My friend livestreams and records video, usually recorded on a phone. They’re currently doing this on Facebook, but I’m helping them find alternative platforms that are accessible and not too technically demanding. Do you have any recommendations?
Owncast if you’ve got a decent enough internet connection.
Consider- a ‘decent’ 1080p h.265+opus stream will be around 8mbps, if you’ve got 10 devices watching, that’s 80mbps, you’d really want 100mbps+ upstream bandwidth to do that.
If you’re lucky enough to have 1GBPS/1GBPS, then you’re probably fine for a hundred or so devices, if you’re stuck on an asynchronous connection, do consider how much upstream bandwidth you (they) have.
I haven’t personally tried it, but Owncast might be an option if your friend knows someone who would be willing to host it. (I’m not sure if that would be considered technically demanding)
Owncast works well for self-hosted streaming without the technical complexity of setting up a full media server from scratch. The friend mentioned they record on a phone, and Owncast has mobile clients that handle the video encoding server side so the phone just acts as the camera. Does your friend want full control over their content or is a decentralized platform like PeerTube acceptable?
I think hosted would suit them best. It doesn’t even need to be decentralized, though I would rather avoid big tech.
I’ve self hosted with icecast and it was ok but definitely DIY. Maybe there are more packaged approaches by now.