Bitrate issue?

[vulpes]

Hello!

I was doing a b/g show yesterday with several viewers on CB but I think it was a little slow because of our FPS/bitrate. Most of the time the FPS is okay but every once and a while the bitrate says the quality isn’t great. The Ethernet cable we’re using is a little finicky so I’m buying a new one but does anyone else know what can cause this? We’re using OBS to stream. Thanks!

 

[roydz]

Hello!

I was doing a b/g show yesterday with several viewers on CB but I think it was a little slow because of our FPS/bitrate. Most of the time the FPS is okay but every once and a while the bitrate says the quality isn’t great. The Ethernet cable we’re using is a little finicky so I’m buying a new one but does anyone else know what can cause this? We’re using OBS to stream. Thanks!

Check your 'output settings' within OBS.. depending on your speed for your internet will come into the bitrate speed & will effect the FPS.

I use a Cat 7 ethernet cable on my 100MB broadband.

 

[Fyre_Guy]

Hello!

I was doing a b/g show yesterday with several viewers on CB but I think it was a little slow because of our FPS/bitrate. Most of the time the FPS is okay but every once and a while the bitrate says the quality isn’t great. The Ethernet cable we’re using is a little finicky so I’m buying a new one but does anyone else know what can cause this? We’re using OBS to stream. Thanks!

Unstable bit rate may not nessecarilly be your fault every time. Its also affected by the server that you are sending to. I believe on wednesday I was having issues with CB.

Bitrate is effectively how much data your computer is able to send to the services server. If that server is having trouble recieving it can effect your bitrate. And if the bitrate falls, so will fps.

 

[vulpes]

Unstable bit rate may not nessecarilly be your fault every time. Its also affected by the server that you are sending to. I believe on wednesday I was having issues with CB.

Bitrate is effectively how much data your computer is able to send to the services server. If that server is having trouble recieving it can effect your bitrate. And if the bitrate falls, so will fps.

Thank you so much for explaining this. I just upgraded my ethernet cable. My speed test is overall pretty great aside from buffer bloat, which I don't think is a huge issue. My stream looked a lot better/more stable yesterday

 

[Ronaldod]

Thank you so much for explaining this. I just upgraded my ethernet cable. My speed test is overall pretty great aside from buffer bloat, which I don't think is a huge issue. My stream looked a lot better/more stable yesterday

If you still have issues take a look at : https://support.chaturbate.com/cust...24140-chaturbate-video-pops-and-ingest-points .
Your obs is standard on "auto" settings. And selects (if am correct) on ping the closest ingress point. But that will not mean it has the best bandwidth. What you can do is do some testing with : http://chaturbate.speedtestcustom.com/ to see what ingress point is the best for your provider. And an extra 80ms latency is mostly not a problem.

Just test and see.

 

[CurvyJ]

Thank you so much for explaining this. I just upgraded my ethernet cable. My speed test is overall pretty great aside from buffer bloat, which I don't think is a huge issue. My stream looked a lot better/more stable yesterday

We've been streaming wireless do you think an ethernet cable helps quality? I think im adding one to our next shopping list

 

[Ronaldod]

We've been streaming wireless do you think an ethernet cable helps quality? I think im adding one to our next shopping list

As a techie in never trust wireless for production. Cable (CAT7) or other high quality cable for your main connection is the way to go. To many things that can break down your wireless connection. (old microwave, Neighbors on the same channel as you work, Antenna moved from the base station). It is a small investment to keep your income more stable. And i do not know your setup. But make sure your cables between your ISP and your working PC are all good.

About quality. Is more about stability and reliable.

 

[CurvyJ]

As a techie in never trust wireless for production. Cable (CAT7) or other high quality cable for your main connection is the way to go. To many things that can break down your wireless connection. (old microwave, Neighbors on the same channel as you work, Antenna moved from the base station). It is a small investment to keep your income more stable. And i do not know your setup. But make sure your cables between your ISP and your working PC are all good.

About quality. Is more about stability and reliable.

Thank you, right now we are using an old logitech cam and laptop in a corner of our room lol its terrible im sure, thankfully we havent had any complaints yet. but ive done what I can with lighting and going from the built in cam to an outsourced one. By friday I am going to get an ethernet cord like you suggested,even better lighting, and a new webcam even though i havent settled on a model yet.

 

[Ronaldod]

Thank you, right now we are using an old logitech cam and laptop in a corner of our room lol its terrible im sure, thankfully we havent had any complaints yet. but ive done what I can with lighting and going from the built in cam to an outsourced one. By friday I am going to get an ethernet cord like you suggested,even better lighting, and a new webcam even though i havent settled on a model yet.

Should not be terrible. If you do not open like 10 sites. And first stick to the site that generates income most laptops can handle it. Is that some models open 10+ sites and then have problems with sound like Echo. Bitrate issues. You can go all in with spending money on best cam and best light. Sometimes simple solutions works good enough. I wish you goodluck on the journey. Oh and one thing make good notes of your settings. And you can save your settings in OBS. (Best thing to do with CB is getting OBS to work if you have a "modern" camera.).

 

[CurvyJ]

Should not be terrible. If you do not open like 10 sites. And first stick to the site that generates income most laptops can handle it. Is that some models open 10+ sites and then have problems with sound like Echo. Bitrate issues. You can go all in with spending money on best cam and best light. Sometimes simple solutions works good enough. I wish you goodluck on the journey. Oh and one thing make good notes of your settings. And you can save your settings in OBS. (Best thing to do with CB is getting OBS to work if you have a "modern" camera.).

Thank you I am only on CB at this time...I am a terrible multi tasker and dont think I could handle more than one at a time

 

[DejaElectra]

Bitrate and fps can be affected by how good of a processor your computer has and your internet upload speeds.

