Instagram allows you to livestream from the phone only. And that too from the camera which means you can’t add extra effects, overlays or cool stuff like that.
If you could livestream from the computer, you can customize the livestream video as you like. Similar to livestreams on YouTube or Twitch.
I was bored and was thinking of cool projects to do. I just got into Instagram and was checking it out. Livestream was pretty cool ! So I searched for livestream from desktop and found this. It worked, but didn’t have some features I needed and it isn’t easy for a normal user to use (cause everything was in the terminal).s
So I forked it and made InstaLV ❤ (InstaLiVe. ❤ is optional :P)
How It Works
YouTube, Twitch and other streamers use a broadcaster software for livestreaming. The most popular of them is OBS Studio (Open Broadcaster Software Studio).
The Streaming service (YouTube) provide a link, username & password for connecting to it. These credentials are set in OBS Studio and streaming is started. Instagram also works like this, but they don’t give you these credentials. But it can be obtained. InstaLV gives you these credentials and allows you to control the livestream from the computer.
Features
- A webapp to easily control livestream
- See livestream viewers
- See likes & comments during livestream
- Pin/Unpin comments
- Call custom callbacks when a user like or comment
Screenshots
Installation
The commands
-
Extract the folder to a place
-
Open a terminal in that folder and run this command :
path/to/composer.phar install -
Edit the file
config.phpand add your Instagram username and password -
In the terminal again, run the
live.phpscript :php live.php -
On another terminal in the same folder, run the server :
php -S localhost:8000 server.php
You can also simply execute the run_server.sh or run_server.bat (Windows) which will run the above command.
- Open the link http://localhost:8000 in a browser.
- In the InstaLV webpage, click on the button Stream Key/URL. Copy the Stream-URL and Stream-Key and paste them into your streaming software. For setting up OBS, read this
OBS Setup
- Go to the “Stream” section of your OBS Settings
- Set “Stream Type” to “Custom Streaming Server”
- Set the “URL” field to the stream url you got from InstaLV
- Set the “Stream key” field to the stream key you got from InstaLV
- Make Sure “Use Authentication” is unchecked and press “OK”
- Start Streaming in OBS
- To stop streaming, click on the “Stop Stream” button in InstaLV and then press “Stop Streaming” in OBS
- Note: To emulate the exact content being sent to Instagram, set your OBS canvas size to 720x1280. This can be done by going to Settings->Video and editing Base Canvas Resolution to “720x1280”.
At the time of writing this post, the original project of JRoy’s has improved a lot ! Do check that out too !