Stream Tools How-to Guide

Before you start

• You’ll need to be signed in to your Aethera channel.
• Install OBS Studio (or any RTMP encoder). Everything else lives in the browser.
• Set up an authenticator app on your account — you’ll need it to rotate your stream key.

Get your stream key

1. Open /stream-tools.html and find the Stream credentials section (your stream key also appears in Studio → Live at /dashboard?panel=live).
2. Copy your RTMP server and stream key. Use Show to reveal the key, then Copy — do this now, because the key is shown only once and isn’t recoverable later.
3. Need a new key? Click Rotate key and enter your 6-digit authenticator code. Rotating immediately invalidates the old key, so re-paste the new one into OBS.

Rotate your key any time you suspect it leaked. There’s no way to recover a lost key — just rotate to a fresh one.

Import the OBS profile

1. On the Stream Tools page, click Download profile to get aethera-obs-profile.zip.
2. Unzip it into your OBS profiles folder — on Windows that’s %APPDATA%\obs-studio\basic\profiles (the included README lists macOS and Linux paths too).
3. In OBS, switch to the Aethera-RTMP profile and paste your stream key in place of the placeholder.
4. Set up your scenes as usual — the video and encoder settings already match Aethera’s ingest defaults.

Prefer manual setup? Use the on-page 720p30 starter or 1080p60 high-motion presets as a starting point for your encoder.

Run your first broadcast

Walk the Go live wizard on the Stream Tools page top to bottom:

1. Confirm credentials. Make sure your RTMP server and key are set in OBS.
2. Run an ingest health check. Click Run check — wait for “online” before you start OBS output.
3. Start streaming in OBS (“Start Streaming”).
4. Watch the broadcast in the Live control room (/live-control-room.html): Stream health refreshes ingest, playback, bitrate, viewers, and last-segment age every 15 seconds.
5. Open the chat pop-out for a clean moderation view on a second screen.

Set up replays

1. Go to Studio → Live (/dashboard?panel=live).
2. Under New replay visibility, choose Public, Unpublished, or Private — this is where auto-saved replays land after each stream ends.
3. Click Save replay default. From now on, every stream is auto-archived as a replay with this visibility.

After the stream

When you stop streaming, Aethera archives the broadcast automatically. Finish up in the Live control room’s Post-stream handoff:

1. Set the replay details — title and visibility — and upload a thumbnail (PNG, JPEG, or WEBP).
2. Review your markers. Any markers you set during the stream become handy clip starting points.
3. Cut highlights. Use Create replay clip with a start time and a duration (5–900 seconds) to carve out shareable moments.

Moderate chat & overlays

• Pop out chat. From Stream Tools, Open pop-out gives you a compact chat-only window for a second monitor.
• Tune chat. In the Live control room, set slow mode, blocked words, and emote-only / members-only / followers-only / auto-block-links toggles, then save. Time out or ban disruptive users from the same panel.
• Add a lower-third. Design an overlay (title, subtitle, accent color) and add it as a browser source in OBS.

Fix common problems

• Ingest check says offline. The RTMP edge isn’t reachable — wait a moment and re-run the check before starting OBS.
• Credentials didn’t load / key missing. Rotate to generate a fresh one-time key, then copy it into OBS.
• Lost your key. Keys can’t be recovered — rotate and re-paste the new one.
• Rotate is blocked. You’ll be sent to set up an authenticator app first; finish that, then rotate.
• Check service status at /status.html if something looks wrong platform-wide.

Next steps

• Read the full Stream tools docs
• Open stream tools
• Open the live control room
• Open Studio live settings
• Browse live sessions