Last updated: 2026-01-12

For most U.S. organizations, the simplest way to stream a town hall is to run the show in a browser-based studio like StreamYard, multistream to a few key platforms, and let guests join via link. If you need heavier custom encoding or deep scene control, you can pair that workflow with tools like OBS or Streamlabs as local encoders feeding RTMP inputs.

Summary

• Use StreamYard as your main studio for planning, hosting, and recording town halls; add YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and more in a few clicks.¹
• Guests join from a browser, can share screens, slides, and video, and you keep independent control over mic and system audio.
• On paid plans you can multistream to several destinations and schedule pre-recorded town halls up to 1080p for reliable, polished broadcasts.²
• Reserve OBS or Streamlabs for edge cases where you truly need advanced local scenes or encoders, and send that feed into your town-hall destinations via RTMP.³

What does a solid town-hall streaming setup actually look like?

Think in terms of outcomes, not gear. A good town hall should:

• Be easy for executives and guests to join (no installs, no drama).
• Reach employees or audiences where they already are (YouTube, LinkedIn, internal portals, maybe Teams).
• Record in high quality for replay and clips.
• Feel professional: clean layouts, lower thirds, your logo, and smooth transitions.

In practice, that means using a cloud studio for the “front door” of your event. With StreamYard, you open a browser, invite up to 10 people on screen, keep another group backstage, and run the show with overlays and layouts in real time.⁴ Because encoding runs in the cloud, you’re not fighting your laptop the whole time.

How should you plan and structure a town hall before you go live?

Good town halls are produced, not improvised. Here’s a light-weight checklist that works well:

1. Define the destinations. Decide where this needs to go: public YouTube, an unlisted link for employees, a LinkedIn Page, Facebook Group, or an internal RTMP endpoint.
2. Lock the run of show. Outline segments: intro, leadership update, product demo, Q&A, closing. Add rough timings.
3. Assign roles. Ideally, one host, one producer in the StreamYard studio, and one person watching back-channel chat.
4. Prep visuals. Slides, short demo videos, overlays, and nameplates. In StreamYard you can upload logos, overlays, and backgrounds and apply them live as you go.
5. Do a tech rehearsal. Put execs and key guests into the same studio they’ll use on live day. Check framing, lighting, mics, and screen-share flows.

StreamYard helps here because you can reuse studios—keeping your branding, destinations, and basic layout ready for recurring town halls—so rehearsals don’t feel like separate projects.

How do you actually stream a town hall with StreamYard?

Here’s a battle-tested flow for a typical U.S. company town hall:

1. Create your broadcast. In StreamYard, create a new live event and choose your destinations. We support Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Twitch, Kick, and other services via custom RTMP on paid plans.¹
2. Turn on multistreaming (if needed). On paid plans, you can send one show to multiple destinations at once, with caps that depend on plan level.⁵
3. Invite speakers. Share the guest link; they join in a browser, no software download required. Guests can share screens, videos, and slide decks directly in the studio.⁶
4. Set up layouts and branding. Add your logo, intro card, lower thirds, and choose layouts that highlight speakers or content.
5. Sound-check and isolate audio. StreamYard gives you independent control of mic and system audio, so you can keep music or video clips from overpowering your speaker.
6. Go live and manage Q&A. Bring speakers on and off screen, switch layouts, and field questions from chat on the platforms where comments are supported.
7. Wrap and export. When the town hall ends, you’ll have high-quality recordings and, on paid plans, long-form HD files suitable for editing or archiving.⁷

For hybrid audiences (desktop and mobile), our multi-aspect ratio streaming lets you broadcast landscape and portrait outputs from a single studio session, so your town hall feels native on each screen size.⁸

How do you stream a town hall to both YouTube and Microsoft Teams?

Many U.S. organizations want the same event to appear publicly on YouTube and privately inside Microsoft 365. A practical pattern:

1. Produce in StreamYard. Run your cameras, guests, and layouts in StreamYard as usual.
2. Add YouTube directly. Connect your YouTube channel as a destination so viewers can watch on any device.¹
3. Use RTMP for Teams. Teams town halls support external production via RTMP-in, so you can create a Teams town hall, copy the RTMP server URL and stream key, and add them as a custom RTMP destination in StreamYard (paid feature). Microsoft describes this external encoder option in their town-hall documentation.⁹
4. Check interactivity limits. Teams town-hall attendee limits and certain features may require Teams Premium for very large events (for example, events above 10,000 participants). Microsoft documents those thresholds in their guidance.¹⁰

The result: presenters stay in one browser-based studio, while the same feed appears both on YouTube and inside Teams, without you having to juggle multiple meetings.

