Thanks for the clear report. This is built and will be part of
Watch Party 2.2.0, which I will put online soon. Here is how it will behave, so you can tell me now if anything should work differently.
Ended, or just a connection problem
- Broadcast ended: the playlist announces its end (at once), it answers 404 or 410 for a full minute, or it gets no new segments for two minutes.
- Temporary loss: everything else, such as a 403, a 5xx error, a timeout or a viewer losing their network. Viewers keep seeing The stream dropped. Reconnecting and the player keeps retrying.
Your server reads the playlist too, so the status also changes with nobody watching, and one viewer with a bad connection cannot end the broadcast for everyone.
What people will see
- The red Live label becomes Broadcast ended on the party page and in the lists.
- The room and the chat stay open.
- If the source comes back, for example after a long encoder restart, the party goes back to live by itself.
Viewers behind the live edge
They keep playing from where they are. The label changes for everyone, but the message only appears when they run out of video, and the host reaching the end no longer pauses them. In my test, a viewer who had stepped away finished about 70 seconds after the host.
Two limits: if Boomstream deletes the segments as soon as the broadcast stops, a viewer can only finish what their browser has already downloaded. And if something is queued, the next video starts when the host reaches the end, which also moves anyone still behind. This covers HLS streams; Twitch live channels are not part of it yet.
A small test that would help me before the release
I tested with a local stream that ends in each of the ways above, not with Boomstream, so your grey screen is the one thing I have not seen myself. On your next test broadcast, could you stop OBS, wait about three minutes, then open the .m3u8 link in a browser tab and tell me which of these you get?
- The last line says #EXT-X-ENDLIST.
- An error page, and which number.
- A list that stays identical when you reload it 30 seconds later.
- A list where the #EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE number keeps changing.
The first three are covered. The fourth is the one I want to rule out: it would mean Boomstream keeps sending placeholder video after the stop, perhaps that grey picture, and from the outside that looks exactly like a running broadcast, so the party would stay live. If that is what you get, I would rather know now and handle it.
The same version also brings the two things from your enhancements thread: keeping a party open without a host, and adding the recording to a finished live party so the replay plays with the live chat. I will post the details there when it is out.
