Streamate contests are often announced days before they occur, sometimes making it difficult to plan around them. Here is a prediction of this year’s bonuses, contests and events for 2024. While this is based on previous data, this is only a guess – the dates and events predicted may be incorrect.
How to Fix Poor Stream Quality on Streamate
You’ve been streaming for years and nothing has changed on your end. Suddenly, every time you log on to Streamate your bitrate is in the red. Your monitor reads “Stream quality: Poor” in SMConnect. Your resolution is low. Your picture looks grainy when you watch yourself. What gives? Let’s look into common fixes for SMConnect.
Why is this happening now?
SMConnect is changing and growing. This bitrate issue became more prevalent right around the time that facial recognition was introduced. CPU usage went up dramatically, meaning system stress and other factors suddenly came into play when this was not an issue before. Sadly this may mean that some older computers will simply no longer be able to work with SMConnect, at least not without some tweaks. This is exceptionally frustrating when we are not experiencing this problem on other sites.
The fact that the site is growing can also mean some growing pains on Streamate’s server side. We’ll explore how to get around that in this comprehensive guide.
Minimum Computer Recommendation
Streamatehelp lists a computer with an i7 processor with 16gb of ram as the minimum requirements to stream at 1080p. This is more than other sites recommend, and overkill if we were allowed to use OBS. What Streamatehelp doesn’t mention is video cards.
Video cards can offload quite a bit of processing need by handling video rendering, so the processor is freed up for other tasks.
Because of this, if you are in the market to buy a prebuilt computer or laptop I always recommend computers geared more towards gaming.
What to Test on your Network
If you have been streaming with no issues on this computer and the change happened suddenly, you know your hardware didn’t suddenly become obsolete overnight. SMConnect is however getting more and more bloated. Let’s start with the things we can test, change and control.
Check your Upload Speed
The site most will recommend is http://speedtest.net. You don’t have to use this site, feel free to search for any site that will test your speeds. What you are looking for is Upload speed. While SMConnect only shows 3-4 Mbps in use, the reality is it takes a bit more than that and you will want a minimum of 10 Mbps upload speed available.
You will want to check your internet provider’s plan and ensure you are on a plan that offers a minimum of 10Mbps upload.
If you are testing at less than 10Mbps upload, but paying for it, give your ISP a call.
But before calling your ISP
Before you pick up your phone and yell at your ISP, check your network usage. Do you have roommates? Family? Kids? A partner? Is there a possibility that someone else is using your upload speed? Since upload is separate from download, you should still be able to stream your favorite content in the background. You can watch your computer’s network activity through Task Manager. There may be tools on your router to view full network usage. You can also try seeing if you get a better connection by unplugging other devices from your router. Speaking of unplugging…
Ensure your computer is hard-wired to Ethernet
You may get great speeds with Wifi, even test at excellent upload numbers. The reality is, Wifi packets may be dropped during streams, resulting in choppy and unappealing performance. It is not an ideal solution for a streamer. Do anything you can to connect your computer straight to your router with an ethernet cable. If you must, run a cable across your house. I crawled across my hot, cramped attic through fiberglass and drilled holes in the ceiling to drop cable. Yes, it’s that important. This is your business – what would you do if your boss asked you to find a solution to this problem?
What to Change
Your internet is testing great. You know this computer can handle SMConnect. What should we look at next?
Check your browser
Lately, Chrome has been the only browser working with all features in SMConnect (August 2023). If you want access to the video recording feature, you must use Chrome. However some models have reported the opposite – you might find better stability in Edge, or another browser. Give changing a browser a try if you’ve exhausted your other options.
Check your Hardware Acceleration
Remember back when we were talking about video cards and gaming computers? That’s where this is going to kick in. Turning on hardware acceleration will ensure that SMConnect is offloading any duties to your video card where possible, freeing up your processor. In Chrome settings you simply need to search for the words, and it pops up. Toggle the switch that reads “Use hardware acceleration when available.” Check your current browser for instructions on enabling hardware acceleration.
Close all other programs
While hardware acceleration will help an older system, it won’t fix all the issues with SMConnect’s new found bloatedness. You will still want to close any and all other programs on your computer. This also means turning off any multi-streaming for testing purposes. If it’s been a while, give your computer a restart. That way you can test fresh without opening anything else first.
Check your SMConnect Resolution
In SMConnect, go to Stream Settings and check your Video Resolution. For some models, they’ve found that their resolution setting was bumped up to 1440, despite never reaching that number while streaming. Sometimes this will not just lower your bitrate, but instead bump your resolution far lower than HD.
