Dropped frames while live streaming

[Jeury Polanco]

These are my settings. I a,m currently streaming live using TMOBILE wireless 5G INSEGO. I am not sure if that is the problem. But I need this fixed. My videos start off great and then throughout the middle it lags and the video is not aligned to the audio. Huge dropped frames. I am currently at 4.4% CPU usage and i am not live streaming at the moment. I've heard it shouldnt be above 1%. Not sure if that is true.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

streaming over cellular .. good luck.. the issue is that for livestreaming you need consistent bandwidth and latency/jitter [which isn't necessarily common over wireless tech]. A simple fix is to NOT use wireless tech... but that may not be practical, and cellular connection may or may not be the problem. And just because you can stream over cellular one day doesn't mean you'll be able to do so the next. An important test is to check for common upload bandwidth availability (and that means NOT using standard speed tests, for reasons documented at length elsewhere). You may need to check/confirm such bandwidth before each stream if your initial testing indicates wide variability.
For example, if you thoroughly test bandwidth over your cell connection, and find you always have more than 5Mb/s, then streaming at 3500Kb/s seems reasonable. You may still need to enable dynamic bandwidth

On the other hand, the issue may be your computer. Hopefully you are aware of just how much real-time video encoding is VERY computationally demanding. As such, older CPUs, or U model laptops optimized for battery life, may struggle to do task of real-time video encoding. When talking about Audio/Video getting out of sync, you MUST determine if that is on the PC (ie try recording, not streaming, and does the issue happen there? if yes, then cellular most likely not relevant to your problem)

I recommend monitoring hardware resource (CPU, GPU, RAM, Disk I/O, etc) utilization [for ex. using Task manager’s Performance tab and/or Resource Monitor] to see if your system is being maxed out with your settings
Also, see
- https://obsproject.com/wiki/Dropped-Frames-and-General-Connection-Issues
- https://obsproject.com/wiki/General-Performance-and-Encoding-Issues
- https://obsproject.com/wiki/GPU-overload-issues
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Here's the quick-start guide:

OBS Studio Quickstart

OBS Studio - Free and open source software for live streaming and screen recording - obsproject/obs-studio

obsproject.com

I'd also recommend watching the Nerd or Die tutorial video series:

OBS Studio Tutorial Series Introduction | Tutorial 1/13

Welcome to our OBS Studio tutorial series! In this series we're going to cover everything that you'll need to know to make your stream look great.Next Video...

www.youtube.com

Per pinned post in this forum

Please post a log with your issue! Here's how...

OBS Studio creates a log file each time you run it which contains very useful diagnostic information. Without a log file, it's much harder for any support volunteers to figure out problems and your post may be ignored. To upload a log file, go to the Help menu > Log Files > Upload Last Log...

obsproject.com

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

I am currently at 4.4% CPU usage and i am not live streaming at the moment. I've heard it shouldnt be above 1%. Not sure if that is true.

If that CPU info is from OBS stats, recognize that it does NOT tell if whatever else is going on your system, which could include the CPU pegged at 100% [a big problem]. And there are more nuanced reasons for the OBS process CPU usage to be any number of amounts. 1% isn't a magic # .. it really depends.
To start, use overall system metrics, and not individual OBS process CPU usage. My recommendation, when starting is to ignore CPU usage info from OBS Stats View window as there are far more relevant and important metrics to be checking [as noted in prior post].