Internet Connectivity: Ecamm Live Twitch Streaming Essential Element: Speedify App for Increased Bandwidth and Low Latency
Ecamm Live gives Mac broadcasters plenty of control, but no setting inside it can rescue a weak upload (the video leaving your Mac for Twitch, YouTube or Facebook Live). When that upload sags you get dropped frames (chunks of picture discarded), plus blocky video and sometimes a disconnect from the streaming server.
Speedify is an app that carries your outgoing broadcast over Wi-Fi, 4G/5G cellular, wired Ethernet, Starlink and other internet connections together, so a stumble on one internet connection does not reach your viewers. With only one connection, Speedify works as an encrypted VPN and cannot stop that connection from dropping. The sections ahead troubleshoot Ecamm Live streaming problems, tackle dropped frames and pixelated video, and show how the tests went with Speedify on.
Speedify keeps your live stream online when one internet connection isn’t enough
A dropped or stuttering Ecamm Live broadcast can mean:
- being unprofessional to your audience.
- losing followers, if this happens frequently.
- losing progress in a game you’re streaming with Ecamm Live on Twitch or people missing important bits from a discussion or interview.
This article explains how you can get a fast and reliable Internet connection at all times, so you can focus on the Ecamm Live streaming and not on fixing the problems of your Internet connection. Speedify helps combine multiple internet connections (Wi-Fi, 4G, 5G, Ethernet, Starlink, Satellite, and more) to improve the stability, speed, and security of your online experiences.
Troubleshooting Ecamm Live Streaming Problems
Why is your Ecamm Live stream experiencing issues? Why does Ecamm Live encounter network errors? How can you avoid dropped frames and buffering?
These are just a few of the questions that often come up in the live streaming community. Dropped frames, low stream quality and disconnects are usually related to connection issues. According to this article, for 4K video streaming, an upload speed of 25 Mbps is recommended. If you don’t have that, you could contact your ISP and upgrade your plan, try another streaming server or restart your network equipment; there is more in this comprehensive troubleshooting guide.
Broadcasting with Ecamm Live on Twitch requires a steady and fast Internet connection so your stream’s video quality doesn’t drop or disconnect. Speedify is built for that, from optimizing live streams to moving the stream to your other connection when one drops, so you stay online during a stream.
Fix Ecamm Live Dropped Frames, Avoid Buffering and Pixelated Videos
Ecamm Live is the preferred platform for live streaming for many Twitch content creators. Like any software for Mac, it’s got all the bells and whistles you may want built-in, and it’s very user-friendly.
Speedify helps live streamers on Twitch and other platforms improve their broadcasts, so the Speedify team put Speedify to the test with Ecamm Live. Below are the results from that testing and how you can enhance your live streams.
Testing Speedify with Ecamm Live
There are many online reviews and discussions where streamers agree that Speedify helps their live streaming. The Speedify team wanted to measure how much, after the release of the Speedify protocol.
Test setup: the goal was to compare Twitch streaming with Ecamm Live with and without Speedify. The Speedify team ran several tests on a full HD video stream. Data is according to the Twitch Inspector tool.
All tests were conducted via Ecamm Live on a Macbook Air Late 2015 featuring an Intel dual core CPU running MacOS 11.5.1.
Streaming video: 1080p @ 30 fps
Ecamm Live and Speedify settings were left to their default. When running, Speedify was connecting to the fastest available server, in Europe.
Testing scenarios: tests ran with and without Speedify using one or more of these Internet connections:
- Bad Wi-Fi: a Raspberry Pi access point limited to 1 Mbps download / 1 Mbps upload
- Wi-Fi connection: 50 Mbps download / 40 Mbps upload
- Cellular hotspots
Test results
First, the Speedify team tested on an average Wi-Fi connection (50 Mbps / 40 Mbps). With Speedify on the Wi-Fi alone, the average bitrate was 40% higher than without Speedify in this test, but the stream still hit 0 kbps and 0 fps once. Adding a cellular connection kept the lowest bitrate at 2,272 kbps and the frame rate at 30 fps throughout. That steady floor is what a second connection adds; a single-connection gain like this one will not repeat on every network.
| 1080p @ 30 fps streaming | Wi-Fi No Speedify | Wi-Fi + Speedify | Wi-Fi + Cell + Speedify |
| Bitrate Average | 2,625 kbps | 3,695 kbps | 3,363 kbps |
| Bitrate Max: | 3,763 kbps | 4,040 kbps | 3,742 kbps |
| Bitrate Min: | 275 kbps | 0 kbps | 2,272 kbps |
| Framerate Average: | 30 fps | 30 fps | 30 fps |
| Framerate Max: | 30 fps | 30 fps | 30 fps |
| Framerate Min: | 30 fps | 0 fps | 30 fps |
Then, the team tested the bad Wi-Fi connection, which should be similar to any public Wi-Fi you may be using to live stream IRL, for example. Here, adding Speedify and mixing that bad Wi-Fi with a cellular connection raised the average bitrate by 125%.
| 1080p @ 30 fps streaming | Bad Wi-Fi | Bad Wi-Fi + Speedify | Bad Wi-Fi + Cell + Speedify |
| Bitrate Average | 705 kbps | 823 kbps | 1,587 kbps |
| Bitrate Max: | 1,163 kbps | 1,319 kbps | 3,983 kbps |
| Bitrate Min: | 261 kbps | 335 kbps | 0 kbps |
| Framerate Average: | 30 fps | 30 fps | 30 fps |
| Framerate Max: | 30 fps | 30 fps | 30 fps |
| Framerate Min: | 30 fps | 0 fps | 0 fps |
Takeaways from the testing team
- Ecamm Live is light and easy to use, with enough settings for basic video streaming and support for a lot of streaming services: Twitch, YouTube, Facebook Live, Restream, etc.
- Similar to Streamyard, Ecamm Live seems to decrease the quality of the video, but not the output resolution or the framerate.
- Adding Speedify on top of a regular Wi-Fi or to a bad Wi-Fi and tossing the cellular connection as well resulted in the best video quality.
Speedify Software vs Hardware Combining Devices such as LiveU and Peplink
Combining connections for faster, more reliable Internet connectivity comes in different forms. Speedify is the software flavor. Another, much more costly flavor is dedicated hardware rigs, such as the LiveU series or Peplink routers. Ultimately it’s your choice, but here are the main perks Speedify brings to the table versus those hardware options:
- the Speedify protocol: opening up to 8 parallel sockets on each combined connection and intelligently utilizing them to prioritize your streaming traffic
- dedicated servers for those truly dedicated live streamers: more performance, closer to the streaming ingest servers, and a service level agreement.
- flexibility: you don’t have to carry a dedicated device for combining connections. Speedify can run on the device you’re streaming from. Or you can use Speedify to set up a custom router that combines connections on Windows or Linux, if you want.
- cost: only a small fraction of what you have to pay for the dedicated hardware.
An events company that depends on live streaming explains in this video how it moved to virtual events. Read its full success story.
Speedify
Get started with Speedify today.
Speedify combines Wi-Fi, 4G/5G cellular, Ethernet, Starlink and satellite into one faster, more reliable internet connection. Free to try: 5 GB a month with a free account. No credit card required.
🚀 Speed
Faster uploads and downloads, because Speedify uses all your internet connections at once.
📶 Stability
If one internet connection drops, Speedify moves your traffic to the others in milliseconds.
🔒 Security
AES-256 encryption on every internet connection, on any network you join.
15M+ downloads worldwide. 75K+ five-star reviews on iOS and Android.