HydraCast is a lightweight Python application that turns your media files into continuous 24/7 live RTSP and HLS broadcast streams. It manages multiple FFmpeg processes, integrates with MediaMTX for stream serving, and exposes a full-featured Web Dashboard for remote control — no manual FFmpeg wrangling required.
✨ Features
🎬 Multi-Stream Broadcasting
- Run any number of independent RTSP streams simultaneously, each on its own port
- HLS output for browser-compatible playback alongside RTSP
- Per-stream video and audio bitrate control
- Copy RTSP or HLS URLs to clipboard in one click
- Export all stream URLs to a CSV file (optionally include current playlist filenames)
- Start All / Stop All global controls in the top bar
📅 Weekly Scheduling
- Assign streams to run on specific weekdays (Mon–Sun, any combination, or all days)
- Streams automatically start and stop according to their day schedule
🎵 Playlist & Source Management
- File playlist — hand-pick an ordered list of media files per stream
- Folder source — point to a directory; HydraCast auto-scans and rebuilds the playlist whenever files change
- Day-tag detection in folder mode: filenames containing
_mon_, _tue_, etc. are automatically assigned to the right weekday
- Shuffle mode for randomised playback order
- Loop count control per stream
📡 Compliance Mode (Broadcast Sync)
- Simulates a real linear broadcast: on start, HydraCast calculates the correct seek offset so viewers see exactly what a continuous broadcast running since a configured time today would show right now
- Optional loop calculation for content shorter than 24 hours
🗓️ One-Shot Event Scheduler
- Full monthly calendar UI to schedule one-off playback events
- Multi-date selection — pick several dates in one session and schedule the same event across all of them at once
- After-event behaviour per event: resume normal playlist, stop stream, or show a black screen
- 1-minute countdown alert notification before each event fires
- Event sidebar with the month's upcoming and played events
- Cancel a running event from the stream row to immediately resume normal operation
- Clear all played events in bulk; hide played events from the sidebar list
📁 Media File Manager
- Browse your media library folder tree from the browser
- Drag-and-drop or click-to-upload media files into any subfolder
- Create new folders and subfolders
- Rename, move, copy, and delete files and folders
📊 System Monitoring
- Live CPU and RAM usage shown in the top bar, updated on a configurable interval
- Disk usage visible in the Settings panel
- Per-stream progress, current file, loop count, and queue (next-up files) shown in the Streams table
- Real-time compliance alert banner when a stream falls out of sync
📧 Email Alerts
Three authentication modes, all configurable from the Settings panel:
| Mode | Use case |
|---|
| Gmail (OAuth2) | Google accounts — no password stored |
| Microsoft (OAuth2) | Outlook / Office 365 — device sign-in flow |
| SMTP | Yahoo Mail, Gmail App Password, or any custom SMTP server |
💾 Backup & Restore
Selective backup with individual checkboxes for:
- Stream configurations (
streams.json)
- Scheduled events (
events.json)
- Per-file resume positions (
resume_positions.json)
- Application settings (holiday country, UI preferences, etc.)
Download as a .hc file and restore in one click from the Settings panel.
🌍 Holiday Calendar
- Fetch public holidays by country and optional subdivision
- Highlighted on the Events calendar so you can plan around them
- Add custom holidays manually
- Holiday data is cached and refreshable on demand
🎨 Web Dashboard
- Dark and light themes with a single toggle
- 7 tabs: Streams, Viewer, Config, Logs, Media, Events, Settings
- In-browser HLS video preview — click any stream card in the Viewer tab to watch live
- Interactive seek modal (enter seconds or
HH:MM:SS, or drag a slider) for any live stream
- Configurable auto-refresh intervals for stream status, system stats, and logs
- Compact mode to fit more streams on screen
- Persistent UI preferences saved in
localStorage
🚀 Quick Start
Prerequisites
- Python 3.8+
ffmpeg and ffprobe on your system PATH (or placed in the bin/ directory)- MediaMTX is downloaded automatically on first run
Installation
git clone https://github.com/rhshourav/HydraCast.git
cd HydraCast
python hydracast.py
Dependencies (rich, psutil) are bootstrapped automatically on first run. The Web Dashboard is available at http://localhost:8080 by default.
Command-Line Arguments
| Argument | Default | Description |
|---|
--listen IP | 0.0.0.0 | IP address for MediaMTX to bind on |
--web-port PORT | 8080 | Web Dashboard port |
--no-web | — | Disable the embedded Web Dashboard |
--no-firewall | — | Skip automatic firewall port-opening (Windows/Linux) |
--list-ports | — | Print ports that would be opened and exit |
--export-urls | — | Generate stream_urls.txt at startup |
⚙️ Configuration
Streams are configured via streams.csv. If the file is missing, HydraCast generates a template on first run. You can edit it manually or use the built-in Config tab in the Web Dashboard — which provides a full form editor for every stream option including weekdays, compliance mode, folder source, bitrates, and more.
📄 License
Licensed under the HydraCast Software License.
