What to do with your VODs after the stream ends

A VOD — video on demand — is the recording of your stream that stays on your channel afterwards. Two things about it surprise nearly every new streamer: it isn't saved unless you turned a setting on, and it deletes itself.

How long you actually get

• Regular streamers — 7 days.
• Affiliates — 14 days.
• Partners, Turbo and Prime — 60 days.
• Highlights — permanent. They don't expire, though there's an overall storage cap across your highlights and uploads.

So a first-time streamer has one week before their first broadcast is deleted forever. If there's anything in it you might want — and there always is, even if it's just to see how far you've come — act inside that window.

The four things to do with a finished stream

1. Clip the good bits — during the stream

Clips are the highest-value output of any stream, and they're what actually finds you new viewers. Don't wait until later to hunt for them: hit the clip button live, or ask a mod to. Full detail in growing with clips.

2. Make a Highlight of anything worth keeping

Highlights are permanent, so this is how you rescue something from the deletion timer. Use the Video Producer to trim the segment you want. Highlights also show up on your channel page, which matters a lot — an empty channel looks abandoned to someone who clicks in while you're offline. Having three watchable things on your page is a genuine conversion difference.

3. Export to YouTube

Twitch can upload a VOD or highlight straight to YouTube from the Video Producer. This is free permanent storage and a second discovery surface — YouTube is a search engine, and an old VOD titled for something people actually search can quietly bring in viewers for years. Even unedited, it's worth more on YouTube than deleted on Twitch.

4. Watch one back yourself

Deeply unpleasant and by far the most useful item on this list. You'll find your dead air, the sound problems you never noticed, the questions you missed in chat, and the moment your energy dropped. You don't need to watch all four hours — twenty minutes from the middle of a stream tells you nearly everything.

Reruns and premieres

A rerun re-broadcasts a past VOD to your live channel; a premiere does the same for an uploaded video, with live chat. Both appear in the directory with a label so viewers know it isn't live.

• Useful for filling your schedule when you can't stream, and for reaching a different timezone with something you're proud of.
• Not useful for faking activity. Viewers notice immediately, and a channel that's permanently “live” with reruns reads as a bot farm. Reruns also don't count toward Affiliate requirements.
• Be there in chat if you can. A premiere with the creator in chat is a real event; one without is a video playing to nobody.

The music problem

Copyrighted music is the most common reason a VOD comes back with sections muted, or gets taken down entirely. The live stream usually passes without incident and the recording is what gets flagged — which is why a lot of streamers who play music simply disable VODs rather than fix the underlying issue. Fixing it is better: see DMCA and stream-safe music.

Next: growing with clips for turning those moments into reach, and what should you stream if watching a VOD back has you rethinking the format.