How does the Twitch "Disconnect Protection" work?

Question

I've been bootstrapping my way to a budget Twitch streaming set-up and have managed to get myself to a point where I'm reliably getting a great looking 30fps 3000kbps 720p stream from a Raspberry Pi 4.

But… as good as it is it still occasionally drops and although I've got the script coming back up within seconds because there's no support for the Disconnection Protection for any platform other than OBS, Streamlabs OBS, or XSplit and there's no documentation available I can't resume my stream. I have requested further information via a Google Doc link attached to their wiki page on the subject but I don't fancy my chances very much of hearing back.

My current theory is that there's a handshake or flag at the beginning of the stream sent over the RCP channel which if not sent when the stream drops keeps it alive until the stream is ended properly or the 90 second timeout is reached.

My question is this: How do I dump a stream from a supported platform to see what, if anything, is contained in the RCP channel so I can attempt to roll it into my own solution? Wireshark or rtmpdump are tools that come to mind but I don't really have any idea what I'm looking for or how to extract what I need.

Answer 1

The Disconnect Protection will work with a work-around on/via nginx as rtmp relay - I found that solution today out - you have 90 seconds to reconnect. Else your stream ends Regulary. :-D

Nginx configuration:

rtmp_auto_push on;
rtmp_auto_push_reconnect 1s;

rtmp {

server{
listen 1935;
chunk_size 4096;

#set stream inifinite online??
timeout 99999m;
ping 0;

##
meta copy;

#Using VPN/LAN to connect
allow publish 10.0.0.0/8;
deny publish all;
allow play all;
#Enable live broadcast service
application live {

live on;
record off;

#RTMP germany Relay
push rtmp://fra05.contribute.live-video.net/app/<primary_twitch_key_here>
}
}

}

Conclusions:

I've tested this today more than once, and after 90 Seconds, it ended on disconnection - if you found a way, to keep the connection Alive you can stream infinite theoretically.