How to Choose Bitrate and Resolution for Live Streaming
Picking stream settings is a balance between image quality, your upload connection and what each platform accepts. Higher is not always better: a stream that drops frames looks worse than a modest one that stays stable.
The four settings that matter
- Resolution: the size of the image, such as 720p or 1080p.
- Frame rate: frames per second. Fast motion (sports, games) benefits from higher frame rates; talk shows do not need them.
- Bitrate: how much data per second the encoder sends. More detail and motion need more bitrate.
- Keyframe interval: how often a full frame is sent. Many platforms ask for a specific interval, commonly two seconds.
Start from your upload
Measure your real upload speed at the time of day you go live, not once in the morning. Keep a comfortable margin between your stream bitrate and that number, because networks fluctuate and other traffic shares the line.
Check what each destination accepts
Every platform publishes recommended and maximum settings for live ingest. When you send one stream to several platforms, choose settings that fit all of them: the strictest platform sets the limit.
A simple method
- Pick the resolution and frame rate your content needs.
- Choose a bitrate inside the recommended range of every destination.
- Confirm it fits inside your upload with a margin.
- Run a private test on each destination and watch for dropped frames.
- Adjust one setting at a time.
Restreaming saves upload
When you restream, your encoder sends one stream to a server, which delivers it to each platform. Your upload carries the stream once, no matter how many destinations you add.
Fast Monkey Creator receives your live over RTMP or SRT from OBS, vMix, Wirecast or hardware encoders and restreams it to YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, TikTok and other RTMP destinations, plus two SRT outputs with SCTE-35.
Read: How to restream to YouTube, Twitch and TikTok at the same time