Set your video resolution to Up to 1080p. If you suspect your computer is a bit older and that might be the issue, you can also try setting your resolution to Up to 720p. 720p is still considered “HD” and will not lower your ranking.
If your issue isn’t low bitrate but low resolution, this can be your fix.
Monitor your CPU
Open Task Manager, have it aside while you are streaming. You will want to watch your CPU usage. If it is hitting 100% after making these changes, and that 100% usage is consistent with red bitrate and poor stream quality, you may need to consider upgrading your computer. You can try dropping your resolution to 720p as detailed in the step above, but if you have already tried this, it may be time to upgrade.
What to Remember
You’ve speed tested your internet, plugged in your ethernet, turned on hardware acceleration, set your resolution to 1080p, closed all other programs, and your CPU isn’t hitting 100%. Everything looks good on your end. Before pulling your hair out, remember these three things.
Give it a bit
Sometimes these slow periods just pass. Give it a few minutes, and it may return to normal. If you have just started your stream it can take 2-3 minutes to stabilize your bitrate.
Give it content
If you are testing SMConnect speeds while looking at a blank wall, ceiling, or the back of your lens cap, your streaming quality meters won’t give true and proper data for troubleshooting. Streaming video size is based on what’s going on in the image. If you’re not moving around you are sending a simple, still image, much less bandwidth than full moving video. So, if you are sending a still image the bitrate may drop without any problems – it simply has less data to send. To ensure a true and proper test, make sure your camera is pointed at something moving, such as yourself.
Give it a once-over
Sometimes when an update is pushed, our settings change without us knowing. Go through your SMConnect settings and ensure nothing has been changed on your end.
When to use a VPN
Congratulations! You’ve done just about everything to confirm that the issue is not you. Unfortunately that means one of two things. Either the connection between you and the local Streamate server is unstable, or the local Streamate server is overloaded, typically occurring during contest weeks. Sometimes major internet backbones go down. This may mean other sites are down as well, or experiencing connectivity issues. Personally, I think when major sites have outages, that’s a great time to jump online. When customers get bored of social media not loading, they may turn to other forms of entertainment.
On most streaming sites that use OBS, you can manually pick the server you are connecting to. That way if your local server is having problems, you can try another further server and see if you can get a better connection. However, because Streamate requires we use the web interface SMConnect, we do not have this option.
This is a good time to try a VPN.
What is a VPN?
VPN stands for “virtual private network” – a service that protects your internet connection and privacy online. VPNs create an encrypted tunnel for your data, and protect your online identity by hiding your IP address.
While it’s not necessary for cam sites, it would be recommended to use a VPN on direct connections such as Skype calls. Skype is notorious for leaking IP information, so be sure to protect yourself.
A VPN will make all your outgoing traffic appear to be from a different location. Using this method, you can try appearing at another location. Once you hit connect, SMConnect will recognize this and connect you to your new “local” server, thus potentially bypassing network issues you may have.
What VPN should I use?
Known VPNs working with Streamate at full speeds include:
Proton VPN (Free)
Private Internet Access
Express VPN
Nord VPN
Most VPNs have a free trial, and excellent coupons are often available just by searching a little. If you prefer to use another VPN that isn’t on this list, go for it! As mentioned you will typically get a free trial to test and ensure it will work with your setup.
My VPN is installed, now what?
Great! When you install your VPN, you’ll have to pick a location. I typically pick something a few time zones away. Some will put their location all the way at Seattle, where Streamate HQ is located. Open up SMConnect, connect your vibe toys, switch on your VPN and connect. Give it a few minutes to establish a stable connection. With a little luck, you’ll see your connection speed jump back up to green again.
Blocking users on SMConnect
You can use this quick tool to block users in SMConnect. All you will need is the User ID. This will only block them from messaging, if you would like to also block them from chat you will need to do so from your block list.
Enter Customer ID#
You can also paste the full User Details URL here instead.
You can get the User ID from the pop up window when clicking on a user name. You will need to copy the ID # out of the URL. The URL will look like this:
https://streamatemodels.com/customer/details?userid=########
Remember if you would like to block them from both chat and messages, you will need to do so from your block list. Occasionally, the date will not record correctly and will default to Jan 1, 1970. If this happens, they will be at the end of the list.
Why January 1st, 1970?
January 1st, 1970 at 00:00:00 UTC is referred to as the Unix epoch. Early Unix engineers picked that date arbitrarily because they needed to set a uniform date for the start of time, and New Year’s Day, 1970, seemed most convenient. If the information is somehow missing, this will be put in its place.