| name | workflow-live-production |
| description | End-to-end live production — OBS as the mixer with obs-websocket control, MIDI/OSC cue triggers, DMX lighting sync, PTZ camera moves, system audio routing, NDI/SDI I/O, and multi-protocol egress via MediaMTX. Use when the user says "go live", "run a live show", "live stream", "wire up OBS", "scene switch on MIDI", "OBS + lighting + PTZ", "broadcast webinar", or anything involving real-time production with multiple control surfaces firing together. |
| argument-hint | ["show-name"] |
Workflow — Live Production
What: Run a live show end-to-end. OBS is the mixer; MIDI controllers trigger scenes; DMX lighting and PTZ cameras follow scene changes; system audio is correctly routed; MediaMTX fans the output to HLS + RTSP + SRT + WebRTC + RTMP.
Who: Streamers, broadcasters, church/corporate AV, venue operators, esports shoutcasters.
Skills used
| Role | Skill |
|---|
| Scene authoring | obs-config |
| Remote control | obs-websocket (auto-discovers URL+password from local OBS) |
| In-OBS scripting | obs-scripting |
| Native plugin authoring | obs-plugins |
| Doc lookup guardrail | obs-docs |
| MIDI surface | media-midi |
| OSC surface | media-osc |
| Stage lighting | media-dmx (via OLA daemon) |
| PTZ cameras | ptz-visca, ptz-onvif |
| System audio | audio-coreaudio / audio-wasapi / audio-pipewire / audio-jack |
| Multi-protocol egress | mediamtx-server |
| WebRTC contribution | ffmpeg-whip |
| Capture | ffmpeg-capture |
| Hardware encode | ffmpeg-hwaccel |
| NDI ingest | ndi-tools |
| SDI ingest | decklink-tools |
Pipeline
Step 1 — Build the scene collection
Author the scene tree as JSON under the active OBS profile via the obs-config skill. Lock scene names early — downstream skills reference them by exact spelling (case-sensitive in the websocket protocol).
Step 2 — Route system audio BEFORE launching OBS
OBS caches audio devices at startup. Create virtual sinks first so OBS sees them as inputs.
- macOS: create an aggregate device combining BlackHole + mic (
audio-coreaudio skill).
- Linux (PipeWire): create a sink and link source apps into it (
audio-pipewire skill).
- Windows: install VB-Cable / VoiceMeeter, enumerate devices (
audio-wasapi skill).
Step 3 — Start OBS and verify obs-websocket
OBS 28+ bundles obs-websocket v5. Use the obs-websocket skill's wsctl.py check + ping — it auto-discovers the password from the local OBS config. For remote OBS, export OBS_WEBSOCKET_URL and OBS_WEBSOCKET_PASSWORD.
Step 4 — Wire MIDI / OSC triggers to scene switches
Use media-midi (midictl.py monitor --json) piped to obs-websocket (wsctl.py scene-switch). For TouchOSC / Reaper, use media-osc (oscctl.py listen --port 8000 --json) with the same fan-out pattern.
Step 5 — Lighting cue on scene change (DMX)
Subscribe to OBS's CurrentProgramSceneChanged event via wsctl.py events --subscribe scenes, then drive DMX through media-dmx (dmxctl.py send/fade --universe N --channel M).
Step 6 — PTZ preset recall on scene change
Same subscription stream. For VISCA cameras (UDP port 52381), use ptz-visca (viscactl.py preset-recall --host <ip> --preset N). For ONVIF, use ptz-onvif after discovery (onvifctl.py discover).
Step 7 — Multi-protocol egress via MediaMTX
Configure the mediamtx-server skill once: RTMP ingest from OBS, auto-republish to HLS (8888), RTSP (8554), SRT (8890), WebRTC/WHEP (8889). Optional runOnReady spawns an ffmpeg forwarder to YouTube/Twitch/Facebook.
Step 8 — WebRTC low-latency path (alternative to RTMP)
Skip OBS's RTMP output and go straight to WHIP via ffmpeg-whip — sub-second latency for contribution.
Variants
- Pure-software — skip DMX/PTZ/DeckLink; software MIDI (Keyboard Maestro) + virtual audio + OBS only.
- Broadcast SDI — swap screen capture for DeckLink input via
decklink-tools; playout back to SDI with ffmpeg's -f decklink output.
- NDI-first facility — replace RTMP ingest with NDI via
obs-ndi plugin; MediaMTX still bridges to external delivery.
- Remote producer + FOH operator — both run OBS; operator drives producer's OBS over obs-websocket by setting
OBS_WEBSOCKET_URL to the producer's LAN address.
Gotchas
- obs-websocket auto-discovery is local-only. For a remote OBS, export
OBS_WEBSOCKET_URL + OBS_WEBSOCKET_PASSWORD.
- obs-websocket v5 only. v4 is EOL. Close code
4010 = client/server version mismatch.
- OBS caches audio devices at launch. Create virtual sinks before starting OBS.
- HighVolume events (bits 16–19) are deliberately excluded from
All (=4095). InputVolumeMeters fires every 50 ms. Only subscribe if you're rendering a meter UI.
- PTZ presets are camera-stored.
preset-set once, preset-recall forever.
- VISCA-over-IP is UDP:52381. No handshake. Firewalls between camera and controller silently drop.
- ONVIF WS-Discovery is multicast on 239.255.255.250:3702. Does NOT cross VLAN boundaries without an IGMP-aware switch.
- DMX via OLA requires
olad running. Art-Net controllers often want a dedicated 2.0.0.0/8 subnet per spec.
- Art-Net universe is 0-indexed; DMX channel is 1-indexed.
--universe 0 --channel 1 = first channel of universe 0.
- MediaMTX ports: 8888 (HLS), 8889 (WebRTC), 8554 (RTSP), 8890 (SRT), 1935 (RTMP), 9997 (API). Overlap with another service = silent boot failure.
- MediaMTX
runOnReady inherits stdin from the daemon. Always pass -nostdin to ffmpeg inside those commands or the encoder blocks.
- NDI runtime (NewTek/Vizrt) is a separate install from the NDI SDK.
- BlackHole / Loopback on macOS appear as both input and output. App routes to output side, OBS picks it up from input side. Wrong direction = silence.
- OBS scene names are case-sensitive in the websocket protocol. Enumerate with
GetSceneList for canonical spelling.
- MIDI 1.0 vs 2.0 UMP are different wire formats. Most tools speak 1.0 by default.
- OSC bundles vs single messages. TouchOSC sends bundles by default — parse
{"type":"bundle"} before reaching into .elements.
Example — MIDI note 36 triggers full-stack cue
On MIDI note 36: switch OBS to scene "Main", fade DMX channel 1 up to full, recall PTZ preset 3. Use media-midi monitor piped through jq to fan out three parallel actions (obs-websocket scene-switch, media-dmx fade, ptz-visca preset-recall). Core live-production value: one event → coordinated multi-device response.
Related
workflow-streaming-distribution — what to do with the stream once OBS emits it.workflow-audio-production — deeper system-audio recipes.workflow-broadcast-delivery — SDI + HDR dynamic metadata upstream.workflow-analysis-quality — monitor the live stream for drift.
