NDI preview issue

[hookahdad]

Hello! First post here. For the last several months I have been doing a dual pc setup with a desktop as my gaming pc and laptop as my streaming pc. I've been using NDI and it has worked flawlessly for me and was very simple to set up. Long story short, my streaming laptop got destroyed so I recently replaced it with a higher spec laptop and have gotten around to setting it up for streaming. No matter what I do, I cannot get NDI to even preview smoothly on the new laptop, let alone try to actually stream. If I move a window around on my gaming PC and watch it via OBS on my streaming laptop, it's clearly having issues and stuttering a lot. No dropped frames detected and I'm not even streaming yet so obviously nothing maxed out spec wise etc. I am using the exact same everything from the previous setup (cables, router, etc) except the new laptop replacing the old. Something to note, I ran NDI from my streaming laptop to my gaming desktop just to see what would happen and it appears flawless in OBS, no choppyness, etc. Any help would be great. Leaving specs of each PC below. Thank you.


Desktop:
9900k
rtx3070
32gb ddr4 ram

Laptop
12700k
rtx 4050
16gb ddr5 ram

 

[danstgram]

Hi - This won't be an exhaustive rundown of possible troubleshooting ideas, but it will get you started:

You noted that you're using the same cables, router, etc. That should be fine, but you might check to ensure that your router has assigned a fresh IP address to your new machine. If you have a static IP assigned to the old machine and suddenly a new device appears with its own MAC address, your router may be throttling that traffic way down.

To check for any issues with the streaming computer itself, you can install a free NDI signal generator on that machine and see how it performs when pulling the feed into OBS (I use Sienna Signal Generator, which has looped animations you can use for testing.).

Assuming that's good, then try the same thing with a signal generator on your gaming rig. If it's a network/connection issue, that should be reflected in the signal test, as well. However, if the signal comes through normally, then two threads to follow:
1. Check frame rate to ensure a match on both sides, as well as with your local display. If you're expecting 30fps but actually pushing 29.97 (television frame rate), that could cause an issue with your computer having to adapt.
2. Check audio settings. We tend to focus only on video -- and that's probably all you want -- but if you've got some intense audio output feeding through, that can have negative effects.
3. Run a speedtest between the two machines to make sure you're getting the expected bandwidth, e.g. iperf3 -- a python tool.
4. Bypass the router and directly connect the two machines to see whether your router is the bottleneck. Features like IGMP snooping, flow control and deep-packet inspection can slow things down.
5. Confirm that both computers and your gateway are all on the same subnet (vlan). To say that another way, when you look at their IP addresses, the first 3 octets should be the same -- like 192.168.1.x. If one is 192.168.212.x and the other is 192.168.1.x, then your router has to do much more work.
6. Noted that you're using ethernet, which is the right call; but if you have other interfaces active (e.g. a Wifi connection), you might have a situation where your game traffic is getting routed over the wire, but your NDI traffic is going over the air. If that's the case, wi-fi is the issue -- it can't handle ndi in a gaming context.

There's a good document on the NDI.tv website outlining optimal network conditions.

Hope this was helpful. Best of luck!

 

[hookahdad]

Hi - This won't be an exhaustive rundown of possible troubleshooting ideas, but it will get you started:

You noted that you're using the same cables, router, etc. That should be fine, but you might check to ensure that your router has assigned a fresh IP address to your new machine. If you have a static IP assigned to the old machine and suddenly a new device appears with its own MAC address, your router may be throttling that traffic way down.

To check for any issues with the streaming computer itself, you can install a free NDI signal generator on that machine and see how it performs when pulling the feed into OBS (I use Sienna Signal Generator, which has looped animations you can use for testing.).

Assuming that's good, then try the same thing with a signal generator on your gaming rig. If it's a network/connection issue, that should be reflected in the signal test, as well. However, if the signal comes through normally, then two threads to follow:
1. Check frame rate to ensure a match on both sides, as well as with your local display. If you're expecting 30fps but actually pushing 29.97 (television frame rate), that could cause an issue with your computer having to adapt.
2. Check audio settings. We tend to focus only on video -- and that's probably all you want -- but if you've got some intense audio output feeding through, that can have negative effects.
3. Run a speedtest between the two machines to make sure you're getting the expected bandwidth, e.g. iperf3 -- a python tool.
4. Bypass the router and directly connect the two machines to see whether your router is the bottleneck. Features like IGMP snooping, flow control and deep-packet inspection can slow things down.
5. Confirm that both computers and your gateway are all on the same subnet (vlan). To say that another way, when you look at their IP addresses, the first 3 octets should be the same -- like 192.168.1.x. If one is 192.168.212.x and the other is 192.168.1.x, then your router has to do much more work.
6. Noted that you're using ethernet, which is the right call; but if you have other interfaces active (e.g. a Wifi connection), you might have a situation where your game traffic is getting routed over the wire, but your NDI traffic is going over the air. If that's the case, wi-fi is the issue -- it can't handle ndi in a gaming context.

There's a good document on the NDI.tv website outlining optimal network conditions.

Hope this was helpful. Best of luck!

Thank you for your reply and all the suggestions on things to try! Crazy enough I decided to go to Best Buy and get a usb 3 to Ethernet port adapter on the wild thought that the Ethernet port on my brand new laptop was wonky based off the network speed on task manager dipping very low every few seconds.. Immediately fixed it. So, I guess that means either I have some weird ethernet settings on the laptop or perhaps the ethernet port itself just is not function properly. Either way, works perfectly with the 20 dollar adapter I bought which is just silly lol.