For government and public media
Video streaming for government meetings and public events
Deliver council sessions, hearings, press events, and emergency updates through your official website player with recording, archives, and access controls.
For municipalities, public information offices, councils, agencies, and government media teams.
Trusted by government and public sector organizations
Business outcomes
The workflow should create value, not more operational risk.
01Serve the public reliably
Create a repeatable broadcast workflow for meetings and announcements.
02Build a useful archive
Turn live proceedings into organized replay content.
03Keep delivery controlled
Stream through the player on your official website, protected by password, domain, and geographic controls.
Capabilities that matter
Technical depth, organized around the operator.
Castr keeps the full feature set available without forcing every buyer to decode a wall of capability labels before understanding the workflow.
Website embedding
Keep residents on the official government website with an embedded player.
Cloud recording
Capture every meeting automatically, ready to publish to the archive.
Video hosting
Maintain an on-demand archive residents can browse and replay.
Multistreaming
Reach public social channels while the official player stays primary.
Access controls
Apply password, domain, and geographic controls when a session should not be public.
24/7 support
Reach a human at any hour on every plan, with dedicated support on Events.
Need the complete matrix? See capability availability and plan tiers in one place.
Compare plans and capabilities →The public-record archive workflow
From live meeting to public record, without a gap.
Video streaming for government has a records dimension that most streaming does not: the replay serves as the public record many residents rely on, not a marketing asset. This is the workflow that keeps it complete.
Broadcast the meeting
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Chamber AV to encoder
The room's existing audio and camera system feeds an encoder, which pushes to Castr over RTMP or SRT on every plan.
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Official player first
The stream plays in the embedded player on the government website, with social simulcasts as secondary reach.
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Recording always on
Every broadcast records automatically, up to 72 hours, with no capture step for the clerk to forget.
Make it the record
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Save within three days
Recordings stay available for three days. Publishing to the hosting library is what makes the replay permanent, so it belongs on the post-meeting checklist.
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Organized archive
Folders and playlists keep sessions organized by body, year, or committee on the meetings page.
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Captions and transcripts
Generate captions with AI and offer interactive transcripts on archived recordings.
Paid plans. AI-generated captions are available in English only.
Control access
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Public by default
Open meetings stream and replay without accounts, apps, or ads in front of residents.
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Closed when required
Password protection on every plan, plus domain and geographic rules on Premium and higher for restricted sessions.
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Analytics for reporting
Viewer geography, devices, and watch time document public reach for 30 days.
Castr is priced as a streaming platform rather than a govtech suite, so meeting coverage does not require an agenda-management contract to go live.
Compare access controls and plan limitsSeen enough to test it? Start a 7-day trial with no credit card, or talk through your exact setup first.
Customer workflows
See how video teams put the platform to work.
Operator fit
Designed for recurring, accountable video work.
Operational complexity matters more than company size. The strongest fit is a team with a named owner, a repeatable schedule, and a real consequence if delivery fails.
Review your workflow with CastrStrong qualification signals
- Council and board meetings
- Public hearings and press events
- Emergency and civic communications
- Replay and public-record archives
Switching to Castr
Change providers without interrupting public meeting coverage.
You do not have to cut over blind. Run Castr in parallel with your current provider while you test, and let our video team confirm the fit before anything switches.
Run in parallel
Residents keep watching the current player on the official website. Behind the scenes, stream a work session or a non-public test through Castr until the workflow is proven.
Map the workflow
Walk our video team through your meeting calendar, official website embed, records retention workflow, and access controls. They confirm plan fit before procurement moves forward.
Cut over with support
Between sessions, swap the embed on the meetings page. 24/7 human support is on hand for the first public meetings.
Build the complete workflow
Connect this capability to the rest of your operation.
Questions before you choose
Evaluate the workflow with confidence.
Feature and plan availability changes by tier. Use the full matrix for comparison, or let our team validate a complex setup.
How do we live stream a city council meeting?
Send the chamber's AV feed to an encoder, push it to Castr over RTMP or SRT, and embed the player on the city website so residents watch on the official page. The same feed can simulcast to social channels, and the meeting records automatically for the archive.
How does streaming help with open-meeting transparency requirements?
Open-meeting laws require public access to proceedings in many states, and a live stream on the official website plus a published replay archive is the most direct way to provide it. Castr keeps both on government-owned pages rather than a third-party feed, with analytics to document reach.
Can meetings be embedded on an official website?
Yes. The player embeds on any page of the official site with no ads and no platform branding, and domain allowlisting on Premium and higher ensures the stream only plays on government domains.
How are meeting recordings retained for public records?
Each meeting records automatically, up to 72 hours per broadcast, and the recording stays available for three days. Publishing it to your hosting library is the step that makes it permanent, so make saving to the archive part of the post-meeting checklist for records retention.
Can we restrict a closed session?
Yes. Password protection is included on every plan, and Premium and higher add domain allowlisting and geographic rules, so an executive session streams only to the people entitled to see it.
Can we simulcast to YouTube and Facebook while keeping the official player primary?
Yes. One encoder feed reaches the official website player and social destinations at the same time, so residents who follow the city's social pages still find the meeting while the official archive stays on the government site.
Does Castr provide captions?
Hosted recordings support AI-generated captions and interactive transcripts on paid plans, with captions generated in English, which covers the published meeting archive. For live captioning requirements, review the workflow with the Castr team before procurement, since live captions are handled case by case.
How do residents watch a city council meeting live?
Publish the stream on a permanent meetings page on the city website, keep the URL stable from meeting to meeting, and link the replay archive on the same page. Residents bookmark one page instead of hunting for a new link every session.
Can Castr help us validate our current workflow?
Yes. Castr’s video team will walk through your current setup, from sources and destinations to audience scale, security, and monetization, and confirm the fit before you migrate.
Move from evaluation to a working broadcast
Map Castr to the workflow your team runs today.
Discuss protocols, concurrency, destinations, bandwidth, storage, security, monetization, migration, and support with a video expert.