The quality of your audio/video stream is determined by several factors. The Ranking Report tool grades these factors on a scale from “Poor” to “Excellent.” If any of your Streaming Quality scores on the Ranking Report are less than “Excellent,” we recommend taking the following steps in order.
1. USE A WIRED CONNECTION
Connect your computer to your router or modem using an Ethernet cable. This connection is generally faster and more reliable than wireless options.
2. CHECK YOUR UPLOAD SPEED
To stream at the highest quality possible, your internet connection must be fast enough to support the data being transferred. A slow upload speed may result in low Bitrate or Round Trip time scores on the Ranking Report.
You can measure your approximate upload speed at www.speedtest.net. If your speed is lower than 0.6 Mb/s, consider contacting your Internet Service Provider (ISP) about their service options, or if possible, consider using a different ISP.
Note that connection speed and quality may vary due to your geographic location, throttling or bandwidth caps enforced by your ISP, and other network conditions outside of our control.
3. CLOSE UNNECESSARY APPLICATIONS
Video streaming is a computationally-intensive process. Running other programs at the same time, with their own CPU and memory requirements, may affect the quality of your stream.
4. USE THE HD ENCODER.
Our recommended quality settings produce a high-quality stream under typical conditions. You may wish to adjust your HD Encoder settings to produce the best results for your individual circumstances.
5. UPGRADE YOUR WEBCAM
We have evaluated many popular webcams for use with our service. Our recommended cameras will give you excellent performance (subject to any limitations introduced by your computer and/or ISP). See the Performer Manual for details.
6. UPGRADE YOUR COMPUTER
If your computer remains near 100% CPU or memory usage while you are streaming, and none of the previous steps made any difference, then it may be unfit for use with our service. For instructions on monitoring system resources, see the HD Encoder guide.
