Question / Help Constant 50%+ frame drops, not sure if it's my end or my ISP

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Very_Merri

New Member
So, for the past few weeks (and in all honesty, to a lesser extent the past few months) I've been experiencing some frame drops. As of late, it's only been getting significantly worse, to a point where I've had to cancel streams because I'm either dropping 50%+ frames or my stream is lagging behind for minutes at a time. For example, I booted up my stream today and within the first few minutes, chat was already about 2-3 minutes behind and climbing. Yesterday my stream wound up getting to be near 15 minutes behind at one point, according to chat, with immense amounts of buffering.

I've tried just about everything I can think of. Opened up ports for OBS and all that, turned off my antivirus (avast), reset the router, rebooted my PC, tried multiple settings in OBS, called my ISP. Nothing has seemed to work, and I just don't know what the issue is. I have noticed that my upload drops significantly in the evening. Today alone I decided to sit down and run some tests throughout the day, which you can find below. (Verizon fios) Timezone is EDT, not that it probably matters all that much.

I also have a few log files from today when I attempted to go live and proceeded to have massive frame drops.I tried both OBS Studio and classic this evening, both had the same issues.

I'm completely lost, and growing more and more frustrated at my inability to provide my viewers with a consistent and quality stream. Could it be on my end? Is it my ISP? If so, what should I tell them to check? I'm not terribly tech savvy, so I wouldn't have any idea what they would need to look at, or what I would need them to do to resolve this issue if it could be on their end. Thank you so much for your time and any advice/assistance you may be able to offer, and my apologies if I overlooked a simple fix or step before coming to post here.
 
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Very_Merri

New Member
Thank you for the response! I went ahead and ran the test this morning and came up with these results. Ran all regions, just because. I'm planning on running a test later in the day when my upload starts to tank, and I'll post that here as well. But for now, here's this morning's test at about 5:50am:

Again, I really appreciate your time! Thank you.
 
Adrian Schofield

Adrian Schofield

Member
Which region are you actually in? Looks like South America, you have a great connection I've never seen figures like that :-) Do the same when you have the bad throughput :-)
 
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Very_Merri

New Member
I'm actually in the U.S! Virginia, specifically. Makes sense that the Ashburn server is pretty solid this early in the morning. I also ran a five minute test just for a better look at things, but it seemed mostly the same.
http://i.imgur.com/gKXnBrg.png

I'll be sure to report back later in the day with the results of the other test!
 
V

Very_Merri

New Member
Alright, started my stream early at about 4:00pm my time. Was semi stable, heavy amount of dropped frames at the start but no delay. Around 5:00pm, like clockwork, I started dropping more frames and the delay increased to about 3 minutes and the buffering started.

Strange thing is, I still had a solid connection to the Ashburn server according to the twitch test even when I was dropping frames and buffering. I'm completely lost as to what could be causing this.Wasn't 50% frames like previously, but it the buffering made it near impossible to interact with my chat, which is the most important aspect of my stream to me.

Twitch test + OBS dropped frames around 4:08pm
Twitch test + OBS dropped frames around 5:17pm
http://i.imgur.com/RGObI08.png
And a speed test taken just a few minutes ago.

Attempting to stream 720p, 30 FPS, at 1900 bitrate. So incredibly frustrated, so you have no idea how much your time and help means to me. Even if we can't get to the bottom of the issue, I really appreciate the help. Thank you!
 
S

sam686

Member
Maybe while streaming, open command and do: ping google.com -t (ctrl+c to stop)
Any ping drops and/or excessive ping jumps?

If you stream online multiplayer game, is online game lagging?
 
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Very_Merri

New Member
I'll give that a shot later today! I'm going to be running a bit of a test to see if it really is tied to the hour by streaming about five hours earlier than I usually do. I'll be sure to ping google then, and when 5:00pm rolls around and the frames start to drop as they usually do, I'll run it again.
 
Adrian Schofield

Adrian Schofield

Member
Could you be suffering from bandwidth capping. This might make sense because the Twitch test tool does a short burst whereas your stream is a constant high upload. It's not unusual for ISPs to cap bandwidth during busy hours and as the problem seems to happen at five pm it may well be related to that. Have a look and see if your ISP does any traffic management, they may not be honest about it though :-(
 
V

Very_Merri

New Member
Well, ran into the same issue again. Dropped a few frames up until 5:00pm, though there was no buffering or major delays and the stream was definitely watchable. As soon as 5:00pm hit, the buffering started, and my stream fell behind about 5 minutes.

I pinged google for a bit, and got these results. Doesn't look like I was suffering any packet loss. I'll have to give Verizon another call and see if I can't get to the bottom of this. Thanks again for the assistance, and if you have anything else that might be worth trying or looking into, please let me know! I'm very eager to resolve this as quickly as humanly possible.
 
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