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First identify what “sleeping” means: a blank monitor may be only screen blanking, while FFmpeg stopped as a shell job may be suspended because it tried to read terminal input. Those have different fixes. Turning off screen blanking will not keep a suspended FFmpeg process running, nor will it repair a network or YouTube interruption.
Match the fix to the symptom
| What you observe | Likely issue covered here | Fix | Does it affect the FFmpeg process? |
|---|---|---|---|
| The monitor goes blank, but the stream continues | Raspberry Pi OS desktop screen blanking | Turn off Screen Blanking in Control Centre or raspi-config | No; it changes display behavior |
| A text-only console display blanks | Linux kernel console blanking | Set consoleblank=0 in the kernel command line |
No; it changes display behavior and requires a reboot |
| You want to switch HDMI output off or on in a Wayland session | Display output control | Use wlr-randr |
No; it controls the display |
| The shell reports FFmpeg stopped or suspended after it was backgrounded | FFmpeg checking terminal input | Use -nostdin or redirect standard input from /dev/null |
Yes; it addresses this terminal-input suspension case |
These remedies address specific display and terminal-input behaviors. They do not establish a universal fix for system-wide suspend, power loss, network failure, encoder overload, invalid YouTube credentials, or a YouTube ingest interruption.
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If the monitor blanks but the stream continues
Raspberry Pi OS desktop
On the graphical Raspberry Pi OS desktop, open Menu → Preferences → Control Centre → Display and switch Screen Blanking off. Alternatively, open a terminal, run sudo raspi-config, then choose 2 Display Options → D2 Screen Blanking and answer No.
Raspberry Pi documentation says the desktop inactivity timeout is 600 seconds (10 minutes) when screen blanking is enabled. This is a display setting, not a process keep-alive.
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Text-only console
If the Pi is running in a text-only terminal connected to a monitor and keyboard, the desktop setting does not apply. Raspberry Pi’s console instructions say: “Add consoleblank=0 to never blank the screen.” The setting belongs in the kernel command line, not as a separate line.
- Open
/boot/firmware/cmdline.txtusing an editor with administrator privileges. - Append a space and
consoleblank=0to its existing single line. Do not split the file into multiple lines. - Save the file and reboot the Pi for the change to take effect.
- After reboot, inspect the active value with
cat /sys/module/kernel/parameters/consoleblank.
The path and menu names here are those in current Raspberry Pi documentation; check your installed Raspberry Pi OS release if they differ.
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Wayland HDMI output
For a Wayland desktop, Raspberry Pi documents wlr-randr commands for HDMI0. These switch the display output, not FFmpeg’s process state:
export WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-1
wlr-randr --output HDMI-A-1 --offTo turn the output back on:
export WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-1
wlr-randr --output HDMI-A-1 --onIf FFmpeg is suspended as a background job
When FFmpeg is started in the background from an interactive shell, it can be stopped when it checks console input. The FFmpeg project FAQ recommends the -nostdin option to prevent those input checks while running as a background task.
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ffmpeg -nostdin -i INPUT OUTPUTReplace INPUT and OUTPUT with the arguments from your actual command, including your existing streaming arguments. The example illustrates where to place the option; it is not a complete YouTube streaming command.
On Linux, redirecting standard input instead is another option when the process does not need it:
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ffmpeg -i INPUT OUTPUT </dev/nullThis fix covers terminal-input suspension only. It does not diagnose a stopped device, broken network, YouTube stream-key problem, or encoder overload.
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Before changing power or boot settings, determine what actually stopped:
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- Only the monitor is blank: check whether the stream is still live; use the relevant desktop or console display setting above.
- The shell says the job is stopped or suspended: check how FFmpeg was launched and whether it is reading terminal input; try
-nostdin. - The Pi or stream itself stopped responding: inspect the process state and logs, then separately check power, network connectivity, and YouTube ingest status. The documented display and FFmpeg options above do not identify or resolve every cause in this category.
Settings not to treat as universal fixes
Do not add hdmi_blanking=1 as a general fix for an FFmpeg process stopping. Raspberry Pi’s legacy configuration reference describes it as controlling how HDMI responds to an operating-system request for DPMS standby, and notes that Raspberry Pi 4 does not switch off HDMI output with this setting. It concerns HDMI standby behavior, not FFmpeg suspension.
Raspberry Pi documentation’s “VPU sleep mode” language appears in instructions for what happens when a supported Pi is turned off. It is not the same thing as a screen-blanking timeout and is not the first remedy for an FFmpeg job that stopped.
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