Melodicast 017 Replay [first shot at 1080p]

Phil-McRackin

What was interesting for me is - I’ve never had that many ‘views’ (total number of those who click on, and click off after half an hour or whatever) - we hit 360 views in total but the ‘viewing now’ number went past 50 and stayed there for a long time last week, compared to this week where we sat between 35 to 49 but went back down to just over 40.

Which means a percentage of people joined and left.

Mind you, my mixing was quite off last night as I haven’t been practising properly for weeks so maybe they got sick of me riding the jogwheel or the buffering was too bad.

Thanks for letting me know about the buffering as for someone like you who helpfully raises it, there are probably dozens who move on without saying anything or just assume their internet is the problem when it’s me. I have knocked the settings back down based on this mate - the visual gains were minimal anyway and it’s important to me that everyone just has a good time.

I’m off for a practise!

Matt Oh yeah mate I agree with you - what I mean is it seems like without crunching proper numbers, a bigger proportion came and left this Sunday so I was wondering if Buffering (or my mixing..) put them off. Buffering is something people stick with on average for about 90 seconds trying to fix before they give up apparently.

@Wasily mate sorry I missed half your questions. Sometimes my eyes miss chatter I want to read (hint tag @NasserAlazzawiTV and it puts more of an alert on my screen if I see it in time)

The resolution settings I was trying out were:

• 1920 × 1080p @ 40fps
• Downscaled to a better streaming resolution (than the previous 720p):
• 1536 × 864
• @ 5300kbps bitrate plus 320kbps Audio

This maintains the 16:9 ratio for viewers watching on wide screen TVs but means I can keep a lower bitrate and not throw more people off.

My friend streams in 1080p @ 30fps - which I can totally do - yet I swear that he gets fewer listeners because he’s sending 6mbps. People who are going to have problems usually do at above 4500kbps as we saw for Phil last night.

My friend has never done it differently so he wouldn’t know if lower resolutions would retain more of an audience. His streams are better than mine by far IMO and I feel like he needs to do some testing by lowering it. I feel like he deserves more listeners than he retains which is between 50 and 80 from what I’ve seen with a 6 month head start on me.

All cameras were set to 1080p during the last few streams.

Meanwhile I have the encoding laptop connected via ethernet to a separate iMac who’s sole job is to record the original source at 1080p. I separate the machines to avoid putting too much stress on the laptop - if the streaming machine crashes we all die a brutal streaming death.

My next stream will most likely be same 1536 × 864 but reducing 40fps to 30fps keeping the total bitrate below 4500kbps aiming at keeping all viewers in (unless they really have connection issues).

I didn’t realise that less FPS might actually crispen the picture as it’s not doubling up the data for the same shot just to make the scenery that moves more fluid.

God knows why I find this interesting, I’m like one of those tinkering people (Chavs) who can’t stop tweaking their motor (Nova)…

After 12 weekends back to back streaming, I’m taking this Sunday off to enjoy a nice recharge and begin exercising so I can bring more good energy.

Some interesting little upgrades are coming to the show soon (I am forever tinkering away and I think you’ll enjoy what’s coming).

PS. My partner in crime from PROGRESS: ON just released this. I’ve learned a lot about my set programming from him in the last couple of years (and still think I have a lot to learn). Alan is one of those genuinely underrated DJs who deserves recognition so if you’re in need of a good Prog hit, you are welcome to get stuck in.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend & Mother’s Day