Month: February 2019

Experimenting with stream quality

We’ve begun experimenting with offering stream quality options on select streams. If you click the gear icon in the lower right of the video player, you’ll see a Quality option. For most streams this will show as Source, which is the stream the broadcaster is sending to our servers. For select streams, the Quality option will show Source and 360p. By default, select streams will load the 360p quality. If you want the best quality of the stream, you will need to switch it to Source.

February 2019 Suggested Encoder Settings

As our video system has evolved over the last three years, we’ve noticed some are still using old or outdated encoder settings for their broadcast. During these changes to our video system we’ve often suggested encoder settings that worked best for the video system at that time.

360p

  • Video Resolution: 640×360
  • Video Bitrate: 750Kbps
  • Video FPS: 30
  • Video Rate Control: CBR (Constant Bitrate)
  • Video Keyframe Interval: 2
  • Video CPU Preset: veryfast
  • Video Profile: High
  • Video Tune (if available): None
  • Video Buffer Size: None
  • Audio Codec: AAC
  • Audio Bitrate: 128Kbps

720p* (recommended)

  • Video Resolution: 1280×720
  • Video Bitrate: 1500Kbps
  • Video FPS: 30 or 60
  • Video Rate Control: CBR (Constant Bitrate)
  • Video Keyframe Interval: 2
  • Video CPU Preset: veryfast
  • Video Profile: High
  • Video Tune (if available): None
  • Video Buffer Size: None
  • Audio Codec: AAC
  • Audio Bitrate: 128Kbps

1080p*

  • Video Resolution: 1920×1080
  • Video Bitrate: 2500Kbps
  • Video FPS: 30 or 60
  • Video Rate Control: CBR (Constant Bitrate)
  • Video Keyframe Interval: 2
  • Video CPU Preset: veryfast
  • Video Profile: High
  • Video Tune (if available): None
  • Video Buffer Size: None
  • Audio Codec: AAC
  • Audio Bitrate: 128Kbps

* 720p and 1080p can cause playback issues for those with older devices or slow internet

Encoder restrictions

At the time of this post, we’ve implemented lower and upper bitrate limits for streams. Why? To help improve stability and watchability. Not everyone can watch a 15,000Kbps live stream with 2-5 second latency.

Here are the video and audio bitrate limits:

  • Minimum video bitrate: 100 Kbps
  • Maximum video bitrate: 3500 Kbps
  • Minimum audio bitrate: 32 Kbps
  • Maximum audio bitrate: 320 Kbps