---
title: 'How to Multistream to Any Platform: Relay vs Direct'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=viyZMEPmcdY'
video_id: 'viyZMEPmcdY'
date: 2026-09-09
duration_sec: 669
channel: 'Stream Scheme'
---

# How to Multistream to Any Platform: Relay vs Direct

> Source: [How to Multistream to Any Platform: Relay vs Direct](https://youtube.com/watch?v=viyZMEPmcdY)

## Summary

The video is a comprehensive guide to multistreaming, comparing relay services like Restream with direct streaming via the Aitum Multistream (ATM) plugin for OBS. The creator shares personal experiences, setup instructions, and critical advice on choosing the right method based on quality, stability, and hardware constraints.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to Multistreaming** [00:00] — The creator spent weeks testing multistreaming tools and found most to be frustrating. The video promises to teach viewers the two main ways to multistream and how to set them up.
- **Relay vs Direct Multistreaming** [01:01] — Relay involves streaming to a service like Restream, which then distributes to platforms. Direct uses a plugin like ATM to create separate streams for each platform. The choice affects PC/internet load and quality control.
- **Pros of Relay** [01:13] — Relay reduces PC and internet stress by encoding once. Restream also merges chats and provides a browser source for viewers.
- **Cons of Relay** [01:26] — Relay services lock features behind paywalls, are unstable, and lack disconnect protection. They also cap stream quality to the lowest common platform, e.g., Twitch's bitrate limits degrade YouTube quality.
- **Direct Multistreaming Benefits** [02:34] — Direct streaming via ATM allows per-platform settings, avoiding quality caps. However, it increases PC and internet load as multiple streams are encoded and sent.
- **Setting Up Restream** [03:20] — Steps include creating a Restream account, choosing 'Stream via RTMP', adding channels (e.g., YouTube, Twitch), and configuring OBS to stream to Restream. The free version limits to two platforms and may add a watermark if using the built-in studio.
- **Configuring OBS for Restream** [04:44] — In OBS, go to Settings > Stream, select Restream.io, and connect account. Ensure stream settings are capped to Twitch's recommendations to avoid quality issues.
- **Setting Up ATM Plugin** [05:26] — Download and install the ATM plugin for OBS. It adds a dock for managing multiple streams. The creator found it easy to set up in minutes before going live.
- **Adding a Second Stream in ATM** [06:26] — In the ATM dock, go to settings, add output for YouTube, and paste the stream key from YouTube's scheduled stream. Ensure the stream is scheduled to avoid go-live issues.
- **Encoder Options in ATM** [08:01] — Using 'main encoder' copies the base stream, saving PC resources but not allowing per-platform settings. Selecting a different encoder (e.g., NVENC) allows customization but increases load and upload requirements.
- **Managing Multiple Streams** [09:39] — Add as many streams as hardware allows. Monitor stats in OBS (View > Stats) for skipped, dropped, or lagged frames to detect issues.
- **Advanced ATM Features** [10:08] — ATM supports different audio tracks, themes, and vertical streaming for TikTok/Shorts, but the creator advises simplicity and focusing on content quality.

### Conclusion

Multistreaming can be done via relay or direct methods, each with trade-offs. For quality and control, direct streaming with ATM is recommended, but it requires more resources. The video provides practical setup guides and warns against common pitfalls.

