9. Stream Health
During a live event, conditions can change that might impact the quality of channel outputs. The Stream Health page can provide you indications of these changes.
It is strongly recommended to share this dashboard with the person in charge of production and broadcasting of your livestream. You can do this by copying the Producer link on the Technical information tab and supplying it to your technical team.
Stream Health
The report listed in the dashboard will give the producer an opportunity to see whether there might be a problem in the encoding and/or internet connection at the location of the livestream. Put simply, the producer will be able to see if the fps (frame rate per second) used in the production software settings is reaching TicketCo as intended.
A typical problem that could occur is that the bitrate settings are too demanding for the production hardware to encode, thus the broadcast will be transmitted at a lower frame rate. If this is the case, the NetworkIn will lower as there is less data fed into TicketCo than intended.
Test broadcasts (using the Start for 30 min test function in Technical information) should always be checked in this Health dashboard. If there is a discrepancy between the received frame rate and the rate set in the broadcasting software, we strongly recommend lowering the bitrate. The producer should also be aware that multi-camera productions and complex sound setup will demand better encoding equipment.
Channel 0 (the blue line) is the primary endpoint defined in the Technical information tab. Channel 1 (the orange line) is the backup endpoint defined in the Technical information tab.
Understanding the graphs
ActiveAlerts
Alerts are indications of critical issues that could have serious impacts on channel performance, such as complete loss of input, loss of the video or audio element of an input, or failure to connect with output targets.
Alerts are active when the issue is occurring and has not been resolved. After the condition has been resolved, the alert status becomes cleared.
NetworkIn (Mbs)
The bitrate of the attached input, averaged over the sample time. There can be small variations in the Network in bitrate depending on upstream network conditions and various attributes of the source content, such as the complexity of the video or corrupt frames.
In the case of file inputs, TicketCo can ingest the file, cache it, then pull from the cache into the encoder. The Network in graph might show a drop after the file has been cached. For live streams, significant drops might indicate upstream network issues which are throttling the incoming stream.
NetworkOut (Mbs)
The combined bitrate of all outputs from the channel. For example, if you had two output groups (primary and backup), this graph displays the combined bitrates from all of the streams. Variations in this graph could be indications of downstream network issues which are throttling the output or the disconnection of a receiver.
InputVideoFrameRate
The input video frame rate averaged over the last ten seconds. There can be small variations in the input video frame rate depending on upstream network conditions and various attributes of the source content. A large variation in this graph could indicate a larger problem with the source or the network, or it could indicate an intentional switch to another input (with a different frame rate).