Stream Settings Estimator, part Deux

[Boildown]

My suggestion is to change this line of test on the Stream Settings Estimator page:

How fast is your upload speed? (Measured in kbps. Test at speedtest.net to the closest streaming server to you)

To

How fast is your upload speed? (Measured in kbps. Test at testmy.net to the closest streaming server to you)

I suggested this before but it got lost in the list of things to be changed, or something. There are still a lot of people who dutifully follow the instructions for OBS but because they are using the "wrong" upload speed estimator, think they have more upload than they really do, and create problems for themselves.

 

[Jack0r]

Testmy.net not in a single time gave me a result I could have used for streaming. In general both services should just give you a rough idea. So I am not sure if this change is either necessary or will do the situation any better in the end ;)

 

[R1CH]

There's no reliable speed test for streaming other than trying it and seeing what happens.

 

[Boildown]

There's no reliable speed test for streaming other than trying it and seeing what happens.

Some are better than others. And you can say with a fair amount of certainty: if you can't achieve a certain bandwidth with testmy.net, you can't stream at or above that much. Speedtest.net has very little correlation with anything, all I see over and over are people in the Help forum quoting their irrelevant Speedtest numbers, and I can't blame them for this, as the Estimator page tells them to use it. At least put the best speed estimator available.

 

[z0rz]

Comcast has some turbo-boost garbage which inflates your up/down speeds big time on small files. Using the larger test sizes on testmy.net should get you closer to your actual sustainable upload speed.

It's still not going to be 100% accurate for livestreaming purposes, but it should at least give you a more useful number to work with, right?

My example:
Speedtest.net: 25.56 mbps down // 5.83 mbps up
Testmy.net*: 20.9 mbps down // 4.4 mbps up
(*Using 50 MB download and 33 MB upload tests)
Reality: ~18-20 mbps down // ~3.5-4.0 mbps up

3000 kbps seems to be the sweet spot for me for streaming. Both services would be giving me inflated numbers, but testmy.net is a hell of a lot closer. Still, I can see how it's splitting hairs since neither one is going to make things simple for the novice user.

Honestly, I think it would be cool if OBS could implement (or maybe someone could make a plugin?) something like this to help users test their practical upload speed: http://obsproject.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 13&p=14853. Maybe make a separate popup window for it that makes dropped frames a little more visible so people will really understand if they've gone above their limits.