Upload your MP4, paste the stream key from YouTube Studio, and Streamza broadcasts it to your channel as a genuine live stream — live badge, live chat, subscriber notifications and all. Loop it and you have a 24/7 channel. Your computer never has to be on.
YouTube gates live streaming behind a few checks. Get these done first or the Stream tab will not give you a key:
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Primary server URL | rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2 |
| Backup server URL | rtmp://b.rtmp.youtube.com/live2?backup=1 |
| Stream key | From YouTube Studio → Go Live → Stream |
| Video codec | H.264 |
| Audio codec | AAC, 128 kbps and up |
| Keyframe interval | 2 seconds |
| Rate control | CBR (constant bitrate) |
In Streamza the primary server URL is already filled in when you pick YouTube, so the stream key is the only thing you need to paste.
Go to YouTube Studio → Create → Go Live → Stream. Set the title, description, thumbnail, category and visibility. This is a normal live event; you are just going to feed it a file instead of a camera.
On the Stream tab, click Copy next to the stream key. Choose a persistent key if you plan to restart the broadcast later — a persistent key reuses the same URL and settings every time.
Open streamza.live/studio, claim a free slot, and upload your MP4. Select YouTube so the ingest URL fills itself in, then paste the key.
Press start in Streamza. Within a few seconds YouTube's preview shows your video and stream health turns green. Now click Go Live in YouTube Studio to make it public. Close the tab — Streamza keeps sending.
Order matters. YouTube will not let you click "Go Live" until it is actually receiving video. If the button is greyed out, the stream has not reached YouTube yet — wait a few seconds, and check that the key was pasted with no trailing space.
Because Streamza relays your file without re-encoding it, these are the numbers to target when you export from your editor, not settings you configure at broadcast time.
| Resolution | Video bitrate range |
|---|---|
| 2160p (4K) 60fps | 20,000 – 51,000 kbps |
| 1440p (2K) 60fps | 9,000 – 18,000 kbps |
| 1080p 60fps | 4,500 – 9,000 kbps |
| 1080p 30fps | 3,000 – 6,000 kbps |
| 720p 60fps | 2,250 – 6,000 kbps |
| 720p 30fps | 1,500 – 4,000 kbps |
Remember the 1.5 GB upload cap when choosing: a 60-minute video at 6,000 kbps is roughly 2.6 GB, so for anything long, export nearer the bottom of the recommended range or shorten the loop.
YouTube is the natural home for always-on looping channels — music, study radio, ambience, information boards. Three things make the difference between one that survives and one that dies quietly:
Full details in the 24/7 live streaming guide.
| Upload | Premiere | Pre-recorded live via Streamza | |
|---|---|---|---|
| LIVE badge | No | Partial | Yes |
| Live chat | No | During premiere only | Yes, throughout |
| Appears in live surfaces | No | Limited | Yes |
| Can loop indefinitely | No | No | Yes |
| Same video to Twitch/Facebook too | No | No | Yes — multistream |
| Video file stays on YouTube afterwards | Yes | Yes | Yes, as a live archive |
Premiere is the better choice if YouTube is your only destination and you want the video to play once and become a normal video afterwards. Pre-recorded live is what you want for looping, for other platforms, or for the full live-stream treatment.
YouTube is not receiving video yet. Confirm the stream is running in Web Studio, re-copy the key, and check you did not paste the ingest URL into the key field by mistake.
Usually a bitrate mismatch — your export is far above what YouTube expects for its resolution. Re-export within the recommended range above.
The audio track is probably not AAC, or the file has no audio stream at all. Re-export as H.264 video with AAC audio.
Content ID matched music or footage in the file. You need rights to everything you broadcast — see our DMCA policy.
Single-use keys expire once the event ends. Generate a new one, or switch to a persistent key so it stays valid.
Yes. YouTube accepts any RTMP feed at its live ingest, and it makes no distinction between frames from a camera and frames from a file. Broadcasting your own recorded video is a normal, supported use of YouTube Live.
Not for this. The 50-subscriber threshold applies to streaming from the YouTube mobile app. Streaming through an encoder or a service like Streamza has no subscriber minimum — you only need a phone-verified channel with live streaming enabled.
Yes. YouTube archives completed live streams to your channel as a video, so the broadcast keeps earning views after it ends.
Yes — enable looping and the video repeats continuously inside one unbroken connection. Use a persistent stream key so the watch page URL survives restarts.
No. Once the stream has started it runs entirely on Streamza's servers. Close the browser, shut the laptop, turn off your phone — the broadcast continues.
YouTube Studio → Create → Go Live → the Stream tab → the "Stream key" box. Full instructions for every platform are in the stream key guide.
Yes, up to three destinations at once on the Multistream plan — YouTube plus Twitch plus Facebook, for example, from a single upload. See multistreaming.
Upload, paste your key, go live. Free to try, no account needed.
