Buffering

No or bad Internet connection? No Problem! LIVE4 has you covered.

LIVE4 follows the no frame left behind policy even when live streaming on really bad or flaky internet connection. Read on to learn more.

Q: I started using LIVE4 to stream mostly mountain biking experience, love the concept of the app but I don’t seem to understand the video buffering. I’d like to learn because there’s usually no connection in the mountains. Do I need to continue feed until I get a good signal, or can I stop feed and keep connected?

A: I personally use LIVE4 for skydiving, at 14 thousand feet there’s almost no signal, so the struggle is very familiar to me.

Most of live streaming apps and hardware solutions drop video when internet connection is down or flaky. That’s very annoying for the audience watching the live stream. Who likes missing the best part of the stream due to bad connection?

We understand that people who are using their GoPros are using it in remote areas with bad cellular coverage, so we are doing our best to buffer video and audio frames until signal becomes available.

Facebook LIVE platform puts it’s own restriction on the live video duration and connection drops. It tolerates 5 minutes of no data delivered to Facebook from LIVE4 (or any other live streaming app or piece of hardware).

Therefore LIVE4 keeps up to 5 minutes worth of video buffered until connection becomes available.

The audience watching a stream from a publisher on a bad connection will most likely see just one interrupt - the first one. When connection is down LIVE4 buffers video and as soon as it’s up it will upload most of the buffer in time less than it took to capture it. A 30 second buffer on a stable connection normally uploads in 10 or less seconds, this creates a budget of 20 seconds for other interrupts to happen. It does introduce delay equal to the duration of first internet connection outage, but we believe it’s a better experience for both publishers and the audience.

Buffering feature is fully supported in Android version of the app and is currently being actively tested on iOS.

If you have questions, concerns or ideas how to make the buffering experience better don’t hesitate to contact us at support@live4.io or join the discussion at our facebook community page