How to preview your stream before going live

This article discusses how to preview your stream when using an external player encoder before going live to your audience 

In this article:

• How to preview your stream
• Troubleshooting: Go Live selection greyed out

How to preview your stream

When using an external encoder to stream over RTMP, RTMPS, or SRT (beta), you can preview your stream before going live.

⚠️Note: This setting is not account-wide and must be configured for each event. If enabled for a recurring event, it will remain active for all associated streams.

To preview your stream before going live: 

1. Create a new live event or select a previously created event. 
2. Select Use an External encoder as your production mode.
3. Select the Settings gear on the top right of the page to expand the settings panel. 
4. Select the toggle to Preview your stream before going live. 
   
5. The preview will populate on the player before it is shown to your audience. Before broadcasting, you can open the Stream Health panel to check its status.
6. Select Go Live in the upper right corner to begin streaming live to your audience. 

If you use auto-closed captioning, those captions will not appear in this player, even after you go live. You must check the video page or the embedded player to see the captions.

Troubleshooting: Stream does not appear in preview player, "Go Live" button greyed out

If you enable the stream preview and the player fails to display your stream after launching your encoder (and you cannot select "Go Live"), it is usually because of blocked firewall ports.

Confirm that the following ports are open:

• • TCP/UDP 3478
  • TCP/UDP 19305-19307
  • TCP/UDP 19307 50000 - 64000

If these ports are unblocked and you still cannot preview your stream, please contact Support for additional assistance.