Stream buffering can be a huge issue for new streamers.
It's hard to know what's causing it and how to fix it.
I have five tricks that are gonna help you.
After this video you're gonna understand what causes buffering, what
you can do to fix it.
Hello, my YouTube friends.
Live stream buffering is caused when you're trying to send too much
data or data that's not properly formatted for the platform that
you're live streaming to.
Now, these problems are fixable on most connections and computers with
a few tweaks or compromises.
So let's get into the five tricks that you can do to avoid live
streaming buffering.
The first thing we need to do to optimize our stream is find out how
fast we can actually stream.
So we're gonna need to do an internet speed test and you can just type
in internet speed test in your browser search of choice, you can just
use pretty much whatever one you want.
You can click go, connects and does a speed test.
Now we don't really care about the download speed.
That doesn't really matter all that much at all.
We really care about the upload speed, so this is gonna take a couple
seconds.
And there we go.
So we have about 20 megabits per second on our upload, and we just
want to know what that number is.
Now we want to take a look at this nifty chart, and you can see over
here on the left, this gives us the stats for YouTube and Twitch.
This is the internet speed that we need to stream at each of these
resolutions and each of these frame rates.
So if we wanna stream at 60 frames per second in 10 80 on YouTube, we
need to have at least 5.6
to 11 megabits per second.
Now we had 20, so we're good.
The same thing applies for Twitch.
If you wanna stream it 10, 80, 60 frames per second, you need between
5.6
and 7.4
megabits per second.
So now that we know what we can actually stream at, we know it is
possible for us to stream at 10 80, 30 frames per second at a full
6,000 kilobits per second bit rate.
We know that it is possible to stream at the 10 80 by 60, even at the
full 9,000 kilobits per second bit rate.
And of course, we can stream at all these bit rates down here.
Now we have our chart.
Now we have our settings.
We know what we can stream at.
So now let's set it up and optimize it.
Let's go ahead and set this up.
I'm gonna click settings and the first thing we're gonna do is go to
our output and I want to change it from simple to advanced and we're
looking at the streaming.
Now I have an Nvenc encoder, which makes my life a lot easier.
I can just set my kilobits per second to 6,000 because of course I'm
going to stream at 30 frames per second.
If I was going to stream at 60 frames per second, I could set this to
9,000.
Quality is a good preset.
I could bump it up to max quality if I like.
And if I'm going to be streaming video games, I can check look ahead
and psycho visual tuning.
I'm not going to be doing that, so that will be just fine.
I'm also going to be streaming in 30 frames per second, so I would
leave this at six and click apply.
And now we have our stream maximized right here.
But if you're in X 2 64, you're going to go ahead and do the same
thing.
You're gonna set your bit rate right here to 6,000 if you're gonna be
streaming in 30 frames per second and you're going to adjust your CPU
preset usage to something that's reasonable, good quality and won't
tax your machine too much, you will have to actually mess around with
this if you notice problems with your machine.
We'll get into that in a minute.
So now that we have our encoders set up the way that we want them, we
need to go ahead and go into audio.
We want to disable all of this and we want to set our audio monitoring
device to however we're going to be listening to our stream.
Generally speaking, you want to use your headphones, so you set it up
for your headphones.
That's how you would be monitoring your actual stream.
Next, we want to go into video and we want to set our resolution.
You want your base canvas and your output scaled resolution to be
exactly the same.
So we're going to stream at 1920 by 10 80.
We are going to have our output scaled resolution at 1920 by 10 80, we
have 30 frames per second.
If we were going to stream at 60, we would set this to 60.
You don't need to change anything else.
And now our settings are optimized for the stream that we're going to
produce.
Now you have the optimal setup.
Let's take a closer look at your assets that you use for your stream.
The last part of optimizing our stream is to go ahead and resize our
assets.
Now make sure that all of your assets are in the native size of your
canvas.
So if you're streaming in 1920 by 10 80, anything that you use on your
stream should be 1920 by 10 80.
If it's not going to Da Vinci Resolve or Premiere or whatever you use
to edit video and rescale those videos to the proper size, then you
want to go ahead and take those MP4s and drag them into shutter
encoder.
Shutter encoder is a free encoder.
You can download it for absolutely nothing.
There is a link in the description so you can check it out.
You just want to drag these in here.
This includes your overlays, your transitions, anything that you're
going to use on your live stream, you want to drag it in here.
Then you want to choose the function VP nine.
This will change those files into Web M, which is a much, much smaller
file size.
If your files have any sort of Alpha graphics, you may want to do
those separately.
That would include things like overlays and stingers.
And when you have them in here, you just go in and you go to advanced
features.
You enable the Alpha channel once you have all of your stuff set up
and you can do 10 or 15 or 20 files in here if you like.
You just click start function and it changes all of these into a much
smaller file size that makes it really, really easy for OBS to use.
