Video quality and performance

Stream quality is a chain that runs from the software you broadcast with to the way viewers pull video. Each page here covers one link in that chain.

Your broadcasting software sets the resolution, framerate, and bitrate that Owncast receives. The video quality settings then control the output qualities Owncast produces and the hardware cost of producing them, since more qualities and higher bitrates mean more CPU.

Object storage moves the bandwidth of serving video off your own server onto an S3 compatible provider, which starts to matter as your audience grows. Reducing latency is the tradeoff between how close to live your stream runs and how smoothly it plays. Stream performance shows from the admin whether the result is holding up.