Streaming to Twitch with vMix Done Right: Get Reliable Internet

vMix is one of the most popular live streaming software for Windows PCs at the moment. Supporting a wide rage of inputs and including native support for multi-bitrate streaming, vMix can appeal both to basic users, but also to power users, who need more from their live stream software. And with a 60-day risk-free trial period, it's a great service to at least consider when choosing your live streaming program.

But no matter how well you set up your streaming, overlay channels and multi coder, your Internet connection ultimately makes or breaks a successful vMix stream. Whether you're going live on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook Live and other platforms - you'll need fast and reliable upload connectivity in order to get the best video quality for your vMix live stream. 

Dropped frames, buffering, pixelated video quality and even disconnects from the streaming server - these are just a few symptoms of a bad Internet connection. That can lead to:

• You appearing unprofessional to your audience.
• You losing followers, if this happens frequently.
• You losing progress in a game you're streaming with vMix 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 streaming and not on fixing the problems of your Internet connection.

Why is your vMix stream experiencing issues? Why does vMix get that network error? How can you avoid dropped frames?

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. What you can do here is contact your ISP, choose another streaming server, restart your network equipment - more in this comprehensive troubleshooting guide.

Broadcasting with vMix on Twitch requires a steady and fast Internet connection so your stream’s video quality doesn’t drop or disconnect. That’s why Internet connectivity is very important. Here at Speedify we get that - our service does everything to help live streaming - from optimizing live streams to making sure you never get offline during a stream.

vMix is the preferred platform for live streaming for many Twitch content creators. It’s available for free for 60 days, it’s got all the bells and whistles you may want, and it’s very user-friendly. The only downside is that it's only available for Windows PCs at this moment.

Since here at Speedify we help live streamers from Twitch and other platforms improve their broadcasts, we always want to know exactly how much our service helps content creators. So, we put Speedify to the test with vMix. Below are the results we got from testing and how you can enhance your live streams.

There are many online reviews and discussions where streamers agree that Speedify helps their live streaming. But we wanted to test it ourselves and see exactly how much it does that. Especially now, when we have the brand new Speedify protocol in place.

Test setup: our goal is to evaluate Twitch streaming improvements with vMix when using Speedify vs. not using Speedify. So we ran multiple tests on a full HD video stream. Data is according to the Twitch Inspector tool.

All tests were conducted via vMix on a PC with the following configuration:

Operating system: Windows 10
Configuration: AMD Ryzen 5 1600x, 16 GB DDR4, Nvidia 1060 6 GB GPU

Streaming video: 1080p @ 60 fps

vMix and Speedify settings were left to their default.

Testing scenarios: we tested with and without Speedify using one or more of these Internet connections:

• Bad Wi-Fi: a limited Raspberry Pi access point with 1 Mbps download / upload speeds
• Wi-Fi connection: 50 Mbps download / 40 Mbps upload
• Cellular hotspots

Test results

First we went ahead to test with the 50 / 40 Mbps Wi-Fi connection. When using Speedify to combine that Wi-Fi with one and with two cellular connections at once, the average bitrate improved by up to 34% vs. when not using Speedify.

1080p @ 60 fps streaming	Wi-Fi No Speedify	Wi-Fi+ Speedify	Wi-Fi + Cell + Speedify	Wi-Fi + 2 Cell + Speedify
Bitrate Average:	4,387 kbps	4,306 kbps	5,309 kbps	5,883 kbps
Bitrate Max:	5,606 kbps	5,583 kbps	6,659 kbps	6,518 kbps
Bitrate Min:	796 kbps	1,045 kbps	646 kbps	5,570 kbps
Framerate Average:	60 fps	60 fps	60 fps	60 fps
Framerate Max:	60 fps	60 fps	60 fps	60 fps
Framerate Min:	60 fps	60 fps	60 fps	60 fps

Then, we tested using that bad Wi-Fi hotspot, which should be familiar to any of you trying to live stream or get work done on most public Wi-Fi hotspots. The results here show a massive improvement on the average bitrate - 3.5 times better; even with just one cellular connection added into the mix, we got more than twice the bitrate vs. when not using Speedify.

1080p @ 60 fps streaming	Bad Wi-Fi	Bad Wi-Fi + Speedify	Bad Wi-Fi + Cell + Speedify	Bad Wi-Fi + 2 Cell + Speedify
Bitrate Average:	1,627 kbps	1,386 kbps	3,537 kbps	5,729 kbps
Bitrate Max:	5,527 kbps	5,525 kbps	5,497 kbps	6,663 kbps
Bitrate Min:	218 kbps	290 kbps	933 kbps	58 kbps
Framerate Average:	9 fps	17 fps	33 fps	60 fps
Framerate Max:	60 fps	60 fps	60 fps	60 fps
Framerate Min:	0	0	0	60 fps

Takeaways from the testing team

• Great live streaming software with a lot of options and fine tunings with a lot of external support for hardware and software;
• Can be used for actual streaming production, multiple camera feeds, stream monitoring, etc.
• Not suited for beginners and it only runs on Windows

Connection bonding 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 bonding 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 guaranteed service level agreements.
• flexibility - you don’t have to carry a dedicated bonding device with you. Speedify can run on the device you’re streaming from. Or you can use Speedify to set up a custom dedicated bonding router on Windows or Linux, if you want.
• cost - only a small fraction of what you have to pay for the dedicated hardware.

Somebody whose company and job depends on successful live streaming said this about Speedify: