The Restream Space is an single-person independently run project to provide free or cheap server and network resources for small independent livestream events that need a way to capture participant video content for final streaming. It presents itself as an alternative to capturing video and audio from Discord, Twitch, or an event-hosted RTMP server.
If you are hosting a livestream event where you are thinking of capturing your participant streams from Discord, or setting up your own RTMP server for an event, read on and see if we're a match for you!
Events that request service from The Restream Space get the following:
Events that need additional help can request additional support that may be provided on an availability basis:
The Restream Space is run by Trysdyn as a solo independent offering to the speedrun, retro gaming, and small-scale streaming communities.
Trysdyn has been a speedrunner since 2015 and has personally participated in over fifty livestream events. Since 2017 Trysdyn has also been an event coordinator, host, commentator, technical lead, and chairperson of about a dozen events:
Trysdyn is also a career sysadmin, site reliability engineer, and content delivery specialist who has a particular interest in video and streaming. So this is just fun for them.
It's probably free if you're in our target audience! If you're any of the following, you're likely to be eligible to receive service for a weekend event for free:
A longer event, or an event for a larger community or for-profit may be asked to pay a small fee. The fee will depend on what services are required, the length of the event, The Restream Space staff availability, any expected financial take from the event, and the event's ability to pay on a sliding scale.
The Restream Space is not intended for long-form serial events such as tournaments, talk shows, etc. If you wish to use The Restream Space for one of those, that will require specific discussion.
The Restream Space is also not intended to be where your viewers watch the event. You will need to receive the video streams sent through The Restream Space, format them somehow, and send them to another location such as Twitch, Youtube, etc. Guidance on how to do this is part of the base offering.
Not unless it's the only way we can continue to operate.
There is no current plan or pathway to monetizing The Restream Space. This is intended to be a volunteer, community-focused project to encourage people who want to try running an event to go for it. No one involved in The Restream Space expects to make money; however there is also a limit to how much they can lose running it.
If The Restream Space becomes so popular that running it is causing a significant loss, fee requests from communities capable of paying may increase but The Restream Space will always support its core target audience for free, if able to do so.
Monetiziation pathways, if they become necessary, will focus on providing the core service for free and offering additional services for a fee, asking for donations (but not requiring them), and running our own events for fundraising.
In the unlikely event someone wants to buy The Restream Space? We'd sell then immediately open an identical, free, volunteer project under another name =)
This is all declared up front for full disclosure. There is no plan to enact any of this and no desire to.
We love running events, we love messing with video and streams, and we love small speedrun, retro, and gaming events. The Restream Space wants to make it as easy as possible to just try running that first event and, if it takes off, getting into a position where The Restream Space is no longer needed for future events.
Right now, there's three options for capturing participant video in an online marathon:
We hope to provide another option: a professionally managed video server cluster that doesn't mean hoping your overseas participants can connect and stream. Since it's set up anyway, we can support multiple events with it, and so we aim to do.
It's also our belief that the technical aspect is one of the larger barriers to providing small-scale but high-quality events and providing a way to jump that barrier may result in new events and more choice for viewers.
We ask (but do not require) events to shout us out once a day and provide a chatbot command if such a chatbot exists. We will not brand anything passing through our network or require you to display any kind of logo or promotion on your stream.
Events using The Restream Space that wish to promote us can do so in their own words, but as a suggestion for the copy to use, see below:
This event is supported by The Restream Space, who provides free or low-cost technical support for small, indie, charity, and community events. You can check out more at https://restream.space
This is the un-fun part. If your community or event is any of the following, The Restream Space is probably not for you:
You can reach out via Email to trysdyn at this domain. Alternatively you can use this Google Form to let us know you'd like us to contact you. Feel free to send along any questions, requests for event assistance, or feedback/comments etc this way.
We're still getting things fully set up, so please be patient. We can run an event on short notice if you reach out, though.