Streamlink 1.4.0 Adds Low Latency Streaming On Twitch, Fixes YouTube Plugin (CLI Tool To Pipe Livestreams To VLC or mpv)

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Streamlink VLC

Streamlink 1.4.0 has been released with support for low latency streaming on Twitch, fixed YouTube plugin, and more.

Streamlink is a free and open source command line utility which pipes live video streams to players like VLC, mpv, MPlayer, OMXPlayer or MPC-HC, with the purpose of avoiding resource-heavy websites (and on Linux, to use hardware-accelerated video playback). It was forked over 3 years ago from Livestreamer, which is no longer maintained, and runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The tool uses a plugin system which allows easy addition of new streaming services, and it supports more than 300 streaming websites, including Twitch, YouTube, Livestream, DLive, Mixer, Dailymotion, BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, NBC, Periscope, Vimeo, VK.com, and many more.

The new Streamlink 1.4.0 adds low latency streaming on Twitch.tv. To use this, add the --twitch-low-latency command line option when piping the livestream to a video player. There's also a new --hls-segment-stream-data option, which makes Streamlink write the HLS segments to the output buffer while they are being downloaded (this is used implicitly when using the low latency option).

With this, the pull request message notes that Streamlink with mpv (without additional player cache) is able to "beat Twitch's web player by 0-2 seconds".

This Streamlink release also fixes the YouTube plugin, which stopped working due to YouTube VOD API changes.

There's also a new option to always show a download progress, by using --force-progress. By default, Streamlink only shows a download progress when running in a terminal, and this new option enables showing the progress if it runs in e.g. a subprocess.

It's also worth noting that with Streamlink 1.4.0, logging in to Twitch has been disabled, since it was no longer working anyway.

More changes:

  • Fix Twitch clips showing "410 Gone" error
  • Add support for Invintus Media live streams and VOD
  • Add support for radiko.jp
  • Add Kugou Fanxing live plugin
  • Add support for GALATASARAY SK TV
  • Add support for ATV and ATVMas
  • Add support for Clan RTVE, children's channel of RTVE
  • New plugin for WASD.TV
  • New plugin for Niconico Live
  • New plugin for rotana.net
  • New plugin for Zeenews Live TV
  • Support for Abema overseas version
  • TF1 plugin: use new API to retrieve DASH streams
  • Fixes for the following plugins: Crunchyroll, Pixiv, TVplayer, Zattoo, Piczel
  • Use Firefox as default User-Agent instead of python-requests

This is the last Streamlink release to support Python 2, which has reached end of life at the beginning of 2020.

Related: Video Livestream Wallpaper For Your GNOME, Xfce Or bspwm Desktop

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Streamlink is available for Windows, macOS and Linux.

On Linux it's available in the repositories for most Linux distributions, as shown on its installation page, although it may not be up to date.

The easiest way to install the latest version is to install Streamlink using its PyPI package. In case you go with the PyPI package, remove the version installed from the repositories, and make sure you have FFmpeg installed on your system.

Also note here that the Streamlink PyPI installation instructions mention using "pip", which is for Python 2 on Ubuntu and Linux Mint, so in case you use an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution, use pip3 to install the Python 3 version instead (and don't run pip with sudo, it's not only bad for security but it can also mess up your system Python).

New to Streamlink? This is how to use it


Play a Twitch stream using "best" quality (I piked a random Twitch streamer for these examples):

streamlink twitch.tv/anomaly best

If VLC is installed on your system, it will be used by default to play the stream.

You may also specify the VLC path, or use a different video player. For example to use Streamlink to stream the same Twitch link in the "best" quality using mpv:

streamlink -p mpv twitch.tv/anomaly best

For best results, the Streamlink documentation mentions to use VLC or mpv!

To show all available stream qualities, run Streamlink followed by the URL, without specifying any quality, e.g.:

streamlink twitch.tv/anomaly

Which should output something like this:

[cli][info] Found matching plugin twitch for URL https://www.twitch.tv/anomaly
Available streams: audio_only, 160p (worst), 360p, 480p, 720p, 720p60, 1080p60 (best)

For more Streamlink options, check out its help (streamlink --help) and documentation.
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