Question / Help streaming over unstable 3g connection

[esmeraldo18]

Hi. We are trying to stream live events over 3g connection. Measured upload speed of 3g usually 3-5 mbits. But when we try to stream from crowded places it starts to freeze. The point is; 3g connection sometimes reach good upload rates but for a fews seconds it disconnects, latency is not important for us, about 5 mins of delay can be acceptable. Is it possible to stream without dropping with huge buffer length? What settings to adjust might help? Thank you.

I found a software called "connectify dispatch" it bonds several internet connections to get high up/down datarates. It makes very huge difference on http://www.speedtest.net measurement. Unfortunately I guess rtmp uses one socket to stream, but this software splits sockets to best available connection, so again stream goes over one connection so no difference I get at all. Is there any way to use one rtmp stream to stream over multiple sockets? If it is possible any way, will be a revolution I guess :)

 

[R1CH]

Unfortunately there is no way to multiplex an RTMP connection over more than a single TCP connection. At least not without a 3rd party proxy solution running on both ends.

 

[esmeraldo18]

this graph I prepaired with ms paint shows the bandwith of my 3g connection. As you can see it is not stable and I can not adjust the bitrate settings for it. Bitrates lower than 100 kbps can be helpful but the image quality is awful. Are there any ways (buffer length... etc) to use connection more efficient? For example, I want to stream 500 kbps if connection drops it waits than upload the passed scenes and new ones when more bandwith available, 5 mins of latency could be acceptable.

 

[Kharay]

Where are you streaming to? Because, as it is, Twitch.TV simply drops the connection if no data has been received in the past 5 seconds. Which is not something we have any control over.

 

[esmeraldo18]

to my own wowza server. I can reach the hosting provider to adjust common settings.

 

[dodgepong]

Streaming requires a pretty stable connection, and isn't very tolerant of wild swings in single-connection bandwidth availability. If you connection keeps fluctuating like you describe, then I think you might be out of luck.

 

[Kharay]

There are ways to stabilize the bitrate. However, OBS has no functionality that I am aware of to buffer in the way you'd like it to. And given the wide range of variation I don't see a reasonable bitrate we could try and stabilize it at. Instinctively I'd have suggested 500 Kbps but whenever the connection would indeed drop to that 100 Kbps level, the connection would still not be nearly enough.

In this case I think a second piece of software would be required but I'm not sure of a specific piece of software that could make this possible. I'm sure one exists, I just don't know of any specific one.

 

[esmeraldo18]

I'm seeking for a solution for broadcasting about an hour from field. I tried everthing including fmle to split 1 mb pieces of video than I manually upload videos to cloud and the main computer at the studio adds coming videos to queue and rebroadcast it with stable fiber connection, which I succesfully broadcast. But it is very hard to handle. Someone allways have to add queue and naming of splitted files is not usefull in fmle because it adds the time and date so you don't know which part is the next, or figure out if there is any missing part. I thought maybe I can use this beautiful software for that kind of broadcasting from field. As I said lateny is not a big problem for me.

Splitting video files to hdd with a number added to the end will be a great feature for that kind of usage.
live_01.flv
live_02.flv...
This way I can use OBS to encode live stream and record to hdd with splitting them. With a cloud software it automatically uploads videos part by part so the main computer in the studio gets videos with the numbers so they'll know which is the next. This way I can use the "connectify dispatch" software (which is a useful software to bond multiple 3g connections) to upload videos faster. Because this way cloud software makes multiple socket connections to upload just recorded and splitted videos so multiple connections can be used at the same time. Which I was looking for direct rtmp streaming.