Why is Low Latency Important for Streaming? If that’s your question, it’s getting answered here and now.
In this piece, we will discuss what latency is, how it influences your streams and how to solve low latency problems.
The best part? Most of it can be solved without even touching your pockets. That’s right. Let’s get started then.
Table of Contents
What is Latency?
Its importance can only be understood if you understand what it is at its core. So in simple words, it’s “delay”.
The delay between data being sent from one device and the receiver receiving it. Do note that this is one of the simplest definitions I can come up with, the technicality is a bit more complex.
For example, let’s say you’re playing a game. You hit the fire button. The time it takes for your internet connection to register your action, take it to the server and reflect the server’s response back to you is called latency.
In simpler words, the less latency you have, the faster your actions get registered and reflected on the internet.
Why is Low Latency Important for Streaming
Latency has different effects on different tasks. For streaming, it’s one of the most important aspects that controls quite a lot of things (even million dollar prizes).
If you need the short version, latency will influence audience behaviour. This will in turn influence your monetary gains as well as overall channel growth.
Let’s discuss this in better detail.
Real-time interactions
With a high latency, what you’re doing on screen will be delayed for your viewers. Hence, their reactions to it will be delayed.
E.g. If you’re talking to your audience via a live-stream and are answering an audience question, your answer will be transmitted much later to your audience than it should be.
This may result in confusion, overlapping questions/answers and basically not a smooth experience.
In fact, your audience may even leave your stream thinking you ignored their question while in reality your answer just hasn’t been streamed yet.
Competitive edge
This is important only for those who’re streaming competitive games. Note that in competitive games such as PUBG, Fortnite or CS:GO, a millisecond means all the difference.
Hence, if you’ve got a low-latency connection it translates into better gameplay and more kills. A slow latency of course would mean you’ll get killed more often.
Generally, people only like to watch streams that have good gameplay. Unless of course you’re a funny/parody content creator.
In that case, a good stream would require a good gameplay and a good gameplay would need a low latency connection.
Desynced audio and video
On a technical level, audio and video of a video stream are two independent components. Low latency generally ensures that the audio and video are in sync.
Of course, this means that with high latency, they may not be in sync. Hence, your expressions, content and basically the entire stream would not be something that people would keep watching for long.
High-accuracy requiring events (non-gaming)
Accuracy isn’t just a requirement for gaming events. There are many other events that require your stream to be as precise as possible.
One such example is a live-trading session, especially if your viewers are following your trades.
Online gambling is an equally precision requiring event. Hence, it’s of utmost importance that your trades or activities get reflected back to your audience as soon as possible.
Point being, for a stream, of any type, the faster your stream is, the better it is.
How to solve a high latency problem?
The problem primarily arises from the speed of your internet connection. So the most straightforward and direct solution is getting a faster internet.
Of course speed isn’t the only variable affecting your latency. Other factors are involved as well.
- Streaming software: The streaming software you’re using for live streaming controls your latency and other technicalities to a great deal as well.
- Better hardware: It’s not always the software’s fault either. At times, it’s your hardware that’s being maxed out or is being capped for some reason. Using a different laptop/computer without changing your internet connection lets you pinpoint the fault better.
- Video resolution: The higher the resolution, the higher the data size, the more bandwidth and speed you need. So a temporary solution is to reduce the video quality as that may help in getting your video uploaded faster.
Conclusion- Why is Low Latency Important for Streaming
I guess it’s pretty evident by now why low latency is important for streaming. I’ve also tried to provide solutions to the latency problem and most of those are free solutions. This ensures you wouldn’t be investing a lot of money trying to solve your latency problems.
Of course, do note that there are a number of technical factors influencing your latency as well. WebRTC is one of those things, it prioritises speed over quality/accuracy, a CDN helps serve content from better locations and so on. However, you may not always have absolute control over such technicalities.
Point being, faster internet, lowering stream quality, and getting better software solve most of the problems.
