Question / Help Question about bitrate/buffer size.

orestes13

New Member
I used to stream at 3000 bitrate with a significantly lower buffer size (~ 500 at the time) and the quality wasn't really bad but it wasn't perfect either. I browsed a couple of forums and most people recommended setting the buffer size to an amount equal to your bitrate. So, I increased my bitrate to 3000 and started getting high latency. I tried 2500-2500, but games were still pretty unplayable. Bottom line, I can't stream with a buffer size that's higher than 1000. I have 5MB up so I guess that's about enough for at least 2500-3000 bitrate, right? Does it really matter if the buffer size is lower than the bitrate and how would that affect performance?
 

dodgepong

Administrator
Community Helper
A higher buffer size will let the stream bandwidth fluctuate a bit more to make high-motion parts of the stream look better. If high bandwidth gives you high ping, that means you're streaming at too high of bandwidth, and your stream and game are competing too much for it. If lowering your buffer helps, then I won't stop you. The other option is to lower your max bit rate and keep your buffer equal to it.

You can also try enabling the Minimize Network Impact setting in Broadcast Settings and see if that helps with ping.
 
Top