How to Broadcast the News Live on Your Own Website?

To broadcast the news live on your own website with DCAST, you sign up, check which plan covers a backup feed, optionally connect an AI assistant, create the live stream, embed the player on your page, add a backup encoder, decide which newscasts are recorded and give your audience a creator site. This guide follows that path in order. Then it covers the editorial and operational decisions that no product can make for you.

Step 1: Create your DCAST account

Everything starts with an account, because the streams you create belong to it. Open the DCAST signup screen and complete the form. If you run a newsroom, decide who owns the account before you register. A shared editorial address that several colleagues can recover is safer than one reporter's personal mailbox, because a broadcast created through the API is stored for the account that owns the API key.

Step 2: Check your plan

In this guide the plan matters for one feature, the backup feed. A second encoder can publish to the broadcast's backup address on the PRO and VIP plans. On FREE and STAR the Backup stream block is shown dimmed with a Pro mark and a See plans link, so you see the boundary before you reach it. Check your plan before you promise your audience a protected broadcast.

Choose by what a failed newscast would cost you, not only by audience size. If people tune in to a scheduled bulletin at a fixed time, a dropped feed is visible to everyone at once, and a backup encoder is worth having. If you are testing the format with a small audience, you can start without it and move up before the first broadcast that truly matters.

Step 3: Connect an AI assistant if you want one

This step is optional. The DCAST connector is an MCP server for video that connects an AI assistant such as Claude to your account. For a news team the useful part is control. When you remove the connector in your API keys, it leaves your list of keys. A token the connector received before the removal is refused from that moment, and a newer token cannot reopen the removed connection. To connect again, you approve the access in DCAST once more.

Treat an assistant like a new colleague. Ask it to tell you what it is about to change before it changes it, and look over what it changed in your library after a session. If you suspect that someone else used the connection, remove it first and connect again afterwards with a fresh approval. Remove any connection you no longer use, so no forgotten assistant keeps a way into your account.

Step 4: Create the live stream

On the dashboard, click Streams in the top navigation, then click Create Stream. Type a clear title, because viewers will see it, and add an optional description so they know what to expect. Then pick how you will send your video. The list starts on CAMERA, which broadcasts straight from the browser or phone. If you plan to use OBS or a hardware encoder, you must change it to RTMP, SRT, WHIP, HLS or FILE. Choose who can watch, click Save, and click the new card to open the stream details page.

If your newsroom has its own publishing system, the same is done through the partner API. The operations are create a stream, list streams, get one stream, update it, delete it, end it, start it and stop it. Others read its status, its viewers, its preview address and its thumbnail. Creating a stream returns an RTMP address, an SRT address and, where it is available, an HTTPS address for WHIP, together with the embed address of the broadcast.

Remember that the API only creates the broadcast. Give the publish address to an encoder such as OBS, because the picture itself comes from your encoder. If the title or the description you send is not plain text, the request is refused with the name of the wrong field and no broadcast is created, so when a request fails, read the named field first. Keep the API key on your server and never place it in a page that your visitors load.

One more decision belongs here: who may watch. Through the API you can switch a broadcast to access by key, and the change is refused unless the request brings the access key with it. Sending a new key for a broadcast that is already open by key replaces the old key and withdraws the passes given out under it. That is what you want if a link to a closed briefing leaks.

Step 5: Embed the player on your website

The embed code is what turns a stream into a live page on your own site. The help guide for sharing describes the routine for a video in your library: click Share or look for the share icon, click Embed, copy the embed code and paste it into the HTML of your page. Then open the page in a browser as a visitor to confirm playback works. If the embedded player does not load, copy the full embed code again, since you need all the HTML and not just the address.

Through the partner API you can read the embed address of a stream and of a video, with one operation for each. Once the page is up, decide where the player may appear. By default it works on any website. If you want control, list the domains where your player may appear, and every other website is refused. An entry can cover every subdomain of a site with a wildcard, and clearing the list opens the player to every website again.

For a news outlet the choice is a tradeoff. Leave the list empty when your goal is reach, because every copy of the embed code then works for whoever pastes it, which suits partner sites that republish your bulletin. Restrict the list when you sell access through your own site and want the player to appear only there.

Step 6: Add a backup stream

A live newscast has one moment it cannot afford to lose, and that is the live moment. On the dashboard, click STREAMS in the tab row and click the gear icon on the card of your stream. In the right column, open the Connection panel. Under Primary stream you see the address your main encoder uses, and below it is the Backup stream block. For an RTMP stream, copy the Backup URL and the RTMP key into your second encoder. For an SRT stream, copy the Backup URL, which already carries everything the encoder needs. A stream on CAMERA has no Connection panel and no backup.

There is no switch to turn on: the backup arms itself when the second encoder actually starts sending. Start the main encoder first and then the backup. While the broadcast is on air, the same window offers Switch to primary and Switch to backup. If the main feed is lost, viewers are moved to the backup in the same player, without reloading the page. The partner API has matching operations to read the backup, set the backup and switch to it.

If Start is unavailable and the tooltip says the backup signal does not match the primary, the message names the setting that differs. Set the backup encoder to the same resolution, codec, profile, frame format and audio as the main one, or stop the backup. If both feeds stop at once, your audience sees a holding screen instead of an error, and the picture comes back when either encoder publishes again. When you press Stop, the broadcast ends for both feeds.

Step 7: Record each newscast

A recording turns a one-time broadcast into something your audience can watch later. When your code creates a broadcast through the partner API, it chooses whether the broadcast is recorded. If you leave the choice out, the broadcast keeps its default setting, which is recording on, and a null value counts as not sending it. Send a real true or false value, because a word such as no or a number such as zero is refused without creating a broadcast.

To fetch the file, the partner API offers operations for a stream's recording qualities and its recording download, along with operations to start a recording, stop it and read its status. A ready recording file downloads as an MP4 named after your broadcast. Store the file name you receive next to your own record of the event, so your team finds the right recording later, and decide for each kind of event whether you need a copy afterwards.

Step 8: Give your audience a site of your own

If you would rather not build a page yourself, your creator site is an address of your own on the platform where your audience finds your videos and your live broadcasts. Once it is active, links to your watch pages and embeds are addressed on your site. While it is not active, share links keep using the platform address, so nobody receives a link that does not open. The partner API can read the site status and activate the site, and it can also upload or remove images such as your avatar, cover and logo.

For a newsroom the site has a practical benefit on the day of a broadcast. A visitor who already has your page open sees the broadcast start without reloading, and when one broadcast ends and the next begins, the player switches to the new one by itself. Pick a site name that is short and easy to say aloud, because it becomes the address your audience types.

Why a page you own matters for news

The reason to do all this is independence. A channel on a social platform can be limited or closed by rules you do not control, and a newscast that lives only there is exposed to that. Keep your bulletins on a page you own, and use social profiles as signposts that point your audience back to it. Put your site address in your newsletter, your profiles and your printed materials, so people always know where your next broadcast will be.

What you still have to decide

No platform settles your editorial process. Check every clip and every claim before it airs, because a live correction reaches fewer people than the mistake. Agree in advance who gives the go-ahead, who watches the second screen and who is allowed to press Stop. A short written checklist for each bulletin costs you minutes and spares you a public retraction.

Rehearse the technical side as well. Start both encoders, stop the main one, and watch the broadcast from a second screen to see the backup take over. For a real safety margin, run the second encoder on a different computer and, if you can, on a different internet connection. Give both the same resolution, frame rate and audio settings so the change from one feed to the other is hard to notice. Then open your embedded page as an ordinary visitor, on a phone as well as at your desk, before you announce the start time.