GoPro Hero 7 Black Edition, 8, 9, 10, and Max cameras support live streaming to YouTube, Meta, Twitch, OBS Studio, Mona, and other RTMP servers with the Live Streamer app. This article describes common problems and fixes which can happen during live streaming with GoPro cameras.
Connection to the camera failed.
This error usually occurs if one of the following is true:
- Your computer does not have Bluetooth or Bluetooth is too old. At least a Bluetooth BLE or better a Bluetooth 5 adapter should be used. Sometimes it also helps to updates the Bluetooth drivers (for instance using the Intel Driver Update utility).
- The camera is not correctly paired. Please checkout this tutorial which describes how to pair a GoPro camera via Bluetooth: https://www.toolsforgopro.com/cameratools_help.
- Another app or device is already connected to the GoPro camera. Make sure that no other device or app is connected to the camera at the same time because the GoPro can handle only one Bluetooth connection at the same time.
Connection errors while establishing a connection to the RTMP server.
The GoPro camera provides only sparse information why the connection failed. The Live Streamer app thus only shows an error message similar to “Connection error.” or “Connection timeout.“. Usually the problem can be fixed by one of the following hints:
- Make sure that the WiFi credentials (WiFi name/SSID, and WiFi password) are correct.
- Make sure the the RTMP server address is correct. If your RTMP server requires a streaming key (which is the case for all public RTMP servers, including YouTube, Meta, Twitch, etc.) then the correct RTMP server address and server key have to be concatenated, so that the final RTMP server address looks similar to this one:
rtmp://live.youtube.com/my_youtube_api_key
- Sometimes the GoPro has problems with secure RTMP servers (starting with “rtmps://”). Try to use a non-secure RTMP server instead (“rtmp://”).
- Try to switch the WiFi frequency from 5GHz to 2.4GHz.
- Make sure that the WiFi network is connected to the internet even if you are streaming to a local RTMP server! The GoPro requires an internet connection for live streaming because the camera seems to send diagnostics data to an internet server.
Starting of the GoPro live streaming mode fails.
If starting of the live streaming mode fails then try and check the following:
- Make sure that the WiFi credentials and the RTMP server address are correct.
- Completely power off the GoPro camera by removing both its battery and the USB cable.