Use two independent checks: monitor FFmpeg on the Raspberry Pi for a stopped process or stalled output, and query YouTube’s Live Streaming API for the stream’s status and health. A running FFmpeg process does not prove YouTube is receiving the stream, and restarting FFmpeg does not prove the broadcast has recovered. Send a recovery alert only after YouTube reports the stream as active.
What your alerts need to monitor
Local and YouTube-side checks answer different questions. Local monitoring tells you whether the encoder process is running and, if you have configured FFmpeg progress output, whether it is advancing. YouTube’s API tells you what the platform has recorded about stream receipt and health. Neither a running process nor a healthy Raspberry Pi alone proves that viewers can watch the broadcast.
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| Signal | What it tells you | What it does not prove |
|---|---|---|
| FFmpeg process state | Whether the encoder process is present or has exited on the Pi. | That output is reaching YouTube or that viewers can watch. |
| FFmpeg progress, if configured | Whether the encoder is reporting advancing work locally. | That YouTube is receiving the stream. |
| YouTube API stream status | The stream’s lifecycle and whether YouTube reports it as receiving data. | That public playback is working for viewers. |
| YouTube API health status | Configuration-health information and its severity, when available. | A definitive diagnosis of why data is absent. |
YouTube defines active as a stream state in which the user is receiving data via the stream. The API also distinguishes stream lifecycle status from health status; include both in your monitor’s record rather than treating one as a substitute for the other. See Google’s LiveStreams API reference.
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Stream status
The API’s streamStatus values are active, created, error, inactive, and ready. Record the exact value and when you observed it. For an offline alert, a status other than active is worth evaluating against your expected broadcast state and persistence rule; it is not automatically proof of a particular failure cause.
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Health status
The healthStatus.status values are good, ok, bad, and noData. In the API reference, good means there are no configuration issues at warning severity or worse; ok means there are no error-severity configuration issues; bad indicates error-severity issues. noData means YouTube’s live backend has no stream health information. That is not, by itself, a diagnosis of why data is absent.
Because activity and health describe different things, an alert should preserve both fields. For example, an inactive stream and a noData health state are distinct observations and should not be collapsed into a single claim such as “YouTube reports an encoder error.”
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Build a monitor with separate local and YouTube checks
- Watch the FFmpeg process. Have a local supervisor or monitor detect when the FFmpeg process exits. If you configure FFmpeg progress reporting, have the monitor check whether reported progress advances; a process that remains alive while progress stalls may still be failing to produce useful output.
- Check YouTube independently. Use the YouTube Live Streaming API to read the relevant stream’s
streamStatusandhealthStatus.status. The API setup requires suitable authorization; keep OAuth credentials private and out of logs, screenshots, and notifications. - Apply a persistence rule. Decide how long or how many observations a condition must persist before it pages you. There is no universal polling interval or alert threshold established for this setup. Shorter intervals can detect changes sooner but increase polling and notification activity; waiting for a condition to persist can reduce transient alerts but delays notice. Treat any chosen values as configuration to validate on your own Pi, network, stream, and API setup.
- Send a concise alert. Include the stream identifier or a safe human-readable label, the signal that fired (local process, local progress, YouTube status, or YouTube health), the observed values, the observation time, and whether the condition met your persistence rule. Do not include stream keys or OAuth secrets.
- Alert on verified recovery. A local process restart is not enough to declare success. Send a recovery notice only after YouTube reports
activeagain; include the new observation time and relevant status and health fields.
Test both failure and recovery notifications in your own setup, including what happens when the Pi loses network access or the API check cannot return a fresh status. The available documentation does not establish alert-channel-specific instructions, quota handling, a delivery guarantee, or a universal timing target.
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Choose the right alert threshold
There is no one threshold that fits every broadcast. A brief network interruption may resolve before a delayed, persistent-state alert fires; a very sensitive rule can notify on short-lived or ambiguous states. Tune the rule to how quickly you need to respond and how much transient alerting you can tolerate, then validate it under the conditions your stream actually encounters. Do not interpret a single noData observation as proof of an encoder, network, or YouTube outage.
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Recovery is not the same as reconnecting
FFmpeg documents reconnect options for HTTP, including reconnect, reconnect_at_eof, reconnect_on_network_error, reconnect_on_http_error, reconnect_streamed, reconnect_delay_max, and retry-limit options. These are documented for the HTTP protocol. They should not be presented as a guaranteed fix for a YouTube RTMP publishing failure. Consult the FFmpeg protocol documentation for the protocol and option details relevant to your configuration.
Whether you restart FFmpeg manually or configure a supervisor to restart it, keep recovery verification separate: observe the local process, then confirm YouTube reports the stream active before telling yourself or others that the broadcast is back.
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Optional examples and limits
Public Raspberry Pi projects illustrate possible approaches, but they are examples rather than guarantees of maintenance, security, availability, or suitability. YouTube-Pi4-StreamMachine documents a Pi Zero companion that polls YouTube status and health using read-only access and displays states such as OFFLINE, AUTH, READY, LIVE, and WARNING. YouTube-AutoEncoder describes a Raspberry Pi-targeted headless FFmpeg/systemd encoder and YouTube Live API integration. Review either project’s current documentation and security implications before using it; do not expose credentials in commands or copied configuration.
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