Introduction

freezes is a local RTMP relay. OBS publishes into it, it holds as much of the stream as you ask for, and it republishes to your platform on its own clock.

Because it sits between the encoder and the platform, you can raise or drop the delay in the middle of a broadcast. OBS never stops, the connection to the platform is never dropped, and your viewers never see a reconnect.

What it is for

Stream sniping, mostly. A delay makes your stream useless as a live map of where you are, but running one permanently costs you the chat interaction that makes streaming worth doing. freezes lets you carry the delay only when you need it: on for the round, off in the lobby.

What it does not do

It does not transcode. Video and audio pass through untouched, so there is no quality loss and almost no CPU cost, but it also means freezes cannot fix a stream that was encoded badly in the first place.

It cannot create time out of nothing either. See the honest limits for what adding and removing delay actually costs.

Status

Source lives at github.com/dancer/freezes.

Next

Start with Getting started to install it, then OBS setup for the exact encoder settings it expects.