Use two independent checks: supervise FFmpeg on the host and query YouTube’s Live Streaming API for the incoming stream’s status and health. FFmpeg being alive does not prove YouTube is receiving usable video; an API check alone does not prove the encoder is healthy. A useful monitor keeps those results separate, treats missing or stale data as unknown, and restarts FFmpeg only under a bounded policy.
What a health check needs to monitor
YouTube models the incoming feed and the viewer-facing event as separate resources. A liveStream reports whether YouTube is receiving data and provides health-check information. A liveBroadcast describes the event’s lifecycle. Neither replaces local supervision of the FFmpeg process.
| Check | What it can tell you | What it cannot establish by itself |
|---|---|---|
| Local FFmpeg process and progress | Whether the process exists, its exit status, and whether the actual invocation is continuing to produce output. | Whether YouTube is receiving the feed correctly or reporting configuration issues. |
| YouTube liveStream API | Whether YouTube reports the incoming stream as active, plus health status and configuration issues. | Whether the local encoder process is progressing normally. |
| YouTube liveBroadcast API | Whether the viewer-facing broadcast is ready, starting, live, testing, complete, or in another lifecycle state. | Whether a local FFmpeg process is healthy; broadcast state is distinct from stream ingest state. |
Use the combined result to distinguish process failure, ingest failure, a reported configuration issue, and a check that could not determine health. These are operational distinctions, not YouTube-defined alert thresholds.
Check FFmpeg locally
Run FFmpeg under a service manager or equivalent watchdog, capture its logs and exit status, and monitor a progress signal tied to the actual FFmpeg invocation and media pipeline. A process can remain present while blocked, disconnected, or producing unusable output, so a process-exists check alone is insufficient.
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Implement the host-side check for your operating system and FFmpeg build; the YouTube API documentation does not prescribe a process-monitoring command or script. Have the check emit distinct states rather than a single green/red value:
- Process absent: FFmpeg has exited or was not started.
- Process present, no recent progress: the process exists but the media pipeline may be stalled.
- Progressing: the monitored invocation is still producing output.
Keep process supervision separate from API polling. A temporary API or credential problem should not automatically be interpreted as proof that FFmpeg needs restarting.
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Query YouTube’s incoming stream status and health
Use the authorized liveStream resource and inspect both status.streamStatus and status.healthStatus. The stream-status definitions distinguish configuration readiness from active ingest:
active: YouTube is receiving data via the stream.created: the stream exists but has no valid CDN settings.error: an error condition exists.inactive: YouTube is not receiving the user’s stream.ready: the stream has valid CDN settings.
In particular, ready is not the same as active. Read the health status separately:
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good: no issues at warning severity or worse.ok: no error-severity issues.bad: at least one issue has error severity.noData: YouTube has no health-status information. Treat it as unknown, not as a healthy result.
When present, inspect configurationIssues[] rather than alerting only on the overall label. Each issue can include a type, severity, reason, and description that can help direct investigation. Also record lastUpdateTimeSeconds, a UNIX timestamp in seconds. Reject or label a health result as stale when it exceeds a freshness limit you choose for your deployment; YouTube’s documentation does not set a universal limit.
Check the viewer-facing broadcast separately
The broadcast lifecycle includes created, ready, liveStarting, live, complete, revoked, testStarting, and testing. A broadcast marked live indicates the event is active, but it is not a substitute for checking the bound stream’s ingest and health.
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To list broadcasts owned by the authorized account, the liveBroadcasts.list method supports the status part and mine=true; its broadcastStatus filter accepts active, all, completed, or upcoming. The method accepts the youtube.readonly scope. Requests can fail if the account lacks live permissions or live streaming is not enabled, so surface authorization and eligibility errors as failed checks—not as evidence that the stream is healthy or that FFmpeg has stopped.
For monitoring, reading state and alerting is generally simpler than changing broadcast state. If you deliberately automate transitions, YouTube requires the bound stream to have streamStatus=active before a broadcast can transition to testing or live. The transition operation requires authorization and can return inactive-stream or invalid-transition errors.
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Combine checks without confusing unknown with failed
Have the monitor retain the source and timestamp of each result. A practical state model can include:
- FFmpeg process absent.
- FFmpeg present but no recent progress.
- Local output progressing.
- YouTube API request failed or authorization was rejected.
- YouTube reports the stream as inactive or in error.
- YouTube health is bad, with the individual issue and severity attached.
- YouTube health is unknown (
noData) or stale. - Local progress and YouTube stream/broadcast checks are consistent with a healthy run.
Do not collapse an API timeout, expired credentials, or a noData health response into “healthy.” Likewise, do not restart FFmpeg merely because one API request failed. Keep the check’s uncertainty visible so an operator can tell a monitoring outage from an ingest outage.
Choose restart and alert rules
YouTube documents the status fields, not an FFmpeg restart policy, polling interval, retry count, or paging threshold. Set these to match the stream’s acceptable downtime and the risk of a restart loop. Before enabling automatic recovery, decide:
- Which condition counts as a restart-worthy failure—for example, an exited process or sustained lack of local progress.
- How long a condition must persist before action, to avoid reacting to a brief interruption.
- How many restarts are allowed in a defined period and what backoff applies.
- What logs, exit codes, API responses, timestamps, and configuration issues are retained.
- When repeated failures or an unresolved API/authorization problem should alert a person instead of retrying indefinitely.
For a local FFmpeg exit, let the service manager apply the bounded restart policy. For a YouTube-reported inactive or error stream, inspect FFmpeg logs and ingestion connectivity before deciding whether a restart is appropriate. For bad health, include the reported issue and severity in the alert. For API failure, stale data, or noData, report an unknown check result and investigate the monitoring path.
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