StreamYard or OBS/Streamlabs for panel town halls?

If your town hall is essentially a remote panel with slides, StreamYard is usually the easiest path:

• Guests join by link, no installs.
• You control layouts, screen shares, and branding in one place.
• You avoid managing local encoders, drivers, and scene collections.

There are cases where you might layer in other tools:

• Use OBS as a “graphics engine” if you need hyper-custom scenes, complex transitions, or niche capture sources. OBS can output a program feed to a custom RTMP server, letting you send that into platforms that accept RTMP.³
• Use Streamlabs if you care about its specific alerts/monetization ecosystem or multi-track recording. Its desktop app can multistream and offers dynamic bitrate for fluctuating networks, but multistreaming is tied to its paid Ultra plan.¹¹

For most internal and public town halls, though, teams care far more about reliability, easy onboarding, and recording quality than about ultra-fine scene graphs. Many creators explicitly move from OBS-style setups to StreamYard because of the simpler, cleaner workflow.

How do you schedule and pre-record a town hall?

Live town halls are great, but many organizations prefer to pre-record segments (or the entire thing) and then “air” them as if live. StreamYard supports this in two complementary ways:

1. Pre-record then schedule as a live broadcast. You can upload a finished video file into StreamYard and schedule it to stream as a live event; on paid plans, pre-recorded broadcasts stream at up to 1080p and can run for several hours.²
2. Record inside StreamYard first. Use StreamYard as your remote recording studio: bring speakers in, record them locally in high quality with separate audio tracks, and then edit in your NLE. Once you’re done, upload the final cut back into StreamYard as a pre-recorded stream.

This approach is especially helpful when you have nervous executives, heavy compliance review, or time-zone-spread audiences. You get all the benefits of a live premiere (chat, moderation, watch parties) with the control of a pre-produced video.

What about large-scale cloud multistreaming for internal town halls?

Most town halls only need a handful of destinations: a public or unlisted YouTube link, one or two social platforms, and maybe an internal endpoint. Multistreaming from StreamYard’s cloud studio already covers this, with one upstream from your browser and multiple destinations fanned out from our servers on paid plans.⁵

If your scenario demands many niche endpoints or a custom CDN footprint, there are other cloud multistreaming services and desktop tools like Streamlabs that relay your feed to additional platforms using their own infrastructure.¹² Those options can be useful when you operate at broadcast scale or need many regional variants, but they also add another moving piece to configure and monitor.

For most U.S. organizations running quarterly or monthly town halls, keeping the workflow centered in a single browser-based studio is the more reliable and cost-effective choice.

What we recommend

• Default to StreamYard as your town-hall control room: browser-based, easy for non-technical guests, and strong recordings.
• Use multistreaming from StreamYard’s cloud studio to cover your few essential destinations; add RTMP when you need Teams or an internal video platform.⁵
• Reach for OBS or Streamlabs only when you have clear, advanced production needs that justify extra setup and hardware.
• Whenever stakes are high—CEO updates, reorgs, earnings—rehearse in the same StreamYard studio you’ll use live and consider pre-recording critical segments for a smoother show.²

Footnotes

1. StreamYard supported platforms. (StreamYard Help) ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Pre-recorded streaming capability and 1080p support on paid plans. (StreamYard Help) ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. OBS overview including custom streaming server/RTMP output. (OBS Project) ↩ ↩²

4. On-screen participant limits on paid plans. (StreamYard Help) ↩

5. Multistream availability and destination caps, paid plans only. (StreamYard Help) ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Guest abilities to share screen, videos, and slides. (StreamYard Help) ↩

7. HD recording up to 10 hours per stream on paid plans. (StreamYard Help) ↩

8. Multi-aspect ratio streaming (MARS) from one studio. (StreamYard Help) ↩

9. External RTMP-in production for Teams town halls. (Microsoft Support) ↩

10. Teams Premium requirements for very large town halls. (Microsoft Support) ↩

11. Streamlabs Desktop multistreaming tied to Ultra. (Streamlabs Support) ↩

12. Cloud-based multistreaming info. (Streamlabs Content Hub) ↩