Hi, I'm dropping frames very sporadically. Some streams I drop as little as 0.5% of frames over 3 hours and sometimes (like in this log) I drop nearly 4% in less than half an hour. Any ideas besides contacting my ISP at this point? Thank you.
Dropping Frames Due To Insufficient Bandwidth
- Thread starter Tcs757
- Start date
When using Dynamic Bitrate in the past it made the quality of my stream jump very, very frequently. Its stability was simply too poor to maintain a quality image.
qhobbes
Active Member
1.Your gigabit-capable network card is only connecting at 100mbps. This may indicate a bad network cable or outdated router / switch which could be impacting network performance.
2. Multiple Game Capture sources are usually not needed, and can sometimes interfere with each other. You can use the same Game Capture for all your games! If you change games often, try out the hotkey mode, which lets you press a key to select your active game. If you play games in fullscreen, use 'Capture any fullscreen application' mode.
3. Your log contains streaming sessions with dropped frames. This can only be caused by a failure in your internet connection or your networking hardware. It is not caused by OBS. Follow the troubleshooting steps at: Dropped Frames and General Connection Issues.
2. Multiple Game Capture sources are usually not needed, and can sometimes interfere with each other. You can use the same Game Capture for all your games! If you change games often, try out the hotkey mode, which lets you press a key to select your active game. If you play games in fullscreen, use 'Capture any fullscreen application' mode.
3. Your log contains streaming sessions with dropped frames. This can only be caused by a failure in your internet connection or your networking hardware. It is not caused by OBS. Follow the troubleshooting steps at: Dropped Frames and General Connection Issues.
I'll try and swap out cables and work on getting a new router/modem. Is it possible that the problem is largely on the ISP's side though?
Lawrence_SoCal
Active Member
Is it possible? yes
But more importantly, is it likely? No
In my experience it is far more common for people to have messed up PCs, poor or misconfigured home networks, or basic lack of networking knowledge, etc [that you can watch Hulu, Netflix [all download bandwidth] or similar doesn't mean you network is up to the task of low-jitter streaming [upload]. Zoom, Skype, Teams, etc all have sophisticated auto-throttling algorithms which can mask bad home network issue
One important troubleshooting step is confirming your LAN/ISPs sustained upload bandwidth,
- You need to make sure NOTHING else is using bandwidth while you do this
- DISCONNECT ALL other devices from your network (that you aren't using that Smart TV, Roku, Apple TV, etc doesn't mean it isn't using your network... these are less likely to impact upload bandwidth, but ... reply packets, etc ... Also, routers spend CPU connections keeping track of connections [not much, but if old router on limit of performance...])
- this means making sure no one/thing else is using the bandwidth. Is anyone else using the same ISP connection (know, don't think... have you checked you WiFi logs to make sure an unexpected device isn't connecting... yes, I've come across this)
- Then, though this doesn't test streaming specific protocols and ports, a good first step in my experience is
- understand basic PC hardware resource monitoring (CPU, RAM, GPU, disk I/O, etc)
- try a large (multi GB file) upload to a Internet server (preferably not using HTTP, but... use what you can)
- Monitoring should show some fluctuation but you will get a sense of a baseline. Is that what you were expecting, and does it correspond to something larger (with some headroom) for your streaming bitrate?
I appreciate the help, but after much investigating and troubleshooting it turns out it is a problem with the ISP. During peak hours drops will occur and even packet loss will pop up from time to time. Testing was relatively easy since I am the only one who lives in my home so I don't have to worry about anyone else streaming/downloading/being connected at all.
Resource monitoring during streams, stream tests, upload tests of files, etc were all normal and nothing that would cause frame drops from a hardware perspective (of the PC at least, can't speak to the router/modem)
Lawrence_SoCal
Active Member
Yea, home internet was never designed for mass upload bandwidth consumption.
pandemic life, and video conferencing are taxing ISPs in a way their architectures were never designed to handle at this volume... so bandwidth capacity limits certainly can occur, with different types of Internet connections (Cable, DSL, fiber, wireless) each having its own pros and cons
in cable plant world, node saturation is often the issue, and not cheap for ISP to fix
pandemic life, and video conferencing are taxing ISPs in a way their architectures were never designed to handle at this volume... so bandwidth capacity limits certainly can occur, with different types of Internet connections (Cable, DSL, fiber, wireless) each having its own pros and cons
in cable plant world, node saturation is often the issue, and not cheap for ISP to fix