Stream troubleshooting

Everything on this page lives on the Studio’s Go Live page, which is where the platform tells you what it actually received from your encoder.

Test your connection first (bandwidth test)

You can stream to us without going live. Add ?bandwidthtest=true to the end of your stream key in your encoder and start streaming as usual:

live_yourkeyhere?bandwidthtest=true

During a bandwidth test:

• Nobody can watch. Your channel stays offline everywhere — browse, search, your channel page, your followers’ feeds, and any go-live announcement. None of them ever learn the publish happened.
• Nothing is recorded. No past stream is created, whatever your recording setting says.
• You see everything. The Go Live page shows a private preview of exactly what arrived, plus the full encoder readout below.

Bitrate limits still apply — a test uses the same uplink and the same ingest capacity as a broadcast.

The Go Live page has a copy button for the test key. When you’re ready to broadcast for real, remove the ?bandwidthtest=true suffix.

Tip

This is the fastest way to answer “is it me or is it my connection?”. Frame-arrival jitter in particular is something your encoder cannot tell you — OBS reports what it encoded, not what survived the trip to us.

Caution

A bandwidth test is refused while you’re already live. Stop your broadcast first.

The encoder readout

Once your encoder is connected — live or testing — the Go Live page shows what actually arrived, refreshing every few seconds. It reports Healthy or Needs attention overall, plus:

Reading	What it means	Flagged when
Video codec & profile	What your encoder is sending	Anything but H.264 is refused outright
Resolution & frame rate	The picture we measured, not what OBS claims	—
Keyframe interval	Your real GOP length, in seconds	Above 2.5 s
Audio	Codec, sample rate, stereo/mono	Anything but AAC is refused outright
Bitrate	Current measured bitrate	Over the limit — see Quality & bitrate
Stability	How much your bitrate varies	Variation above 15%
Jitter	How evenly frames arrive over the network	Above 50 ms

Stability and jitter are about the trip from you to us, not your encoder’s settings. High jitter with a healthy bitrate usually means Wi-Fi, a congested uplink, or an unstable route — not OBS.

Note

This readout is on the Go Live page only. Your live moderation dashboard shows viewer count, chat and bitrate warnings, but not the encoder health panel.

Your stream history — the Inspector

Every time your encoder connects, the session is recorded in Studio → Inspector: bitrate and jitter over time, the encoder details, and every event. Bandwidth tests appear there too, and appear nowhere else. Sessions are kept for about two weeks.

Use it to answer “was last night’s stream actually bad, or did it just feel bad?” — see Inspector.

Why a publish was refused

If your encoder connects and immediately drops, the reason for the last refusal is shown on the Go Live page. OBS itself will usually just say the connection failed and retry in a loop, so the Go Live page is the place to look.

What you’ll see	What to do
No stream key was supplied	Paste your stream key into your encoder’s Stream settings.
That stream key is not in the expected format	Copy it again from the Go Live page.
That stream key was rejected	The key doesn’t match any account. Copy the current one from the Go Live page — regenerating invalidates the old one.
This account is not allowed to stream	Your key is fine. Contact support to request streaming access.
Streaming is temporarily disabled across the platform	Your key is fine. Try again later.
The platform is in maintenance…	Your key is fine. Try again shortly.
Your stream key is blocked	A bitrate-enforcement block. Regenerating your key will not lift it — contact support.
Your stream key is suspended after a bitrate violation	Temporary. The Go Live page shows when it lifts. See Quality & bitrate.
This channel is already live on another server	Stop the other encoder, wait a few seconds, then start again.
Publishing is blocked from this network	See Blocked networks below.
<codec> video is not supported	Set your encoder’s video codec to H.264.
H.264 <profile> is not supported	Set your encoder’s profile to Main or High (8-bit 4:2:0).
<codec> audio is not supported	Set your encoder’s audio codec to AAC.
Your stream was stopped by the platform	A moderator or an automatic rule ended your broadcast. A reason is included when there is one.

Blocked networks

The platform can refuse publishes coming from networks classified as high-risk — typically VPNs, proxies and hosting providers rather than home connections. If you see “Publishing is blocked from this network”:

1. Turn off any VPN or proxy and stream from your normal connection.
2. If you have a legitimate reason to stream from that network, contact staff — an exemption can be added to your channel. There’s no way to request or view this yourself.

This check fails open: if the platform can’t classify your network, you’re allowed through.

Reconnecting after a drop

If your encoder disconnects, your stream doesn’t end immediately.

• Your channel shows as offline to viewers, but the stream is held in a reconnecting state for 5 minutes.
• Reconnect within that window and the same stream continues — same page, same chat, same clip source — and the downtime is subtracted so the saved past stream’s length reads correctly.
• Miss the window and the stream is finalised as ended, timed from when you actually dropped rather than when the platform noticed.

Two things to know:

• Come back to the same place. Reconnecting to a different ingest server while the old session is still held gives you “Your channel is already publishing from another ingest server.” Stop everything, wait a moment, start again.
• The newest publish wins. If a second encoder starts on your key, it takes over and the older connection is closed. Two encoders can never write to one stream.

Viewers’ players hold the stream open slightly longer than your grace window, so a quick reconnect usually isn’t visible as anything more than a buffer.

Common situations

My encoder connects, then drops over and over. Almost always the video codec. Check H.264 first, then the profile, then the audio codec — and read the refusal reason on the Go Live page.

My stream was stopped and my key is suspended. That’s the bitrate hard limit. See What happens if you go over.

My viewers say the stream is behind / stuttering, but OBS looks fine. Check jitter and stability in the encoder readout. OBS reports what it encoded, not what reached us.

My keyframe interval warning won’t go away. Set the keyframe interval to exactly 2 seconds in OBS (Output → Streaming → Keyframe Interval). “Auto” can drift well past that.

My past streams aren’t being saved. See Saving past streams — there’s a platform-wide switch you can’t see.

Still stuck? Reach staff and other creators on Discord, or open a support ticket.