How to Optimize IRL Streaming Data Usage

Live streaming in real life from different locations? The most important thing is having a fast and reliable Internet connection to serve you while live streaming. But how fast and how to make it more reliable?

Most IRL live streamers go with multiple cellular connections. They use those on dedicated broadcasting devices (like computers) that can combine the connections together. However, things can be optimized here as well – why not use available Wi-Fi networks if those are in range? This will save your mobile data fees and hopefully provide faster Internet.

In this article we’ll show you a couple of tricks on how to optimize the IRL streaming data usage.

When IRL streaming, you have to take three things into account:

1. Bitrate
2. Framerate
3. Resolution

All of these factors will affect the quality of your video, how much processing power it takes to encode your video, and how much bandwidth it takes to broadcast your video. It is always better to have a steady stream with a slightly lower resolution or framerate than it is to have a super high-quality stream that is constantly buffering.

Here are the best video bitrates to live streaming without buffering on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Live:

• Full HD Video with a High Framerate (1080p, 60fps) > your bitrate should be 4,500 to 6,000 kbps
• Full HD with a standard Framerate (1080p, 30fps) > your bitrate should be 3,500 to 5,000 kbps
• Regular HD with High Framerate (720p, 60fps) > your bitrate should be 3,500 to 5,000 kbps
• Regular HD with Standard Framerate (720p, 30fps) > your bitrate should be 2,500 to 4,000 kbps

So, to calculate the monthly data usage, just multiply the bitrates above with the number of seconds you will stream per day and the number or days you’ll stream in a month. Let’s take an example:

• you wish to stream 720p @ 30 fps for one hour daily on weekends
• that’s 3600 seconds x roughly 9 days per month
• the total amount of monthly data usage for a 2,500 kbps IRL stream would be around 10 GB

We’ve all been there – experiencing unreliable Internet at some point. But it’s most annoying when you’re streaming live to your followers.

The most common situations where you might encounter these type of connectivity issues live streams include:

• When traveling / on the go – on the street, bus, train. You may be connected to a bad / spotty WiFi hotspot.
• In crowded areas – the available bandwidth for both WiFi and cellular data connections may not be sufficient to serve everyone on a stadium, at a concert or at a frat house party.
• At home – if your ISP is doing maintenance work right when you’re broadcasting live streams. Or if they’re throttling your connection.

Here’s what happens: if the connection is unreliable, you may not be live streaming at a high resolution due to limited available bandwidth, so your videos may appear jittery or choppy. Plus – if your Internet connection is spotty and disconnects for some reason – you will lose many of your viewers at least for that specific stream.

Speedify is the perfect IRL streaming backpack companion. It’s a powerful software app that gets you faster, more reliable and secure Internet. Speedify allows you to use multiple Internet connections at the same time. Speedify runs on computers, smartphones, tablets and various devices that run Linux, including Raspberry Pi.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money on dedicated bonding hardware to combine multiple cellular connections! Speedify does that easy on any device. You can combine any mix of two or more WiFi networks, cellular networks and wired networks. By doing that, you’re not only solving the reliability aspect of live streaming through the automatic Internet failover mechanism, but also the  bandwidth and latency issues.

In order to combine 2 or more Internet connections at once, Speedify uses channel bonding technology. It’s the only standalone software service that does that. See below how we managed to combine 10 connections at the same time.

If one of your connections fails, Speedify automatically reroutes all the traffic through your other available connection(s). This happens in the background without you having to do anything. When the dropped connection is back online, Speedify will pick it up and start using it again.

The great thing about Speedify channel bonding software is that you can configure each connection you’re using individually and set priority rules. This means that you can:

• set data limits per connection
• configure when a specific connection should be used
• set up unlimited and metered connections so the software can optimize the traffic between them.

Read more about connection settings in our knowledge base.

Speedify doesn’t just get you a fast and reliable Internet connection when live streaming in real life. Speedify also protects you from compromised WiFi networks and snooping hackers. It uses advanced encryption to make sure your private data stays under your control.

Before Speedify, users often had to choose between security and speed. As Speedify was designed with speed as one of its primary goals, you no longer have to sacrifice speed for security. You can have both.

Forget about low quality video streaming, buffering or even disconnects when IRL live streaming! Get started with Speedify today!