As mentioned before check your output settings in OBS and make sure you have an appropriate bitrate for your stream quality. This is a handy starting guide for bitrate https://stream.twitch.tv/encoding/ you don't want to put in too low of a bitrate but you also don't want to put in something too high that will make your stream wonky.

I'd highly suggest getting a cat 7 ethernet cable to stabilize your internet connection. I work on SM and cannot get the quality I need over wifi even if the modem/router is in the same room. When I cam I turn off as many wifi devices as possible in my house. That may be a bit overkill since I have the 2nd best package my ISP offers, but at least make sure something like another computer isn't uploading videos or something.

Check your upload speeds, lots of ISP advertise "great" internet but in reality it's only great download speeds. Your bitrate should really only be 50% of your available upload bandwidth, so if you're only getting 5Mbs upload you don't want a bitrate of 5000.

For your processor, close all unnecessary applications and windows on your computer. Open up your task manager to see what may be running in the background as well, you might be surprised to find some bloatware eating up your CPU. Also, close all unnecessary tabs in your browser. Try not to stream music to save internet bandwidth, but if you must, use another device to do it. Having something like YouTube or Spotify open on your computer can eat up a lot of CPU. Also, I know I had a lot of issues with browser add-ons eating CPU so check your browser task manager as well.

A good processor is an often overlooked factor in camming, upgrading to a great processor was a game changer for me and made life so much easier, you can get by with a crappy processor but it means you can't do 1080p and is in general a headache. For years I cammed on a half dead CrackBook Pro with a 3rd gen processor and managed to get a good stream at 720p using these methods, so it's possible, but unless you already have a top of the line processor "good processor" should be up there on your shopping lists.

Overall remember that a smooth stream in 720p at 30 fps with a 2500 bitrate is better than a choppy 1080p 60 fps stream, so don't overwork your computer and internet just because 1080p sounds nice.

 

[DJ_Pioneer]

As a techie in never trust wireless for production. Cable (CAT7) or other high quality cable for your main connection is the way to go. To many things that can break down your wireless connection. (old microwave, Neighbors on the same channel as you work, Antenna moved from the base station). It is a small investment to keep your income more stable. And i do not know your setup. But make sure your cables between your ISP and your working PC are all good.

About quality. Is more about stability and reliable.

Cat5e and Cat6 network cables should also work and they should be cheaper.

 

[Ronaldod]

Cat5e and Cat6 network cables should also work and they should be cheaper.

Cat5e should be ok. They can give glitches with cheaper routers on 1Gb connections. Already had a few of those. (To be honest you only notice when you go above 500Mbit.)

 

[DJ_Pioneer]

Cat5e should be ok. They can give glitches with cheaper routers on 1Gb connections. Already had a few of those. (To be honest you only notice when you go above 500Mbit.)

If I remember correctly from work you have to be close to a 100 Megabytes/s and have a bad link quality and run at full duplex for those issues to occur with Cat5e, so the person would need a gigabit connection for that to be an issue. Among home users it is mostly people torrenting that runs into these kinds of issues, but they are more likely to overload the CPU in their cheap router by setting the amount of connections to infinite in the torrenting software and overload the router CPU.

If any model is running a fiber connection get a Cat6 cable to be safe or a Cat7 if you want to be future proof for the coming 10 years.. It is probably going to take another 2-3 years for 1 gigabit over a cable modem to be common.

 

[cammingcouple]

I wouldn't really worry about cat5e vs cat6 vs cat7 for a 5 Mbps video stream. Hell, even cat3 or a coax cable running a token ring network from 1988 can handle that without a problem. Cat5e is good for 1000 Mbps. 5 Mbps is nothing for it. If your cable is bad, replace it, but I wouldn't worry too much about it if you're running a perfectly good cat5 cable. If you're using a cable modem, it's all getting sent over a coax cable anyway.

If you're having problems, run a bunch of speed tests (such as speedtest.net). If they come back faster than your video stream, then the problem isn't likely on your end. Could be a problem with one of a dozen links between you and chaturbate's servers or they may have a down link or server causing the others to become oversubscribed. Who knows.

 

[CurvyJ]

for myself if I can find a decently priced one im just going to get cat7 then i dont have to worry about it for a long time

 

[Zoomer]

Glad someone finally said your CPU may also be a bottleneck... cheap laptops (or cheap processors) and lack of resources can impact. Check how much memory and CPU usage you have at various times (right click on the date in bottom right corner if using windows - select task manager, and ensure to expand "view more details". The processes tab is what you're after. what's using CPU (and what percentage is used), what's using memory (and again, .what's the total used) and what's using disk (and how much). Sometimes when gaming i lose sound and it gets choppy - alt tab out of game, start task manager, check... fkin windows update garbage using the disk very heavily and obliterating gaming experience. Which leads on to what may be using resources...

Virus scans, windows (annoying as hell) installs and any other automated (annoying) task - like disk defrag or indexing.

Before starting to cam ensure you update any anti virus and run windows update (specially around 1st Tuesdays of the month is it? but I think they're pushing more frequent patches these days anyway). Your CPU may be good enough, but if it's got virus scanning/installs going on (or windows automatic defrag) tasks, then it'll hit you too.

That's off the top of head. You can always check speed of connection with speedtest.net - and as said, use cable over wireless as wireless can drop signal strength quickly - and that means speed can drop off massively. I have a mobile phone app called Wifi Analytics which allows you to check signal strength of wifi at various areas, as well as how congested the channels are. I think it's Netgear who make it...

 

[Ronaldod]

About CPU/memory/disk. Use task manager to see what happens when you start different programs/sites.