transcript
Koopa:
Hello everyone. Welcome to another BlueStacks Streamer Academy video. How to improve your stream quality? Let’s discover how. If you’re not familiar with this website, it’s time to become familiar because you need to first establish that you have a consistent internet connection, by far the heart of everything that you do on Twitch. Be sure to click the Begin Test to start testing to see whether or not your internet connection is going to be stable enough to be streaming on Twitch.
It first starts to test the download speed, and what you’re looking for is a nice, steady line on the graph. If you notice, not only is the meter peaking out, which is great, but it’s a nice even flat green line. A lot of times when you’re testing this, it might be erratic, it might be up and down, especially if you test this on your mobile device when you’re out and about. You’re looking for that consistent straight line.
Also your upload speed. You want this to be about three to four or more, just so that you have a strong enough connection to stream on Twitch.
Once you’ve established that your internet has a solid connection, the next thing that a lot of people make the mistake of doing when you’re setting up in your OBS your actual settings as far as your resolution, a lot of us put it to 1080. Like, “Oh my gosh, 1080, I need the best, so I need the best, uh, resolution. That’s high quality, high definition.” Reduce it to 720 and then do 60 FPS. Drop that to 30 FPS. Start there and ask your viewers to see how that looks.
Then what you can try after that, maybe the next day or later that day, or if you have a friend that’s watching your stream privately to see what’s going to give you that better quality, still keep it at 720P, but then try increasing the FPS to 60 while still keeping it away from 1080P. Because what you’re at a limit is how good of connection your viewers’ internet connections are. Not everyone has the most amazing Wi-Fi or the most amazing service.
You’re trying to give the best quality stream you can, but for everyone, whether they’re watching from their home PC or from their mobile device or from who knows where around the world. You’re going to want to try and find that balance where you’re giving a professional production to everyone. Because you don’t want to limit someone that doesn’t have that good of a Wi-Fi connection to where when they watch your stream, it always renders. It’s always loading, and that’s because you have it at 1080P or those really high settings. Be aware of that.
Once you’ve got your video settings figured out, your internet settings are figured out, then you need to figure out lighting for your camera. I’m just using the Logitech C920, and it probably looks really clear, but that’s only because I have studio lights in this room. Make sure you have lighting. You can reference our advanced guide on three point lighting if you want to know more about how you can use lighting to make your webcam have a better quality.
Don’t forget about audio. Audio is a big deal to a lot of viewers. That was one of the first things that I noticed when I discovered Twitch. When I watched MANvsGAME, I was like, “Man, this guy’s voice quality just sounds crazy. Like I just don’t even have to watch this guy. I could just sit here and listen. This is so nice and relaxing.”
When you first start out, yeah, even though I can plug in, have a regular headset, and that’s fine. Later on down the road, if you’re getting donations, if your stream is growing, if you have money to invest into your channel, start looking at maybe buying an audio interface with a professional grade microphone that you might find in a broadcasting studio. I promise it will be worth every dollar and your viewers will appreciate it.
Last but not least, the computer. You couldn’t really have all this work with each other if you didn’t have a good enough computer with a good enough CPU, GPU, all that stuff. If you first start out streaming on just with whatever you have, whatever internet, whatever headset, whatever webcam, whatever computer, give it a try. Try it out. See how it works. See what you’re missing. See if you really want to take it seriously.
Down the road, you may have to invest into building your own computer. Most days in the age when you go to your local hobby store, Micro Center and you tell them exactly what you want to do. You say, “I need a graphics card. I need a CPU.” They do a really good job at picking the pieces together, and you buy from one place, so you usually get a bundled deal. They can also probably build it for you as well.
You’re going to need a computer that has a higher end CPU with hyper threading so that you can handle multitasking. Because you’re going to be using multiple monitors, streaming, playing a video game, running your donations software and this and that and the chats here. It’s going to be very overwhelming at times, and so you’re going to need … The last thing you don’t want to worry about is whether or not your computer can handle all the processes that are happening within itself.
Just trust me, invest into your computer if you’re having any issues at all because any one of these factors that we’ve talked about, they limit each other. Unfortunately, there’s a lot that goes into a stream quality, but just take it in little bits and pieces. Because if you can start out streaming and if you can be live on Twitch and you can be interacting with people and getting a following, getting viewers, don’t put it on to yourself where it’s like, “Gosh, I need to have all of these things upgraded within the first month of doing this. No, it could take months.”
I didn’t have my audio for … I think it took like eight months after I started streaming to get this and then to get this to work. It took an additional like six months because audio is a nightmare. That’s another thing that I should probably mention is that just if you’re going to make a change to your stream, do little small, small, small changes. Otherwise, you’re going to stress yourself out.
Sometimes you’re going to run into problems and issues. Use your audience. Your audience is very smart and they are all professionals with what they do. You’d be surprised, they could probably help you with random questions that you might encounter or you might find your answers here on Streamer Academy and we might have other videos that can help you with what you might be curious or having issues with.
Anyways, this concludes our video on how to improve your stream quality on Twitch. My name’s Koopa and I’m looking forward to seeing you and one of our upcoming videos. Thanks guys.