Sudden Bitrate Drops

[Shadowsense]

Hey all! Recently I've been having a lot of random bitrate drops with OBS. The two streams I did in October and December had steep bitrate drops where they fluctuated wildly between 500-4000kbps, causing the streams to stutter pretty bad. I have the log file for last night's stream (which went very smooth until about 2 hours in, when the bitrate dipped to 0 and ended the stream before I even hit the "stop" button) but not the ones I did in October or December, though I can provide the VODs if needed with timestamps.

CPU: Intel Core i5-9600K
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super
MOBO: Gigabyte Z390 UD

My internet speed is 200mpbs down, 5mbps up, and attached are my stream settings.

Any sort of help would be appreciated, thank you!

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Your log shows dropped frames due to Network. What else uses you Internet connection? are you doing any real-time monitoring to confirm what you think is going on with your LAN is indeed the case. And that includes background processes on OBS PC

streaming at 3500Kbps on a 5Mb/s link is fine, as long as that uplink is consistent AND nothing else uses up the buffer bandwidth (which is easy to do). OBS has no real way to monitor that for you, so up to you to figure out where on your network and how to monitor

 

[Shadowsense]

Your log shows dropped frames due to Network. What else uses you Internet connection? are you doing any real-time monitoring to confirm what you think is going on with your LAN is indeed the case. And that includes background processes on OBS PC

streaming at 3500Kbps on a 5Mb/s link is fine, as long as that uplink is consistent AND nothing else uses up the buffer bandwidth (which is easy to do). OBS has no real way to monitor that for you, so up to you to figure out where on your network and how to monitor

My uncle uses his FireStick to watch Youtube and movies, but that's it. This never used to happen on the laptop I used to stream on.

The idea I have now is plugging directly into my modem next time I stream.

 

[iTouch44]

It can also a be problem from the ISP you use

i have a 1000 Down / 50 Up Connection, and also got weird Network Drops aka not Stable Upload with wired connection
you can try the Bandwidth Test Mode in OBS ( Under Settings / Stream ) and start a "Stream" at various times
to check the behavior

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

My uncle uses his FireStick to watch Youtube and movies, but that's it. This never used to happen on the laptop I used to stream on.
The idea I have now is plugging directly into my modem next time I stream.

You are both using WiFi at the same time? that can definitely cause the issue, or any neighbor WiFi. But your log showed a wired Ethernet connection??... if you were wired, then video watching should be ok, as long as there was enough bandwidth for TCP reply packets and other misc, plus your stream traffic, PLUS anything else your PC may be doing (which won't be in the OBS log)
then again, is 5mb/s is an optimistic speedtest result, and actual sustained is lower, like 4mb/s, and you are doing other traffic, to run into occasional contention with a 3.5mb/s stream... seems probable

Too many users do the equivalent of driving blind-folded, and wonder why they are running into obstacles.
I recommend monitoring hardware resource (CPU, GPU, RAM, Disk I/O, etc) utilization [for ex. using Task manager’s Performance tab and/or Resource Monitor] to see if your system is being maxed out with your settings. And in your case, with obvious Network contention issues, then you ALSO need to monitor your network traffic (both at your PC and at the LAN to ISP connection). Yes, you will need to figure out how to do that if you want to troubleshoot. The likelihood it is your ISP depends on location.. in some markets, it is REALLY rare, in some countries, streaming obstacles isn't uncommon. but, I'd always rule out LAN before focusing on the WAN.

 

[Shadowsense]

You are both using WiFi at the same time? that can definitely cause the issue, or any neighbor WiFi. But your log showed a wired Ethernet connection??... if you were wired, then video watching should be ok, as long as there was enough bandwidth for TCP reply packets and other misc, plus your stream traffic, PLUS anything else your PC may be doing (which won't be in the OBS log)
then again, is 5mb/s is an optimistic speedtest result, and actual sustained is lower, like 4mb/s, and you are doing other traffic, to run into occasional contention with a 3.5mb/s stream... seems probable

Too many users do the equivalent of driving blind-folded, and wonder why they are running into obstacles.
I recommend monitoring hardware resource (CPU, GPU, RAM, Disk I/O, etc) utilization [for ex. using Task manager’s Performance tab and/or Resource Monitor] to see if your system is being maxed out with your settings. And in your case, with obvious Network contention issues, then you ALSO need to monitor your network traffic (both at your PC and at the LAN to ISP connection). Yes, you will need to figure out how to do that if you want to troubleshoot. The likelihood it is your ISP depends on location.. in some markets, it is REALLY rare, in some countries, streaming obstacles isn't uncommon. but, I'd always rule out LAN before focusing on the WAN.

Oh no no no, I'm on a wired connection. I'm currently wired into my router and was thinking if plugging directly into my modem would help fix things.

I'll do some network monitoring. It's just frustrating seeing as this was never an issue before. I appreciate the tips!

 

[qhobbes]

Enable Dynamic Bitrate in the Advanced Network Settings.