As a Twitch streamer, having an archive of your past broadcasts is extremely valuable for growing your channel and community. With video archives, your viewers can catch up on streams they missed or rewatch their favorite moments. However, Twitch only stores past streams for a limited time.
To keep your streams accessible for fans and repurpose content, you need to download and archive your broadcasts externally. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to archive your Twitch VODs like a pro.
Table of Contents
Why Archive Your Twitch Streams?
Here are some of the key reasons you should archive your streams:
Allow Viewers to Catch Up
If a regular viewer misses your stream, they can watch the VOD later at their convenience. This helps keep them engaged with your content.
Get More Eyes on Your Content
Archived streams help you get more views overall for your channel. Fans can stumble upon your library of videos and discover you.
Repurpose Content
You can clip highlights or moments from archived streams to share on other platforms like YouTube and TikTok. This expands your reach.
Preserve Your Progress
When you play long games over multiple streams, having archives allows both you and fans to go back and see your journey.
Grow Your Following
An extensive VOD archive makes your channel appealing to new viewers who want to watch a variety of your past content.
How to Automatically Archive Streams on Twitch
Twitch allows you to automatically archive your streams as videos on demand (VODs). Here’s how to set it up:
- Go to your Creator Dashboard and click Settings
- Select the Stream settings category
- Under VOD Settings, toggle on Store Past Broadcasts
- You can also enable Always Publish VODs if you want them public immediately
This will archive all your future streams as VODs on Twitch when you go live.
How Long Twitch Stores VODs
For Affiliates and standard users, Twitch stores VODs for 14 days maximum.
Partners, Prime, and Turbo users get 60 days of VOD storage.
You’ll need to download any broadcasts you want to archive permanently.
How to Download Twitch VODs
To archive streams beyond Twitch’s limits, download them as video files to your computer:
- Go to your Creator Dashboard and click Content then Video Producer
- Find the Past Broadcast VOD you want to download
- Click the three-dot menu and select Download
- Save the MP4 file to your computer
You can now keep this video file forever and reupload it anywhere.
Best Practices for Twitch VOD Archives
To build a professional archive channel fans will love, keep these tips in mind:
Organize with Playlists
Create playlists around games, series, or events so viewers can easily find related VODs.
Add Descriptions
Give context in the description about what happens in the stream, with timestamps for highlights.
Use Appealing Thumbnails
Customize the video thumbnails with engaging images from the stream to attract clicks.
Trim Irrelevant Sections
Consider trimming just the highlight moments to keep viewers’ attention rather than including long intros.
Promote Your Archive
Let viewers know about your VOD archive channel and playlists so they subscribe and check back often.
Where to Host Your Twitch VOD Archive
While downloading your own archives is essential, you’ll want fans to be able to easily access them in one organized place. Here are the best platforms for hosting VOD archives:
YouTube
YouTube offers features like playlists, chapters, and robust analytics for your archive. Fans can subscribe and get notifications when you upload more archived streams.
Twitch Collections
As a Twitch Affiliate or Partner, you can create Collections to organize archived streams by game or series for fans to browse.
Personal Website
Hosting archives on your own site allows maximum control, such as charging for access. But you need robust hosting and bandwidth.
Grow with Video Archives
Building up a searchable archive of your best Twitch streams provides endless opportunities to increase viewership and revenue. You give fans more chances to engage with your content and discover you.
By downloading and organizing your VODs like a professional, you can retain viewers better, reach new audiences, and fully leverage your past streams to promote future growth.
