How long Twitch keeps your VODs, and how not to lose anything

Retention periods, by status

Twitch records your lives as past broadcasts, which everyone calls VODs. They are kept for a limited time, then deleted. The duration depends on the channel's status and the account's subscription:

• 7 days for a channel with no particular status.
• 14 days for a Twitch Affiliate.
• 60 days for a Twitch Partner, and for any account with Prime or Twitch Turbo.

Two special cases shorten part of the video. If you stream in dual format or vertical, the vertical version expires 7 days after the live, and the horizontal version stays until the end of your normal period. If you stream in 2K, the 2K version also expires after 7 days, and the 1080p version stays.

To keep a broadcast beyond that period, Twitch says it itself: download or export it before the window closes. There is no extension.

The setting everything depends on

None of these durations matter if your lives are not recorded. Recording depends on a single setting, Store Past Broadcasts, in the stream settings. Three things to know about it.

1. 1It must be on before the live. A live streamed while it was off is recorded nowhere.
2. 2It can only be set from the Creator Dashboard on the web. The Twitch mobile app does not offer it: if you stream from your phone, enable it on the web first.
3. 3An unsuitable stream configuration or an unstable network can prevent recording even with the setting on. Twitch points to its Inspector tool to check your settings.

Once storage is on, past broadcasts are published as VODs by default, except for lives streamed in your excluded categories, and unless you disabled automatic publishing. In those cases, the VOD waits for your review before becoming visible.

What survives the VOD

The VOD disappears, but what you made from it can remain. On Twitch, two formats have a life of their own.

• Highlights are created from a VOD with the Highlighter, Twitch's tool. They do not follow the VOD's retention period, but all your Highlights and uploads together are capped at 100 hours of storage, unpublished ones included.
• Clips created by your viewers during the live are videos in their own right, at most 60 seconds long, with their own page. You can manage, share or delete them from your clips manager.

The Highlighter also shows on its timeline the clips and stream markers created during the live, at the time they were created. It is the beginning of a review, limited to what you and your editors placed.

A review schedule that fits in 7 days

Seven days is the worst case, and it is the one to build your routine around: what fits in seven days also fits in sixty.

1. 1During the live: the markers get placed without you. The chat places markers with a command, you place a note with one tap from your phone, a team member opens the panel. See live review.
2. 2The next day: you open the VOD's timeline, not the video. You keep or discard the passages proposed by the analysis, you open a segment on what deserves an edit.
3. 3Within three days: what matters leaves the VOD. A segment goes to the Studio and becomes a rendered video; a cut of the VOD is downloaded and exists on your side.
4. 4Before day seven: one last pass over the timeline. What was not extracted will disappear with the VOD.

What derush.tv keeps, and what it does not

derush.tv does not store your VODs: they stay on Twitch, and their retention period stays Twitch's. What it keeps are your notes, markers, segments and captured chat, attached to each VOD, as well as the cuts you download and the Studio projects. Once the VOD is deleted, the markers remain visible, but they point to a video that no longer plays.

Downloading a whole VOD is not available today; its feature page shows its status. Downloading a cut, passage by passage, is.