It's 9:58 on Sunday morning. Your volunteer presses one button on the encoder, and your service goes live on YouTube, Facebook - all your destinations at once. Nobody logs in to anything. Nobody hunts for a password or has to remember the title format.
That's Autostart, new in PolyStreamer this November. You set up your destinations and a title once, and from then on, going live is just: start your live stream encoder (whether that's OBS, vMix, or a hardware encoder like an ATEM Mini Pro). Read on to get it set up, and discover a few important details.
PolyStreamer's goal is to be the simplest way to go live on all your destinations. With our YouTube, Facebook and Twitch integrations, you've never needed to visit those sites: you simply clicked Setup Streamer, typed a title, and we started every destination for you. But someone still had to log in to PolyStreamer.com for each stream. Not anymore!
For a lot of us, that someone changes every week. Churches run on volunteers, schools and businesses on overworked staff, and every extra step adds friction for them. With Autostart, the whole job fits on a sticky note:
Going live, for volunteers:
1. Turn on the camera and the encoder.
2. Press Start Streaming in OBS or vMix.
3. When the service is over, press Stop.
That's it! Whether your "encoder" is a hardware box in the sound booth or streaming software like OBS or vMix on a laptop, it works the same way: PolyStreamer starts your destinations when your encoder connects.
Everything below happens on your PolyStreamer dashboard, and you only do it once.
If you're new to PolyStreamer, the first step is getting your destinations set up on your Dashboard. YouTube, Facebook Pages and profiles, Twitch, even custom RTMP destinations - Autostart will send to all destinations when your stream starts.
Copy the Input RTMP Server and Stream Key from the Setup tab into your encoder or streaming software. Your stream key stays the same from one stream to the next, so this is also a one-time step.
On the Schedule tab, tick the checkbox Start my destinations automatically when my encoder connects.
The Autostart dialog opens and asks for the title and description your streams should use. The title is a template: a few words in braces fill themselves in each time you go live, and the preview shows exactly what your viewers will see.
| Type this | You get |
{date} | Nov 8, 2026 (you can customize the format) |
{time} | 10:00 AM |
{weekday} | Sunday |
{n} | the stream number: 1, 2, 3… |
So Sunday Service – {date} becomes Sunday Service – Nov 8, 2026, and a church with Wednesday and Sunday services can use {weekday} Worship – {date} for both. Dates and times are in your own time zone. Click Save, and you're done.
When your encoder connects, we create the YouTube broadcast and the Facebook live video with your title and description, and start sending your stream to every destination. It takes a few seconds, so your encoder may show "connecting" for a moment. On your dashboard, the Live tab shows the status of your stream:
When you stop sending video, the stream ends on every destination 2 minutes later. (This 2-minute delay is in case the Wi-Fi hiccups or someone restarts the encoder. Quick reconnects continue the same stream instead of starting over.)
Tip: need a special title, like Christmas Eve? Schedule that stream as usual. A scheduled stream keeps its own title and preview image, and takes precedence over Autostart. And Setup Streamer still works any time you want to go live by hand.
Open your dashboard, pick an input, and tick the box on the Schedule tab. Next time your volunteer presses Start, you'll be live everywhere. 👍
New to PolyStreamer? Get started here. And if you'd like a hand setting up your encoder or your title, drop us a line. We'd be glad to help!
Header photo by Luis Morera on Unsplash
