our world of tomorrow.

Live streaming is elevating both individuals showcasing their talents online for the first time and professionals with sizable audiences - without venue capacity limitations, event audience size is virtually unlimited. Millions of people around the world who are talented but unknown singers, dancers, and performers, can perfect their craft and have an opportunity to amass followers at an unprecedented speed. Many start streaming from their bedroom, others use live streaming to supplement their in-person events.

 Live streaming is helping streamers and their audience build valuable relationships.  Never before have we been able to feel as connected to our favorite social media personalities, influencers, artists, and brands as we can now. Triple the watch time for live videos over pre-recorded videos also means triple the engagement. Many social media platforms have chat rooms to facilitate interactions between live stream viewers, performers and each other through comments, questions, stickers, donations, and sharing. Social media streamers entertain their audience and in turn, they and their brands are compensated in sales and advertising revenue.

Live streaming allows gamers to create supportive communities that facilitate learning and connection. Though many viewers of gaming content are learning and developing skills to apply in their personal gaming, 

 of gaming content on Youtube in 2018 spent more time watching others play than gaming themselves. The most successful game live streamers, beloved for their narration, expressions, and communication style, manage to create communities of like-minded individuals who enjoy interacting with each other, in gaming and beyond.

At Livepeer.com, we recognize the incredible impact of live streaming and are supportive of innovation in the sector. We help live streaming social media companies do what they do best - build the best streaming experience for their users while keeping the costs of running that infrastructure low.

Growing platforms for performers, influencers, gamers, and many others looking to grow their brand on social media, tend to support a large number of live streams at a time, which often translates to unsustainable transcoding costs (read our blog post 

 for an introduction to transcoding). They end up reliant on existing cost-prohibitive streaming platforms to fulfill increases in live streaming demand. When it has been shown that 

80% of consumers prefer to watch a video than read a blog

63% of 18-34 year olds watch live streaming content regularly

, it is safe to assume that an investment in lower cost infrastructure can pay off exponentially in the future.

At Livepeer.com, we can offer pricing to significantly reduce costs, help with quick implementation, and provide instant scalability and reliability. We help platforms free up capital that can then be re-invested into growth and innovation. Get in touch at 

Live Streaming on Social Media Platforms

If you’ve been looking to integrate a video player with Livepeer.com, you’ve come to the right place. This is the first of a series of posts that will guide you in integrating Livepeer.com with a video player of your choosing. On this post, we’ll be using THEOPlayer to stream using Livepeer.com.

 and click on the “Get Started” button in the “Web Browsers” section. You’ll be redirected to a login page. Click on the “Connect with Github”, “Connect with Google”, or click the “Sign up now” button at the bottom and follow the prompts to create an account.              

Once you’ve created an account and are logged in:

select “SDKs” on the left-hand side of the page

name your SDK what you’d like, click next

scroll to the bottom of the screen, click next

Congratulations! You’ve published your first THEOPlayer SDK.

Step 2: Integrating into your application

The SDK page you created above should look something like the screenshot below. Red squares have been added to hide two important fields unique to every SDK created - the “Key” and “Library Location” fields, both of which will be used to integrate THEOPlayer into your web app.

Click on “How to embed my THEOPlayer HTML5 SDK” tab at the bottom, then the “Step-By-Step” section to take a look at web app integration code unique to you.

Feel free to follow these “Step-By-Step” THEOPlayer instructions to continue integrating, especially if you’ve customized your player during the setup process, and skip to step 3 in this guide once you do so. Otherwise, for a more detailed THEOPlayer setup, continue reading here.

Let’s start by creating an HTML file that looks like this:

Add the following code inside the <body> tags in your HTML sheet. Replace {YOURKEY} with your unique THEOPlayer Key from your SDK home page. This will reference the THEOPlayer library and make it available on your homepage.

To add the THEOplayer UI, you need to reference the THEOplayer CSS file. Add the following Link tags inside the <body> tags of your HTML file, below the script tags we just added. These Link tags are used to add a CSS file to a web page.

Next we’ll create a video element and add it to our page. To start playing a video in your player, you’ll need a video manifest. Paste the following example inside your <body> tags. We're using an HLS sample URL here.

Once all this has been added, your complete HTML file should look like this:

Step 3: Integrate a Livepeer.com source into your THEOPlayer video player

Login to your livepeer.com account, go to your Livepeer.com Dashboard, and select a stream you’d like to integrate into your application. If you haven’t created a Livepeer stream yet and/or have not yet streamed a video into Livepeer.com, follow 

 to do so. Your stream page should look something like this:

Copy the “RTMP ingest URL” from your stream page. Using OBS, stream a video into Livepeer.com (see step 5 in 

 for detailed instructions on how to do so).​ 

Copy the “Playback URL” from your stream page. Paste into the player.source section of the HTML sheet we made in step 2 in this tutorial. You should be replacing the "https://cdn.theoplayer.com/video/elephants-dream/playlist-single-audio.m3u8" URL from our example with the Livepeer.com Playback URL.

Load up your page, and watch your video come to life!

What did you think of this tutorial? Give us any feedback on how it can be improved and send over any questions you might have by emailing us at

. We’d love to help you stream using Livepeer.com!

Video Tutorial : Stream into Livepeer for the First Time

Step 1: Create an account on Livepeer.com

Step 2: Verify your Livepeer.com account

Step 3: Create your first stream

Step 4: Install and setup OBS

Step 5: Stream into Livepeer.com using OBS

Step 6: Watch your transcoded video

Articles you may be interested in

Live Streaming on Social Media Platforms

How to Integrate Livepeer.com into a Web App using THEOPlayer

Ready to get started?