Quality settings

‘Set the quality according to your connectivity situation’
Context
The quality of a stream has a lot of dependencies from the Wi-Fi connection, the network carrier or device, such as bandwidth capacity, network availability and processing the image quality. Consider changing the quality of the broadcast when you are using a different Wi-Fi than the dedicated Wi-Fi for the Broadcast of Whisbi, when you are making use of a carrier or when you are using the front camera instead of the rear camera of a device.

Problem

  • Streaming from external locations with unknown Wi-Fi, or in studios where 4G or 3G is required, often results in unexpected bandwidth constraints which stop a broadcast. 
  • Streaming on-site at events where one moves in-between places means that wifi and cellular networks change, resulting in streaming cuts.

Solution

We are giving you full control over the quality of your broadcast with ‘quality settings’, so you can control different situations when you are on the go, when you are visiting a conference with a ‘Guest Wi-Fi’ or when you have to use your personal phone to broadcast. 

Choose between Low (cellular network), Medium (wifi up to 2Mbps) and High (HDTV quality) quality according to your situation and give the viewer a seamless Broadcast experience from everywhere. Medium quality is always the default setting, however, when you change it once, it will save your last preference. 

The following quality settings are validated with the clients’ needs:

  • Low quality: Resolution device with 480 Kbps and 20 frames per second
  • Medium quality: Resolution device with 900 Kbps and 24 frames per second
  • High quality: Resolution device with 1.4 Mbps and 24 frames per second

Limitations:

  • 3G – Use Low for streaming over 3G only in the most desperate scenarios. Our app handles it, and it has been tested in live 3G scenarios, but you should try to improve your network where possible.
  • 4G
    • When using 4G, the Low-quality setting guarantees reliability, and medium quality can often be used too, but test first. High quality is not to be used on 4G.
  • Wifi
    • Only use High quality if there is a dedicated Wi-Fi to broadcast on which has at least 3Mbps dedicated all the time. Test it before going live. 
  • Always test the quality with a test account, URL or channel BEFORE going live.

How to use this feature?

  1. Get the broadcast app from the Google Play Store
  2. Open the Broadcast app
  3. Login with your account
  4. Click on ‘Quality settings’ before you start the broadcast
  5. Choose the quality according to your most performing quality test on the viewer side
  6. Once you started the broadcast, you are not able to change the quality settings
Quality settings screen