Question / Help Stream lagging for others but not me

[EntarioFox]

Hello OBS users.

I am pretty new to this program and have been using it for a while now. It works just fine for me so far.
Recently I've had a few viewers of my stream, complain about severe lag. This is confusing to me as my recordings on Twitch are just fine when I watch them afterwards. No lag at all. I even tried watching my own stream on my laptop while I was streaming live on my desktop PC. Again, I saw no evidence of this supposed lag.

All of this is confusing to me. I realize this is not just a single fluke, as more than one have been complaining.

I have a 7.1mbps upload connection and my max bitrate is 6500kb/s while my buffer size is 2000kbit.
I can tell that I am streaming in 1050p and this works fine for me.

Does anyone have any idea of what is going on? :(

 

[XCVz]

6500kb/s is really pushing it. A lot of viewers don't have that fast of a download. Twitch has even thought about banning people that use anything over 4000-5000 because after 3500 or so, it has little effect on quality. I would suggest going with a 3500kb/s and either match or go a little higher on the buffer size. Hope this helped you out :)

 

[Floatingthru]

There is a reason why Twitch recommends people to only use at most 1500kbps/720p or under for non partners. A lot of people really can't handle more than that. Internet speeds outside of NA and EU are pretty horrible generally. If you actually want people to watch your stream lower your bitrate.

It all just depends what you are trying to do and what you want out of streaming. I sometimes use Twitch as a DVR instead of doing local recordings all the time, but with those settings no one can really watch.

 

[EntarioFox]

There is a reason why Twitch recommends people to only use at most 1500kbps/720p or under for non partners. A lot of people really can't handle more than that. Internet speeds outside of NA and EU are pretty horrible generally. If you actually want people to watch your stream lower your bitrate.

It all just depends what you are trying to do and what you want out of streaming. I sometimes use Twitch as a DVR instead of doing local recordings all the time, but with those settings no one can really watch.

6500kb/s is really pushing it. A lot of viewers don't have that fast of a download. Twitch has even thought about banning people that use anything over 4000-5000 because after 3500 or so, it has little effect on quality. I would suggest going with a 3500kb/s and either match or go a little higher on the buffer size. Hope this helped you out :)

Thank you, both. I had no idea that my bitrate was too high. :) I'll definitely try these settings out.

 

[alpinlol]

dont go over 4k actually stay with something around 3k and you'll be fine

 

[EntarioFox]

I tried setting my bitrate to 3500 and my buffer size to 3500 as well. People are now reporting ocassional lag, like every few minutes the video on the stream freezes or lags. What is interesting is, that the lag doesn't seem to affect the sound or my commentary.

Should I just try to lower the bitrate and buffering size and see what happens? At least it's a lot better than before :)

 

[Kharay]

Disable Custom Buffer Size completely, if you're going to keep it the same as Maximum Bitrate anyhow. And yes, just keep dropping it in steps of 50 Kbps until everything stabilizes. You could also try posting a recent log so we can analyze it with you.

 

[EntarioFox]

Disable Custom Buffer Size completely, if you're going to keep it the same as Maximum Bitrate anyhow. And yes, just keep dropping it in steps of 50 Kbps until everything stabilizes. You could also try posting a recent log so we can analyze it with you.

Okay, so here we have the log from the latest stream. Same stream that had the occasional lag.

 

[Kharay]

01:30:15: Total frames rendered: 188917, number of frames that lagged: 18143 (9.60%) (it's okay for some frames to lag)

That's your problem, right there. It's not your connection or the bitrate that is falling behind, it's your PC. Try Resolution Downscale 1.25 (Lanczos filter) at 48 FPS instead of your current 1050p @ 30 FPS. It will probably end up freeing up a lot of CPU and GPU time and drop that lagging frames number down quite a bit.

Lagging frames -- Frames not rendered in a timely fashion, ie -- PC falling behind.
Dropped frames -- Connection falling behind, ie -- Too high of a bitrate, poor quality server, etc, etc, etc.

 

[EntarioFox]

01:30:15: Total frames rendered: 188917, number of frames that lagged: 18143 (9.60%) (it's okay for some frames to lag)

That's your problem, right there. It's not your connection or the bitrate that is falling behind, it's your PC. Try Resolution Downscale 1.25 (Lanczos filter) at 48 FPS instead of your current 1050p @ 30 FPS. It will probably end up freeing up a lot of CPU and GPU time and drop that lagging frames number down quite a bit.

Lagging frames -- Frames not rendered in a timely fashion, ie -- PC falling behind.
Dropped frames -- Connection falling behind, ie -- Too high of a bitrate, poor quality server, etc, etc, etc.

Ah yes, I realize my PC is not high end, which is partly why I reserve my channel for retro gaming (games that aren't too CPU/GPU intensive).

I shall try these settings tomorrow and see what happens. Good to know that it's not a matter of bitrate/buffer.

 

[EntarioFox]

Realizing this is turning into a long thread and I apologize for the many questions.

So I did what Kharay said and did a 5-6 minute test stream. While testing I was watching my own stream via my laptop and was discouraged to see that it was lagging very frequently. I have the short log here for you to see.

Maybe it's just a bad idea to try and watch your own stream while testing, or?

 

[alpinlol]

change the server you are streaming to ... since you didnt drop frames and also still lower the bitrate to 3000 just to make it even easier for people with a bad connection to watch your stream

 

[Kharay]

The log does not suggest any lag but if you are still experiencing lag, Enable CBR, Enable CBR Padding, Disable Custom Buffer Size and start slowly dropping the bitrate, 50 Kbps at a time until it stops lagging for you.