Streaming¶

This page explains how a file in Telegram becomes something you can watch — in plain English — plus the file formats supported and the analytics you can see.

How streaming works¶

   Telegram            PyroFork             FastAPI              Stremio
┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐
│ Your video    │──▶ │ Reads bytes   │──▶ │ Serves them   │──▶ │ Plays the     │
│ sits here     │    │ on demand     │    │ over HTTP     │    │ video for you │
└──────────────┘    └──────────────┘    └──────────────┘    └──────────────┘

Here’s the same thing in words:

Your video stays in Telegram — it is never copied or re-uploaded.
When you press play, the app asks Telegram for the video piece by piece.
Those pieces are handed to your player over a normal web link.
The player shows the video as it arrives, so it starts almost instantly and you can seek/skip around.

Beginner Tip

Nothing is downloaded to the server first. It’s like a straw into your Telegram file — the app sips the exact part of the video you’re currently watching and passes it along.

Why links never expire¶

Instead of storing a temporary Telegram download link, the app stores the channel ID and message ID of your file. Whenever someone plays it, a fresh connection to Telegram is made on the spot. That’s why your links keep working forever.

Multiple bot tokens (load balancing)¶

Under heavy use, a single bot can only pull so much at once. If you add extra bot tokens (see Configuration), the app spreads active streams across all of them — like opening more checkout lanes. Each viewer gets assigned to the least-busy bot.

Supported file formats¶

The app recognizes these video types when reading captions/filenames:

mkv   mp4   avi   ts   m4v   mov   wmv   webm   flv   m2ts   mpg   mpeg

It also understands split archive parts (files ending in .001, .002, …) so large videos uploaded in pieces can be streamed as one. See Media Management for the naming rules.

Limitations

The most reliable playback formats are MKV and MP4 — stored titles are normalized to one of these.
Some players struggle with certain codecs (e.g. exotic audio tracks). If a video plays with no sound, it’s usually a codec issue in the player, not the server.
“Multipart” files meant to be joined outside the player (e.g. movie.part1.rar) are skipped — they aren’t streamable video on their own.

Streaming analytics¶

The web panel and API expose live streaming telemetry so you can see what’s happening.

Active streams: Who/what is playing right now, including how many bytes have been transferred.
Recent history: A rolling list of recently finished streams.
Speed & health: A Health Dashboard and a Speed Test let you check that Telegram, your databases, and streaming are all responsive.

Relevant endpoints (see API Reference for details):

/stream/stats — live and recent stream summary.
/stream/stats/{stream_id} — detailed telemetry for one stream.
/api/system/speedtest — measure real streaming throughput.

Good to Know

If you enabled subscriptions or per-token limits, streaming usage (bandwidth) is tracked per user token so daily/monthly caps can be enforced.