## Transcript

I just spent a few weeks multistreaming, and what I learned is most services and tools absolutely f***ing suck. Setting them up is annoying, finicky, and painful, but by the end of this video, you won't have to worry. You're going to go from having no idea how to multistream to understanding the two main and best ways to start multistreaming to any platform you want,
as well as how to set them up yourself, and why you kick one or the other. But before we get into all of that, thank you so much to our sponsor, Ode. Oh, your one-stop shop as a streamer has created an entire scene editor and integrated it into their free version of OwnPro.
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And for a little extra month, you also get access to all of Epidemic Sound, meaning that is over 40,000 plus songs and 90,000 sound effects to your stream. If you want to support me, check out the link in the description to try out OwnPro's new free scene editor and more today, but with that out of the way, let's get into the video.
Before we get into the core setup, we need to understand the two different ways to multistream, relay vs direct, and why you'd want to choose one or the other. First, relay. This means you're streaming from OBS, for example, to a service like Restream,
for example, and then that service will stream to the platform you link to it. The pro of this is that you're just encoding and streaming one stream and letting the service handle for rest. This means no added stress on your PC or internet. Another great pro is Restream
will combine your platform's chats for you and even give you a browser source to put it on stream for viewers. It looks like ass but hey it's better than nothing. Now the cons though are pretty rough. For starters, services like Restream tend to lock really important features behind paywall.
They tend to be horribly unstable, constantly crashing, one or multiple platforms, and when that happens they don't have any disconnect protection which means sometimes they set up a whole new stream. That all sounds pretty bad, but worst of all, they lock your stream's quality to the lowest common platform. For example, Twitch's max bitrate you can use is
between 6,000 to 8,000, but on YouTube, I can stream as high as 20,000, 30,000, I can do whatever I want, which I actually need to do, because 1080p 60fps actually looks kind of garbage at 6,000,
especially if there is a lot of motion, which will allow you guys to play very motion-heavy games. 1080p simply requires a higher bitrate than Twitch can currently provide, which is a problem if you're multi-streaming a relay to Twitch and YouTube.
It will lock that YouTube stream to Twitch's standards, making YouTube look far worse. And even worse, it will actually destroy the YouTube VOD quality, essentially eliminating one of the main benefits of multi-streaming to YouTube.
Now we get around this instead by doing the second type of multi-streaming, Direct. Essentially you use a plugin in today case it ATM to create several streams that go out to different platforms The major pro here is the ability to customize the settings for each platform but also this means you adding more stress to your PC and internet as you literally streaming to multiple places
Another con is that the plugin only works with OBS because Streamlabs locks plugin support behind paywalls to force streamers to pay their money and use their terrible services, like their shitty multistreaming tool or the fact you have to pay them a ridiculous subscription
just to change their bot's name to a custom account name. Everyone else does that for free streamlabs, what the fu- With that difference explained, let's quickly cover setting up a relay like Restream and then I'll cover ATM as well. There are time codes in the description
if you need to skip ahead, of course. First things first, you'll need a Restream account, so head to Restream.io and log in. You'll want to head to the homepage and click Stream via RTMP. This means essentially you're streaming from OBS to Restream rather than using their
built-in studio. For the love of god, don't use their studio, I'll explain why in a second. Once you've selected that, you'll click Add Channel and start adding the platforms that you want to stream to, such as, in this case, YouTube and Twitch. Now, Restream has a limitation of only allowing two platforms for their free version,
and they also say they'll add a watermark. This isn't true. It's only adding a watermark if you use the built-in studio version that I told you not to use. But the way they've written this is clearly designed to trick people into buying the paid service to remove the watermark,
and that pisses me off. Mostly because it tricked me. That tricked me, yeah. I got me. but I made you pay 45 Australian dollars to test this tool. Once you've added the platforms and streams, sometimes Restream will change your stream title
and go live notification to their default one. I don't know why they do this, so make sure you double check and edit your settings, particularly if you're streaming to YouTube. You'll want to click the dot, dot, dot, click edit, and make sure the event you select is the next scheduled YouTube stream.
If you don't have one scheduled, I'll link a video in the top of the description that covers all of YouTube streaming and shows you how to set up a scheduled stream and why it's so important. Once your platforms are added, toggled on, and the settings look correct, we need to tell OBS to stream to restream.
So, open OBS, go to Settings, Streams, and click the drop-down service, find Restream.io, and log in with the Connect Account button. Now, when you click Start Streaming, it will stream to Restream, and Restream will stream to the toggled on and connected accounts you'll see in this list.
You can even click this button right here to see all of your chats merge together. Now, one thing I noticed was that if I tried to go live before the YouTube stream scheduled time, even by a minute or two, restream would absolutely panic and glitch out and not be able to go to it.
So make sure you're going live at the right time. And again, make sure you're capping your stream settings inside OBS to Twitch's recommendations as it's the lowest quality platform. So with that out of the way, let's talk about direct multi-streaming.
As I said today we doing that with a plugin called ATM which adds this amazing dock to your OBS and just kind of makes multi insanely easy No joke when I decided to set this tool up it was about 5 minutes before I was supposed to go live and I installed it had it all set up and I went multi nobody knew a difference
