Question / Help Sometimes, for no apparent reason, OBS can not keep the live running.

[kiahal]

Good Morning!

I have been about a month with a recurring problem with OBS. Sometimes (not always, but at least one day a week) when I stream games that are running on my Mac, the upload rate gets inconsistent, jumping from numbesr down to high, high to down, and livestream behaves all night long like a slideshow. Apparently it would be an internet connection problem (FB and Youtube log are saying that). But every time this happened I tested the connection start doing livestream through the PS4 (which does livestream natively by the console) and it worked normally, the same day the same hour!

In short, my current connection has worked 100% of the time to transmit game lives on the PS4 (and it did not even need to be configured), but in OBS, which until a few months ago worked normally, it has now been unstable as if the connection was not good (but by PS4 I realize that the conection is uploading and pinging normally)

In all cases (PS4 and Mac) the livestream was done directly by the cable, not by the wifi (in the wifi same problem as the cable: always a surprise, sometimes works normally, sometimes don’t)

Would anybody help me?

Thanks in advance.

Log below:
(the live stream ended 21:22)

https://obsproject.com/logs/9n1SE_TDO16r1L3U

 

[Narcogen]

This either suggests that your console is using different ingest servers than your Mac is, or that there is an issue with your local network that is affecting your Mac and not your console.

21:21:46.335: Output 'simple_stream': Number of dropped frames due to insufficient bandwidth/connection stalls: 38138 (51.4%)

Is your console streaming at a similar bitrate or apparent quality as compared to your OBS configuration, which is using a bitrate of 6000? Because the above dropped frames indicates that at least during this test, you were not even close to sustaining your selected bitrate and you should probably drop it in half. I imagine that the PS4, if it works similarly to the Xbox's similar features, may automatically be reducing quality in response to your network speed.

 

[kiahal]

This either suggests that your console is using different

it would be great to know which one the PS4 is using and can change on mac, but unfortunately I do not think that is possible.

or that there is an issue with your local network that is affecting your Mac and not your console.

I called the people responsible for installing the internet network here at home, but apparently everything is working right (the speed tests are always stable in download, upload and ping)

Is your console streaming at a similar bitrate or apparent quality as compared to your OBS configuration, which is using a bitrate of 6000? Because the above dropped frames indicates that at least during this test, you were not even close to sustaining your selected bitrate and you should probably drop it in half. I imagine that the PS4, if it works similarly to the Xbox's similar features, may automatically be reducing quality in response to your network speed.

On PS4 I always use the default, which is 720p (I do not know exactly what bitrate it is, it doesn't show because it's a preset). In OBS I tried with 1500, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000 and 6000. Apparently it makes no difference. In that part where the OBS shows the upload speed it normally shows the color green and working. But in some lives, for no apparent reason, it drops to 0 frequently, turns red and the live becomes a slideshow :(

 

[sirbryan]

In that part where the OBS shows the upload speed it normally shows the color green and working. But in some lives, for no apparent reason, it drops to 0 frequently, turns red and the live becomes a slideshow :(

I've seen that too, recently, when trying to stream to my own server over a variety of Internet connections (LTE, Fiber, DSL).

I finally came up with a solution that is a bit technical, but it solved the stability of the feed for me and gave me an indication of where the problem is (or at least where to look).

I stream to an nginx-based RTMP server in Vegas (my Mac Mini hosted at MacStadium), which takes and segments the video for HLS delivery to my viewers. It seems that OBS's connection to that machine would freak out due to jitter (sudden changes in latency) or some other detected network issue, and my feed would go down. Monitoring in other windows would show the network to be working fine, and tweaking timers on the nginx side didn't seem to make a difference.

So I installed nginx on my laptop and configured it to be an rtmp relay to the Mac Mini. Now OBS streams to nginx on the laptop (which then forwards it to the Mini) and I am able to stream at 1200Kbps over LTE for hours on end.