What's up guys, welcome to the Gaming
Careers YouTube channel. My name is Pete and
you are here today because you're having
issues with your Twitch stream and you
want to get them sorted out. Now you've
come to the right place because the
Gaming Careers YouTube channel is a
channel completely dedicated to helping
you make a profession out of your gaming
passion through streaming or content
creation on Twitch or on YouTube, so if
you've got issues with Twitch you're at
the right channel. Today we're going to
be looking at two different tools that
will analyze your Twitch stream and help
recommend what might be the issue so
that you can sort it out and your stream
viewers can get back to enjoying your
content. Now obviously there's a whole
handful of technologies and things going
on between you streaming, Twitch
receiving it and it being sent out to
your viewers, so there are a lot of
different things that could be going
wrong but these analysis tools they're
going to analyze all the things like
bitrate, how stable your connection is, if
you're dropping any frames, which ingest
server your streaming to. All these kind
of things are going to be analysed by
these two tools and hopefully then you
can pinpoint exactly what is going wrong
with your stream so you can fix it. Just
finally before we jump in I do want to
mention that the YouTube channel you're
on now, the Gaming Careers YouTube
channel is a channel completely
dedicated to helping you improve your
livestreams, improve your content
creation and make a profession out of
your gaming passion so if you haven't
subscribed yet please do and we will
jump into the analysis tools.
So the first tool that we're going to be
using is called the Twitch inspector. Now
this is an official stream inspector
tool built by the fine folks at Twitch
that lets you run a test stream without
actually streaming to any of your
followers and then analyze all of that
juicy video and audio information in
real time. So what we need to do is point
our browser of choice over to the URL
which is inspector.twitch.tv and login
with our Twitch account. You'll probably
also need to authorize the application
to be able to access some of your twitch
account information. Now when you log in
the dashboard page that you arrive at
can look a little different depending on
if you've streamed at all in the past
week. If you have, you may see some
information here about your previous
broadcasts, but if you haven't it'll
probably look quite empty like mine. In
the top right hand corner if you click
this little down arrow you'll be able to
add other Twitch accounts that you own
if you want to be testing more than just
one account. Below this you should have
an option to be able to run a test
stream, if you click this it will open up
a new window which details some of the
things that we need to do to be able to
run a test stream. Now as I mentioned
before it's important to note the good
feature here is that when you run a test
stream it won't actually be putting you
live to all of your followers. Nobody
will be able to see that you are live
except yourself and it will be a totally
realistic test since all the work being
done between your end and Twitch's end
is exactly the same as if you were
actually live. So the first thing we need
to do is to grab our stream key from our
Twitch dashboard. Now I imagine most of
you have already put this properly set
up into OBS but if you haven't you can
head over to your dashboard, grab your
stream key from there, copy it and then
head to your OBS settings click the
stream settings and paste it into the
stream key box. Before we hit OK we need
to add the test flag to the end of our
key so that Twitch knows that we are
running a test stream, so head back to
the Twitch inspector and copy the
'?bandwidthtest=true'
and paste this directly after our stream
key into OBS. Once you've done that you
can click OK to save it. Now it's worth
mentioning at this stage that hopefully
you have followed my ultimate guide for
setting up twitch which goes into loads
of detail and choosing which bit rate
and resolution you should be doing based
on your internet connection. Just because
you
want to stream in 1920x1080, 60 frames
per second and 6000 kilobytes per second
it doesn't necessarily mean you can.
You're going to need a really amazing
computer and a super stable internet
connection if you're going to be able to
handle anything near those kind of
numbers. Twitch has recently updated its
guidelines on stream settings,
resolutions, bit rates, frame rates all
those kind of things so I've added a
link to their new updated guidelines in
the description below. Obviously if you
are already set up and you've followed a
previous guide then you want to just be
testing your stream and seeing where
you're running into issues. So once
you're ready hit the start streaming and
let's head back to the Twitch inspector.
Now you might have to wait 10 to 20
seconds for your stream to actually go
live and be ingested by Twitch, you
should eventually see the page change to
show a graph of your stream stability.
Now we're going to want to run this test
for at least 10 to 15 minutes to
properly be testing your connection.
There's no real point of just testing
for 30 seconds because as I'm sure
you're aware your internet fluctuates
and if you don't have a particularly
stable connection then it might take you
know 15 minutes for that instability to
show. As the test stream is running we
can click on either the stream link here
on the left or on the graph directly on
the right to open up the proper analysis.
