Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) public beta

[Gabriel]

Abstract
Adaptive bitrate works by adjusting to each viewer’s network and serving adequately lower quality content to minimize loading and reloading times; read about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_bitrate_streaming

Opportunity for WpStream clients
– Use up less overall streaming bandwidth as some of your viewers will stream at a lower quality than the original
– Better percieved quality of service for some of your viewers; faster start time and fewer interruptions
– Feature has been used in production by multiple customers during closed beta, since May 2019, with consistently good results

Restrictions, shortcomings, notes
– Feature requires individual whitelisting
– Feature can be enabled for particular channels (i.e. for initial testing) or for all of them
– Only functions with RTMP broadcasting (i.e. OBS, Wirecast, vMix, iOS and Android apps); browser broadcast will no longer be available once feature is enabled for a specific channel
– Only available for horizontal, 16:9 video
– Fast, high and stable upload capabilities to anywhere in the world (i.e. not just your city, country, or ISP) is required to broadcast; if your streams are interrupting right now, ABR will only make them worse
– A recommended encoding profile (i.e. for OBS etc) is to be used; during beta we will not be able to offer support outside the margins of this profile
– The feature is still experimental and may not work under various unexpected circumstances
– We can only offer limited support related to the feature at this time

To apply for the feature, please provide the following information in an email to prerelease at wpstream.net
– Your WpStream account username
– Your website
– IDs of channels for which you would like the feature enabled (i.e list of chnanel IDs, or “ALL”)
– Please confirm you understand Web Broadcasting (i.e. broadcast from browser) will no longer function after feature is enabled for specific channels
– Please confirm you understand this only works well within specified technical parameters
– Please confirm you understand that superior network capabilities are required on the broadcaster end for this to work well

[Gabriel]

Recommended settings for broadcasting

Software: OBS Studio

Video:
Resolution: 480p or higher
Video aspect ratio: strictly 16:9 horizontal (854×480, 960×540, 1280×720 etc)
Video Bitrate: 1mbps or higher
Encoder: x264
Keyframe Interval: 5 seconds

Audio:
Sample rate: 48khz
Bitrate: 128kbps or higher
Codec: AAC

[laclaqueimpro.com]

Hello,

I’ve tested ABR today, and the results are not what i expected. One of the tester obviously had a bad connection, and still, he was receiving very sharp image (720), but with huge loss of frames, even paused for very long time.
I was hoping that ABR would reduce the quality to ensure a good framerate.

So, how is it supposed to work ? The quality gear selection at the bottom only shows 720 (the output stream). I can’t choose automatic or a lower quality.

Is all that normal ?

Matthieu

[Beatrice]

Hello there,

Thank you for being part of our beta features program, we appreciate any comments and feedback. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to change the quality using the gear, it is done automatically. However, you could use the 3rd party video player in order to have that type of control over your video quality https://wpstream.net/forums/topic/use-3rd-party-video-player-public-beta/

You can use a Quality level selector or any other similar features with the 3rd party video player.

Hope this helps!

[Author]

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