How to Live Stream a Conference or a Ceremony for Hundreds of Viewers?

To live stream a conference or a ceremony for hundreds of viewers with DCAST, you create an account, check your plan, optionally connect an AI assistant, create the live stream and feed it from an encoder, place the player on your own page, prepare the quality levels of the recording, add a backup feed and send the same broadcast on to social platforms. The sections below follow that order, and the last two cover the decisions no product can make for you.

Step 1: Create your DCAST account

Open the sign-up screen and fill in your email, a password and the same password a second time. All three fields are needed, the two passwords must match, and the password must be at least eight characters long. If one of these conditions fails, the form shows a message and does not go further, so read the message before you try again.

Do this well before the day of the event, so that the days before it go to rehearsal and not to paperwork.

Step 2: Check your plan

Click your avatar in the top right corner of the dashboard and choose Billing. In the Available Plans row you see FREE, STAR, PRO and VIP side by side, and the card whose button reads Current Plan is the plan your account is on. The feature list on that card names the limits that apply to you. If you never bought a plan, you are on FREE.

Two plan rules matter for an event. The live picture has a top height that depends on the plan: 720 on FREE, 1080 on STAR, 1440 on PRO and 2160 on VIP. A backup encoder feed belongs to PRO and VIP only, and on FREE and STAR its block is shown dimmed with a Pro mark and a See plans link.

To change plans, click the button on the plan you want. A checkout window opens with the plan name at the top, you pick how you want to be billed and a payment provider, and you complete the payment in the window that opens. When it closes, the dashboard opens with the new plan already applied. Make the change before your rehearsal, so that you rehearse with the features you will use on the day.

Step 3: Connect your AI assistant

The DCAST connector links an AI assistant such as Claude to your account. For an event team this is a convenience around the broadcast, for example when someone prepares the library before the day or tidies it afterwards. What matters most is how you take that access away again, because a forgotten connection is a way into your account.

When you remove the connector in your DCAST API keys, it leaves your list of keys. A token the connector received earlier is refused from that moment, even if it had not expired, and a newer token cannot reopen the connection. To connect again you approve the access in DCAST once more. Removal also closes any permission requests that were still open, and another account cannot remove your connector.

Ask your assistant to tell you what it is about to change before it changes it, and after a session look over what it changed, the way you would check the work of a new colleague. When the event is over, remove the connection you no longer use.

Step 4: Create the live stream

On the dashboard, click Streams in the top navigation and 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 comes the choice that trips up most first-time users: the list starts on CAMERA, which broadcasts straight from the browser or phone. For a hall encoder such as OBS, change it to RTMP. Choose who can watch: Public, Link Only, Subscribers Only or Private, and click Save. Your new stream card appears in the list.

Click the card to open the stream details page, where you find the server URL and the stream key to type into your encoder. Treat the stream key as private, since whoever holds a key can broadcast to that channel.

If your event system creates its broadcasts from code, the partner API does the same job. Through it you can create a stream, list your streams, read one, update it, delete it, start it, stop it and end it, read its status and its viewers, and ask for its preview 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 player page.

The request creates the broadcast, but the picture itself still comes from your encoder, so give the publish address to OBS or another encoder. If the title or description you send is not plain text, the request is refused with the name of the wrong field and nothing is created, so read that field first when something fails. Keep the API key on your server and never place it in a page that your visitors load.

Step 5: Embed the player on your page

Guests should not hunt for the broadcast, so put the player on the page where you already send them. You place the player of a broadcast on your own website with a short embed code. Through the partner API you can read the embed of a stream, and the embed of a video for the recording afterwards.

By default the embedded player works on any website. If you want control, list the domains where it may appear and every other website is refused. One entry can cover every subdomain of a site with a wildcard, and clearing the list opens the player to every website again. Only you can change the list for your content, because it is saved under your signed-in account.

Restrict the list when you sell access through your own site and want the player to appear only there. Leave it empty when your goal is reach, because every copy of the embed code then works for whoever pastes it. After any change, open the real page from another device and confirm that the player loads.

Step 6: Plan the quality levels

This step concerns the recording you upload after the event, not the live picture. Each uploaded video is encoded into several quality levels, from the height of your original down to a small mobile size, and never above the original. A 4K original on PRO becomes seven levels, and a smaller recording is not blown up to a higher resolution.

Lower levels give viewers on slow connections something they can play smoothly, which is what people watching a ceremony on a phone need. When you upload, you can ask for a lower top level and the ladder is built from that height downwards. After the upload, the video shows a Processing status in your Videos library until it becomes Ready, so open it and play the preview to confirm picture and sound before you share the link.

Step 7: Add a backup stream

Your event usually depends on one encoder, one computer and one internet connection, and any of them can fail at the worst moment. A second encoder can publish to the backup address of the broadcast, and when the main feed is lost the broadcast continues from the backup in the same player, without reloading the page. Your stream must receive video over RTMP, SRT or WHIP, because a stream on CAMERA has no backup.

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 only, because the SRT address already carries what the encoder needs. For a WHIP stream, the backup input is RTMP.

There is no switch to turn on: start the main encoder and then the backup encoder, and the backup arms itself when the second encoder actually starts sending. In the gear of the Backup stream block you choose what happens after a switch: return to primary automatically, stay on backup, or return manually. While the broadcast is on air, the same window offers Switch to primary and Switch to backup.

Through the partner API you can read the backup settings of a stream, change its return mode and switch the source between the main and backup feeds. 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.

If the Start button is unavailable and its tooltip says the backup signal does not match the primary, the message names the setting that differs. Give both encoders the same resolution, frame rate and audio settings, so the change from one feed to the other is hard to notice. For a real safety margin, run the second encoder on a different computer and, if you can, on a different internet connection.

Step 8: Restream to social platforms

Restreaming sends one broadcast to several platforms at once, so people who will not open your page can still watch where they already are. Destinations include YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Kick, as well as a custom address for any other service. The source of a restream can be an RTMP, SRT or WebRTC feed, or one of your existing broadcasts on the platform, and the source you pick is the source that is stored.

Before you go live, fill in every destination completely. A destination without a stream key, or a custom destination without its address, cannot be switched on until the missing field is filled in, and the settings name that field so you can fix it in one step. Platforms with a known ingest address need only your stream key. If you clear a key, that destination drops out of the active list instead of failing in the middle of the broadcast, and a destination you switched off stays off.

How many destinations can run at the same time depends on your plan, so keep your list of channels realistic. Keep the keys private, and test each destination with a short private broadcast before the important event, because every platform has its own rules for new streams.

What you decide about the venue

The product starts at your encoder, so the quality of the hall connection is yours to settle. Test the venue internet at the same hour of day as the event, because the connection is slower when the hall is full of phones. If you can, ask the venue for a wired connection for the encoder and keep guests on a separate network.

Decide also who does what. One person should own the encoder, another should watch from a second screen as a viewer would, and someone should be ready to use the backup feed if the main one fails. Your event runs calmer when each role has a name before the doors open.

What you decide about your audience

Send the watch link to your guests before the day, so the first minutes of the event are not spent explaining where to watch. Tell them whether to open your own page or a social platform, and open the link yourself as a guest would, because a link that leads to a stream a guest cannot see will look like a broken event.

Finally, run a full rehearsal with the exact setup of the day: the same encoder, the same venue connection, the embed on your page and every restream destination you plan to use. Start both encoders, stop the main one and watch from a second screen. If something fails during the rehearsal, you have learned it at the cheapest possible moment, and your viewers never see it.