Watching a friend (or myself) results in super poor quality

[Z0r ⛴]

Hey,

when I try to watch the broadcast of friends of mine with the internal broadcasting feature, I always receive a super low resolution video feed, which however has a extrem low latency (almost live). Problem is that the video is almost unrecognizable. When investigating the "technical details" inside the stream, it is said to have a resolution betwenn 320x180 or 180x120, although it is configure otherwise. The sound is also very poor and the fps tends to collapse from time to time to 1 FPS.

The problem also occurs on my side when others watch me. I checked my configuration as well and have configured:
- Friends can watch me
- Resolution: 720p
- Max. Bitrate: 3500 kbit/s
- Best Performance
- Show Upload statistics

The upload statistics on my side show that the stream is acitvated, but allegedly no one is watch (which is not true) and i upload 0 kpbs at 0 fps.

Any idea what the problem might be? This occured out of nowhere from one day to another and searching on google did not yield any results similar to my problem.

Looking forward to some ideas.

Best

[KiRiASU]

Yeah, I have the exact same issue when I'm watching my brother (and vise versa), who's using the same router. I have this issue since ages. Valve doesn't really care, i'm afraid, The sound quality is abyssmal, too.

[Jaunitta 🌸]

what I use with my system with a resolution of 1920x1280, 16 gig ram internet fiber optics speeds very high.
Video dimensions 1280x720p
Optimize encoding for best quality
Max bitrate 2500 Kbits
I use friends can request to watch.
when your broadcast first starts it takes a while to kind of buffer and download the stream once it has then your friends can watch.Its not instantly live I dont know the language but give it time and see if the video will just appear after around 5 minutes
have you checked this?
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6730-TOAK-6497

[ImJesus]

Originally posted by Jaunitta 🌸:

what I use with my system with a resolution of 1920x1280, 16 gig ram internet fiber optics speeds very high.
Video dimensions 1280x720p
Optimize encoding for best quality
Max bitrate 2500 Kbits
I use friends can request to watch.
when your broadcast first starts it takes a while to kind of buffer and download the stream once it has then your friends can watch.Its not instantly live I dont know the language but give it time and see if the video will just appear after around 5 minutes
have you checked this?
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6730-TOAK-6497

BS!!!!!!!
I`m watching my friend`s broadcast for 1h right now!!! And I can count all pixels with only 5 fingers...
STEAM, WTF...?

[DeadShot - CybaGirl]

Originally posted by ImJesus:

Originally posted by Jaunitta 🌸:

what I use with my system with a resolution of 1920x1280, 16 gig ram internet fiber optics speeds very high.
Video dimensions 1280x720p
Optimize encoding for best quality
Max bitrate 2500 Kbits
I use friends can request to watch.
when your broadcast first starts it takes a while to kind of buffer and download the stream once it has then your friends can watch.Its not instantly live I dont know the language but give it time and see if the video will just appear after around 5 minutes
have you checked this?
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6730-TOAK-6497

BS!!!!!!!
I`m watching my friend`s broadcast for 1h right now!!! And I can count all pixels with only 5 fingers...
STEAM, WTF...?

Have you tried another browser and with no plugins or extensions installed?

Have you tested your internet connection?

If you watch someone on Twitch is there any issues?

[Bubble]

I guess since it's a small company they are having a hard time fixing it.

[funkjaw]

I was having this same issue while trying to watch my friend play a game. The playback resolution was super low hovering around the 480p with lots of stuttering even though his settings were 1080p, 3500kbs, etc.

BUT I FOUND THE FIX!

Instead of using the steam client to watch your buddy play a game, use your favorite web browser and watch the game on steam's website https://steamcommunity.com/chat/

This completely fixed all issues related to the stream. It now plays back in perfect 1920x1080 with no stuttering.

[sijolas]

Thanks that worked fine.
i tested it with Google Chrome which apparently has the same issues than with the steam client. With Firefox it works perfect.

[BodyTalk]

same issue