# Livestreamer

Livestreamer is a command-line utility written in Python, which allows you to watch online video streams in popular video players, such as VLC, MPlayer or mpv The full list of supported media players is available here: http://docs.livestreamer.io/players.html#player-compatibility.

Support of a various streaming services is provided by a plugins, which can be easily added if needed. A lot of popular video streaming services are supported out of the box, including Dailymotion, Livestream, Twitch, UStream, YouTube Live and many more. List of all built-in plugins is available on http://livestreamer.tanuki.se/en/latest/plugin_matrix.html.

## Installation

Install livestreamer, available from the official repositories.

## Usage

The package provides a livestreamer command-line utility, which is quite easy to use:

    $ livestreamer -p your_player url stream

- `your_player` — name of executable of your media player, for example, `vlc`. You can also specify a full path if needed: `/usr/bin/vlc`. By default, VLC will be used if it can be found in its default location.
- `url` — URL address of a stream. You can omit protocol (`http://`) for HTTP URLs.
- `stream` — stream to play by given URL. Primarily, you can select the video quality with this option. Use `best` for highest and `worst` for lowest quality available. Specific plugins may have additional quality options.

For example:

    $ livestreamer -p mpv dailymotion.com/embed/video/x1b1h6o worst

See the `livestreamer (1)` man page for the full list of available options.

### Twitch

    $ livestreamer -p player twitch.tv/name_of_channel quality

For example:

     $ livestreamer -p vlc twitch.tv/archlinux medium

Available stream qualities are: `source`, `high`, `medium`, `low` and `mobile`.

#### Authenticating With OAuth

     $ livestreamer --twitch-oauth-authenticate

This command will open a web browser with further instructions on authenticating with twitch.

The instructions only offer documentation for a configuration file, if you prefer not to use a configuration file, you can use:

     $ livestreamer twitch.tv/channel --twitch-oauth-token YourOAuthToken

Where YourOAuthToken is the OAuth token you received in the previous step.

## See also

- Livestreamer repository on GitHub
- Livestreamer documentation

Category:

- Multimedia players