Recordurbate-Docker

Heads up (April 2026): Chaturbate switched to LL-HLS CMAF and ffmpeg 8.x can't demux it cleanly. :latest was rolled back to the 2025-10-28 build (digest sha256:33ba571d…), which is verified working. Long-term migration to N_m3u8DL-RE started on the n_m3u8dl-re branch. that work is now merged into master.

Based off the good work of https://github.com/oliverjrose99/Recordurbate

Records chaturbate streams to .ts files. Uses N_m3u8DL-RE for the HLS download instead of ffmpeg, because ffmpeg's HLS demuxer is broken on chaturbate's current CMAF format and recordings end up with audio that stops mid-stream while video keeps going. ffmpeg is still in the image and still does the muxing through --live-pipe-mux, but it never sees the HLS stream directly so the demuxer bug is bypassed.

The cam-recording community shifted to this approach during the March-April 2026 mess. See the references at the bottom for the full story.

Pre built Docker image

docker pull ghcr.io/despernal/recordurbate-docker

See the Running section for the volumes that need to be mounted.

Building

./build to build locally.

Running

You will need to change paths in start and docker-compose.yml.

In docker-compose.yml:

- PATH_TO_RECORDINGS:/app/videos
- PATH_TO_CONFIGS:/app/configs

and in start:

-v PATH_TO_RECORDINGS:/app/videos/ -v PATH_TO_CONFIGS:/app/configs

You can either start it with the start script or use the docker-compose stack.

You can run it either way: bake the configs folder into the image and not bind-mount it, or do like i do and map the provided configs folder into the container.

Upgrading from an older image

Your existing config.json and youtube-dl.config dont need changes.

If you want to customize the new N_m3u8DL-RE flags, drop configs/n_m3u8dl-re.config from this repo into your host configs dir. Otherwise the bot uses sensible defaults baked in.

Tuning recorder behavior

N_m3u8DL-RE flags live in configs/n_m3u8dl-re.config. One flag per line, # comments and blank lines ignored, --flag=value and --flag value both work.

Shipped defaults are tuned for live recording: --auto-select, --live-real-time-merge, --live-pipe-mux, --live-keep-segments=False, --no-log, --disable-update-check. those same flags are baked into the bot as a fallback if the config file is missing or empty.

Edit on the host (no rebuild needed if you bind-mount /app/configs) and restart the container to apply.

If you hit audio-sync trouble, drop --live-pipe-mux from the config and set environment variable N_M3U8DL_NO_FFMPEG_PIPE=1 on the container. That switches to the separate-files-then-merge mode that ctbcap uses, trades a small post-merge delay for tighter A/V sync.

Hang watchdog

N_m3u8DL-RE has a known thing where it sometimes doesnt notice the stream ended and just keeps polling forever (nilaoda/N_m3u8DL-RE#594, #409, #443). Chaturbate's HLS doesnt reliably emit #EXT-X-ENDLIST either, so the recorder hangs until something kills it. The community workaround is "Ctrl+C and remux." This image bakes that in: per-recorder watchdog checks the output file's mtime every tick, if it hasnt grown in 5 minutes (HANG_SIGINT_AFTER) the supervisor sends SIGINT, then SIGTERM 30s later (HANG_SIGTERM_AFTER) if the process is still alive. The existing exit-detection branch then handles the .part.ts -> .ts rename naturally.

Two paranoia paths for restarts too: on graceful shutdown (SIGTERM from docker restart / salt redeploy / watchtower) the supervisor SIGINTs each child, waits, and runs the same rename. On startup, a reaper scans the videos dir for any leftover .part.ts files (host crash, abrupt kill, pre-fix backlog) and renames them. Idempotent.

Healthy recordings stay untouched — every chunklist refresh that produces a new segment bumps the file mtime, the watchdog resets. The watchdog only fires when the file is demonstrably not growing.

This came out of 2026-05-18: 14 N_m3u8DL-RE processes running on the prod chat container with output files frozen 3.5 to 10.9 days, container at 314% CPU, ~76GB sitting in .part.ts files that never got finalized. With the watchdog + shutdown finalize + startup reaper all three failure modes are now covered.

Why this approach (history)

In March 2026 chaturbate switched their stream format to Low-Latency HLS with split audio/video CMAF (separate audio and video chunklists, per-segment init_*.m4s MOOV atoms). ffmpeg 8.x's HLS demuxer doesnt handle the per-segment init reload cleanly so recordings ended up with audio that stops mid-stream while video keeps going. ffprobe on an affected file shows it right away: video duration is normal, audio duration is a fraction of that.

Tried pinning ffmpeg 6.1.2 first, that was a wrong-direction guess (6.1.2 predates LL-HLS-CMAF support). Rolled back to a 2025-10-28 image with a working ffmpeg 7.x range. That worked but was brittle because every alpine bump risked re-breaking things.

Switching to N_m3u8DL-RE for the actual segment download bypasses the demuxer bug entirely and matches what the rest of the cam-recording community ended up doing. This is the long-term fix.

References

• StreaMonitor issue #342, main thread documenting the bug across multiple recording tools
• ctbcap n_m3u8dl-re branch, the working workaround using N_m3u8DL-RE that this approach is based on
• chaturbate-dvr issue #155, same symptoms reported in a sister project