Well, I'm not sure everyone knew I was using a new tool because I wasn't crashing every 3 seconds. Thanks Restream! So, you're going to go to my link in the description and download the plugin for OBS. Once it's downloaded, make sure your OBS is closed and simply run the installer that
downloaded it's incredibly easy once that is done installing open obs backup and you should have the atm multi-stream dock but if you don't head to the docs at the top click atm multi-stream and it will add the dock that said you may also have several vertical drops open or in that drop down you would
have noticed several vertical docs that could be added these are for when you want to stream to tiktok or youtube short but we're not going to be covering that till much later in the video in a very specific way so just close all those docs for now inside the atm multi-stream dock however you
you should see something called built-in stream. This is your normal stream that is set up through OBS settings. So you'll see my base or core stream is Twitch. Because if I go to my settings, click stream, you'll see I'm logged in and connected to Twitch.
If you need help with setting up your base stream and all the settings, I'll have a video linked down in the description. But I'll be honest, if you're trying to multi-stream and using a direct plugin, you really should be able to set up and understand all of these settings by yourself by now.
With the first stream set up, it's time to add a second stream. We're going to be setting up YouTube today. but you can set up pretty much any platform you want. So on the ATM dock, head to the cogwheel, which pops open the settings for the plugin, and then head to main canvas. This is your normal 16,
9 or horizontal canvas. Click add output and select the platform you want to add. Like I said, I'll select YouTube, leave it as primary, but I do need my stream key. To find this, I can either click this link right here on screen, or I can go to my YouTube creator
dashboard. I'll go to my live section by clicking create in the top right, and then clicking go live, and I'll either select an upcoming stream that I've scheduled or I'll schedule a new stream. If you don't know how to schedule a stream on YouTube or why that's important, again, I linked that video in the description down below. I'm not skipping over parts, it's just
the content's already been covered. Once you have one scheduled, click it and make sure you copy your default stream key from this drop down and paste this into the plugin where it says YouTube stream key. If you have multiple streams live or scheduled, this will offer a lot of other keys,
but if you simply pick default, then when you click go live, you'll always go live to your current next scheduled stream as far as I know. Once that is done you can technically go live except there are two major problems we need to solve first.
Number one is that if you try to go live before your scheduled YouTube stream starts again YouTube won't let you appear so make sure you're going live at the time you set and the second problem if you go to the main canvas area you'll
see the YouTube output click advanced settings and it will say main encoder This means right now that YouTube stream is just copying the base stream so in case it the Twitch stream Now this is where it gets a little confusing so Jimmy please pay attention If you leave this as main encoder you get the benefits of only having to encode one stream
This means less stress on your PCs, but you still have to send the data to multiple platforms. So you'll still be sending 6,000 bitrate to Twitch and 6,000 bitrate to YouTube, aka you need to be able to handle 12,000 bitrate uploading consistently and in a stable way.
This also means you're not getting the benefit of the plugin by being able to customize the settings for each platform, and it means you need to go live on the base stream before you can go live on the second stream, because again, the second stream is just copying the
first. So, if you click this dropdown and select a different encoder, for example, I use NBank, which is a special chip on my GPU, suddenly all the streaming settings can be changed. So again, YouTube has no real cap, so I can set this to 15,000 bitrate, change the rest of it as I see fit, but stop right there before you get carried away.
Remember, by changing all of this, you are now asking OBS to encode a second stream, aka you're now adding more stress to your hardware, and if you increase the bitrate like I did, now my internet needs to be able to handle 6,000 to Twitch and 15,000 to YouTube, so 21,000 in total.
If you're not sure what your upload speed is, then check out the speedtest.net link in the description, that will give you a good idea. You can of course add as many streams or platforms as your setup can handle, and once you've changed your settings or left them as main encoder, depending on your setup, and you're
ready to go live, you'll click this little button here on the main stream, and then work your way down the list clicking any other platforms you want to stream to. While streaming, I really recommend you keep your stats panel open by going to OVS, View, Stats, and this will let you see any skipped, dropped, or lagged frames.
will know your PC or internet is struggling if there is a large percentage of either of these. If you want to know the difference between these three types of frame issues and how to fix them, again, I'll have a video on that in the description. Now there are a lot of other cool aspects of this plugin, such as sending different audio tracks to different platforms, sending
different themes to different platforms, or using ATM to stream vertically on TikTok or Shorts. But for me, I don't use any of that, because I think it just adds complications that don't make my streams content better. I like my streams to be really simple and minimal so I can focus on
on just making something entertaining. Plus, when it comes to multi-streaming, TikTok and Vertical want very different content to horizontal platforms. If I streamed on TikTok as if I was a Twitch streamer, I'd not get a single viewer.
So I wouldn't even bother multi-streaming to those platforms. I'd just go live for them and give them the energy they deserve. That said, if you do want to learn about any of that, I'll link a mate of mine named Nutty who has an amazing in-depth video on it down below.
And if you want to learn how multi-streaming can actually pretty much destroy your growth as a creator, well, especially on YouTube and TikTok, click here. If the video is not out yet, it might be next week, but it should be here.