So we're optimizing our actual video assets and our overlays and our
stingers and everything that we use in our live stream to make it as
easy for our computer as we possibly can.
Now after this, you should test your stream to see if you have any
buffering.
If you don't, congratulations, you solved the problem.
If you do, let's dive into the next trick and see if we can fix it.
The third trick that you're gonna want to do is to remove CPU hog
plugins.
And there are a few.
If you are using a background removal program for a virtual green
screen that is a plugin and not the one that's set up to work with
nvidia, you probably wanna remove that and not use it.
Get a real green screen, they're pretty cheap.
Or if you have the means, get an nvidia graphics card if you still
want to use a virtual green screen.
But a plugin actually uses a lot of CPU resources, which could be
messing up your stream.
Another one that can take up a lot of clock cycles is some of the
features in stream effects.
So test it, see what's taking up a lot of clock cycles.
See what's making your machine not run as well as it possibly could.
And don't use those effects.
You don't have the best of computers, so sometimes you have to make
compromises in order for this stuff to work properly.
Some pieces of stream effects are a lot less efficient than others.
So those are two CPU hog plugins that you can remove.
And there are probably others on this list.
Either way, any OBS plugins that you're not really using, you can
remove out of OBS, hopefully clean up a little bit of the way that it
runs.
This next step goes hand in hand with number three and you stream you
should have an order for startup for your computer and all the
applications.
The things that you have open on your machine and the order that you
open them can have an effect on performance and even hotkey usage.
Likes and comments are super easy things that you can do to help push
this video to a wider audience.
So take a second down below and let me know how I'm doing.
And while you're there, if you're not subscribed, please do.
It really does help me continue to make content that helps you.
So thanks.
Next step is to make sure that you come up with a list that is the
direction of how you open each thing before you live stream.
This can affect all kinds of different things and you wanna make sure
that you only have opened on your desktop anything that you absolutely
need.
Sometimes there are things that you're running or possibly have opened
in something like Google Chrome, which is a notorious CPU hog that you
can close out.
In fact, if you don't need to have Google Chrome opened at all, don't
open it.
And if you do need to have some sort of web browser open, use
something that's a bit lighter than Google Chrome if you can get away
with it.
Firefox or just something else, any other applications that you may be
running on your system, you can go down to your system tray open it up
and check and see whatever is running there that you don't need to
ring your live stream, kill it, turn it off, don't use it.
This should effectively increase the amount of RAM that your computer
has available to do the encoding, and that can help a lot.
After you create your list and eliminate anything unnecessary, give
your stream another test run.
If you get no buffering, well then you're good.
Otherwise, it's time for the last trick.
Now the fifth trick is kind of what you have to do in a last resort.
Sometimes you have to make compromises, and that means maybe
downscaling your live stream from 1920 by 10 82 to a 720 stream.
If that's the case, then you're gonna wanna run all of your assets,
your stingers, your overlays, any videos you use, anything that you
use that's media based, you wanna run it through Premier Pro or Da
Vinci Resolve or whatever editing software you have and resize it to
720.
Then once you do that, you go ahead and load it in, change the stream
to 720.
Make sure you set it all up just like you did from step one for 720,
and you run through the process again.
And hopefully this will solve your buffering issue because if it
doesn't, you're probably gonna need to go ahead and contact your
service provider for your internet.
Bump that up a little bit and maybe even pick up some new equipment at
your house.
Now the one thing that I didn't mention, which should be ridiculously
obvious, you should never live stream on a wifi connection.
And really that is step number one, plug in your computer.
It's always going to be a faster connection when it's plugged in than
it will be on wifi.
You really just shouldn't be streaming on wifi.
You never know what else is pulling that signal or interfering with
it.
And that can definitely cause full on buffering.
And we didn't even test for any of that cuz we shouldn't have to.
We should be plugged in.
Once the stream is downscaled, go through steps one through four again
until you don't get buffering anymore.
Now, a quick word about testing.
How do you perform a quality live stream test?
First, you create an unlisted stream and go live.
You can send a few links to friends so they can join and test all the
aspects of your live stream.
If you add guests, you want to test that.
If you add alerts, you want to test those.
If you use any chat features at all, you have to test those as well.
And of course, if you're using transitions or multiple transitions,
you have to test each and every one.
And if you use a green screen plugin or app, you gotta test that too.
And if you notice any of these things buffering on the stream, well
that's a great place to look when you're starting to optimize.
If you wanna learn more about lag and the things that you can do to
fix it, you should check this video out.
Big thanks to the sponsors that support this channel, you can find
their links down below in the description under the heading sponsors,
I couldn't possibly do this without them or you.
So thanks.
And if you're always looking for tools, tips, and tricks that can help
make you a better live streamer or YouTuber, subscribe to the channel.
My name is Michael Feyrer Jr.
Thank you so much for watching.
Have a great day and I'll see you in the next one.