Settings Help

[brewcrew0]

Hello All, I had a horrible experience last weekend streaming a swim meet where I "usually" have great upload speed. I was getting about 30mbps up (where I usually get 3x that) and I was streaming in 1080p/30 with a 3500 bitrate and I was dropping frames and the stream would disconnect multiple times.

I have another meet this weekend and should I stick to 1080p/30 and drop bitrate down to 2,000-2,500? or should I try going out at 720p, and if so, what bitrate should I use?

Thank you very much for your help in advance.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

The real answer depends on why your upload rate was lower, and what your real, sustained actual available upload rate is (SpeedTest are almost worthless for figuring this out). SpeedTest are for regular data transfers which are NOT Jitter and Latency sensitive, but which livestream traffic is)

Was that a cellular connection? It could have been a one time thing...(and overloaded cell) and not re-occur, or local tower could have been reconfigured, or (the list goes on). The problem is, without knowing cause, any advice on a solution is simply a guess. As to what bitrate you should use? the one that would work, which doesn't tell you anything... because none of us knows what bitrate was or will be available. Bandwidth could be fine this upcoming weekend, or worse...

Thoughts?
- is a wired Ethernet connection available? if yes, test and confirm upload bandwidth and if sufficient that is likely best option (presuming there isn't a bunch of guest WiFi traffic using same connection with no Quality-of-Service available)
- were you using your phone as a hotspot? if yes, did you reboot it before the event? if not, start there.
- Using OBS Studio dynamic bitrate might help prevent disconnects (but drop in bitrate will likely be visible/noticeable to viewers.. no way around that easily).
- One option is to record and post (uploaded completed video) later (not Jitter sensitive)... but I'm guessing that is not desirable