Here we can get loads of details about
the stream we are running as well as
advice from Twitch if they notice
anything isn't set up properly. The graph
here on the left shows both the bitrate
over time as well as the framerate
over time so we want both of these to
remain as stable as possible. Just as I'm
editing this I've realized that actually
the graph that you're seeing on screen
now the framerate is remaining at zero
so I reached out to Twitch on Twitter
just to ask about this and apparently if
you are using the test bandwidth command
at the end of your stream key you're
actually not going to be able to see
your framerate here which is always going to
show zero. However it will show you a
framerate if you are actually
screaming so if you think you might be
having issues specifically to do with
your framerate I'd recommend removing
the bandwidth test and just having a
look at the Twitch inspector after you
finish streaming and it should show any
problems with your framerate, but as
you're using the test bandwidth like
I am here the frame rate actually isn't
gonna work and it's just gonna show zero.
This little box in the top corner which
says configuration check, this will
recommend any changes that Twitch
notices that you need to make to your
stream settings to get the optimal
performance out of what you send to
Twitch. Now obviously the ideal situation
that you would be in right now is that
both of your graphs remain nice and
stable over the 15 to 20 minute test
that you run. The more likely scenario if
you're watching this video is that
you're experiencing some sort of drops
in either your frame rate or your
bitrate. The Twitch analysis tool should
highlight any issues that it notices
with any instability on the graph, you
can then use any information that twitch
gives you on that instability and
research maybe what you need to change
to be able to fix that instability. One
thing I'd recommend doing is opening up
the help guide at the top here and that
can help you identify what your issue is
based on how your graph looks along with
the recommended steps on how to fix that
issue. You can also run a more extended
test which I definitely recommend doing
if you can afford to, you know run it for
a couple of hours to really get a good
snapshot of what your connection looks
like. To make this a little easier to be
able to do Twitch provides a handy
little notification box here that you can
check and it will notify you if it
notices any instability so you don't have
to keep watching this page and you can
get on with some other work. Just make
sure you're not doing anything
particularly internet heavy whilst this
twitch test is running. Now once you've
finished running the tests you may well
have some issues that you want to
resolve, if you want to get some more
information on what changes you might
need to make it can be worth opening up
the full help menu which goes into a lot
more detail about the different settings
you can change. To do this what we need
to do is click on the all broadcasts
link in the top left and then toggle the
help guide back open again. Now you'll be
able to see plenty of tips and
troubleshooting on things like dropped
frames and setting proper bit rates and
choosing the proper ingest server. I
unfortunately can't go through every
possible instability issue that could
arise from streaming video like I said
at the start there's so many different
things that could be wrong but hopefully
now you have an idea on what the issue
is and it's just about lowering or
changing one of the values in
OBS to be able to fix it. By far the most
common settings that need to be lowered
are your video bitrate, your video
resolution, or your framerate. The second
tool that we can use that runs when we
are actually live for our viewers is
something called Rich's analyzer. This is
a handy little website where you can
enter your Twitch live URL and it will
take a sample of around 10 to 20 seconds
of your stream and analyze all sorts of
information about the data that Twitch
is receiving. It's just quickly worth
noting here that this is actually
analyzing your live stream when it is
live for your viewers,
so if you want to use this tool you need
to go back to your OBS settings and take
out the appended part of the test bandwidth
that we added to our stream key. On
Rich's analyzer we can look at things
like bitrate stability,
drop frames, video frame rate and quality
checks as well as gathering loads of
other information about the stream
settings. The other reason that I
recommend using this tool is if you want
to see the settings that another
streamer uses, just paste in their
channel when they are live and you can
look at all sorts of settings as to how
they're making their stream look the way
that they do. Hopefully between these two
tools you've been able to discover a
little bit more about what's happening
with your stream and hopefully fix your
instability. Unfortunately sometimes it
can be just as simple as your internet
connection isn't good enough or stable
enough or maybe your computer actually
isn't good enough to be able to play the
game that you're playing at the
resolution as well as streaming. In the
very near future I'll definitely be
making some videos on the more common
problems, how you can fix them as well as
how you can reduce the strain on your
CPU by using a graphics card or a
capture card. Let me know down in the
description below exactly the issues
that you were facing and how you fix
them and if you haven't been able to fix
them comment anyway with the issues that you're finding and maybe one of the
Gaming Careers community will jump in
and be able to help you if they've seen
something similar. I'll definitely be
down in the comments looking at any
issues and helping out where I can.
Hopefully you found this video helpful,
if you have got to this point and you
found it helpful please do give it a
thumbs up, it does really help us out and if
you're new to the Gaming Careers YouTube
channel have a look around or all the
other guides that we've got and
subscribe if that's the kind of thing
that interests you. Subscribers I'll see
in the next video... Peace!
