Pre-Recorded Video as Live: How Upload & Stream Premieres Work

Upload & Stream takes a finished video file and airs it at a scheduled time as if it were happening live — real-time chat included — instead of just dropping it into a feed for whenever someone scrolls past it. You upload once, set a date and time, and CastFork starts playback automatically at that moment and streams it out to whichever destinations you’ve enabled, whether or not you’re online when it starts.

That last part is worth sitting with: the broadcast doesn’t need you present at all once it’s scheduled. You could be asleep, traveling, or simply not near a computer when it goes out, and it airs exactly the same as if you’d been sitting at the encoder the whole time.

CastFork accepts a specific container and codec combination. Most editing software can export directly to this without any extra conversion step:

• Container: MP4, MOV, M4V, or MKV.
• Video codec H.264, audio codec AAC.
• A keyframe every 2 seconds.
• 1080p at 30 or 60 fps recommended, constant bitrate preferred over variable.
• 15–20 seconds of padding at the start and end — destination platforms trim slightly during their own processing, and padding keeps you from losing real content to that trim.

If your export doesn’t match, re-export from your editor rather than trying to work around it — this combination is common enough that it’s rarely a real obstacle.

A single file can run up to 8 hours on every plan from Free through Business; Enterprise sets custom limits.

• A product demo or recorded webinar, premiered at a fixed time so an audience across time zones has one clear moment to show up, instead of a video sitting unwatched in a feed.
• A "best of" or highlight marathon built as a playlist, running unattended for hours as a background channel rather than a single scheduled watch.
• A previously-recorded interview or panel re-aired as a premiere for a different audience or time zone, without re-running the actual recording session.
• A safety net for a live show that didn’t go perfectly — record it, edit the rough parts out, and schedule the clean version as a premiere instead of leaving the original as the only record of it.

Build a playlist of up to 40 uploaded videos and let them run back-to-back for up to 24 hours total, unattended — a "best of" marathon or an always-on channel format. For a single video that should repeat rather than run once, loop it up to 10 times per scheduled event. Looping isn’t indefinite — for something closer to a 24/7 channel, a playlist you repeat is the better tool than trying to push loop count past its cap.

Pick a date and time in your own profile timezone — by default the one your browser reports — and CastFork stores it in UTC underneath, converting it back correctly for anyone else who’s also managing the event. Nobody has to do zone math by hand, and the scheduled time doesn’t drift if you or a collaborator are in different zones. See scheduling and promoting a stream for how to give people a reason to show up at that exact moment.

• Chat still runs in real time — viewers on each connected platform can comment normally, and it all lands in CastFork’s unified chat panel exactly like an actually-live broadcast.
• The same destination toggles and simultaneous-destination cap apply as a live encoder stream — setting one up feels identical to going live from OBS, just with a video file instead of a camera feed as the source.
• You can cancel or reschedule any time before it starts. Once it’s airing, treat it like a live stream you can end early if you need to.

A video sitting in a feed gets watched whenever, by whoever scrolls past it — there’s no shared moment. A scheduled premiere gives people a reason to show up together, chat while it plays, and treat a recording like an event instead of a rerun. See Upload & Stream for the product overview, or pricing for the storage numbers by plan.