facebook-live-video

Stream a website with phantomjs to Facebook Live via ffmpeg (video) and collect Facebook reactions

Resources

Overview: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/videos/live-video API Doc: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/live-video/#Overview

If you need help with the setup or if you want to use it for commercial please text me [email protected]

Installation

I installed everything on Ubuntu 16.04, for other versions check docs how to install.

FFmpeg

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

NodeJS

Install latest NodeJS on your server - you can do it ;)

phantomjs

I used the self-contained binary. Check http://phantomjs.org/download.html

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential g++ flex bison gperf ruby perl \
  libsqlite3-dev libfontconfig1-dev libicu-dev libfreetype6 libssl-dev \
  libpng-dev libjpeg-dev python libx11-dev libxext-dev
wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
tar -xf phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
rm -rf phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
sudo cp phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs /usr/bin/
rm -R phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64

Usage

1. Create Facebook App (if you dont already have one) >> FB App
2. Get Facebook User Access Token with this app and your user >> Explorer Important: User needs publish_actions permission
3. Go to your cli and type in:

npm start [accessToken] [debug] [privacy]

It creates a Live Video (via FB API) and streams the index.html inside the /website folder. Modify this files for your needs. ;)

The video is set to privacy:SELF, only you can see it.

Check your Facebook wall. ;)

Configuration

Go to src/index.js and checkout the function start() there is another function call:

fb.startLiveVideo({
    accessToken,
    title: 'First test video - ' + new Date(),
    // privacy: "{'value':'FRIENDS'}"
})

modify the options object to configure your stream see: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/live-video/#Overview for possible parameters.

Privacy parameter:

npm start [accessToken] false public
npm start [accessToken] false friends
npm start [accessToken] false friends_of_friends

Customize your own settings. You can find privacy settings here: (search for privacy) https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.8/post

---

Modify the files in /website how you like. You can also stream another website by changing the url in the index.js file

Debug

If you have problems with your installation, check the stream.log:

tail -f stream.log

If you just want to fake increase the reaction counter use :

npm start [accessToken] [debug]
=> npm start [accessToken] true

It will increase the numbers every 2 sec by a random number.

---

If your phantomjs script stuck (sometimes it doesnt stop after a ctrl + c) use to kill every process:

pkill -f  phantomjs

FB API wrapper - /src/fb.js

I build a little wrapper for the FB API in /src/fb.js which is also available from the cli.

node src/fb.js [accessToken] [action] [postId]
node src/fb.js [accessToken] get 1234
node src/fb.js [accessToken] end 1234
node src/fb.js [accessToken] delete 1234
node src/fb.js [accessToken] get_all
# CAREFUL: deletes all videos! Only do this on a testaccount. I am not resposible for your deleted videos! # node src/fb.js [accessToken] delete_all

Todo

• keep ffmpeg stream at 30 fps
• configure streaming video with cli params, e.g. stringified JSON
• stop process after ~4h (max. fb live video length)
• kill phantomjs process properly after the stream ends or main process exits
• optimize quality (ffmpeg)

Contribution

Please help me to improve this toolset for Facebook Live Videos. Feedback and PR's are very welcome! :)

Happy hacking ;)