Stream delay is mostly used in big tournaments, and events, where matters If other players can see where the enemy is, or based on live stream someone can lookup your exact position. We call them stream snipers. However it’s not commonly used in day-to-day streams, because If you put a 15 minute stream delay to yours stream, you will basically lost connection with your viewers. And If a donation comes, or viewer writes a comment, they will got the answer after 15 minute, or the stream delay as you set.
Stream Delay is when you set a different amount of time, from milisecond to minutes, between the recording and the streaming. So probably If you set a 5 minute stream delay, then when you playing at 6:55 PM, your viewers will see the image at 7:00 PM. With that amount of time, “basically” we can’t speak real time live stream. This option a good choice, If you set only one or two minute, then you can cut out or stop the stream If any bad happens, or some misbehaviour happens. Radio stations always using this method, so that’s why you never hear a wrong sentence. Of course, you can set the stream delay to 5ms or 100ms.
In this guide you’ll learn how to set this option in OBS Studio or in Streamlabs OBS. These two are the most welcomed streaming software currently, so let’s check it out.
How to set Stream Delay in OBS Studio?
OBS Studio is the essential streaming software when comes to live gaming, podcast, IRL or etc. We start to setup with this software because of that. The first step is to simply download and install, and setup for your preferences. We have many articles about how you can do it.
1. Open up OBS and go to the Settings
The first thing you need to do, is simply hit up OBS Studio. After that, select the Settings option at the bottom-right corner. A popup will appear where you find the OBS settings. Right know we need the Advanced tab, what you’ll find at the left side panel.
You need to scroll down a little bit at the center, then you will see the Stream Delay block.
2. Enable Stream Delay in OBS and set the Duration
After you enabled the Stream Delay option, you can set the duration. Besides that you can see how much memory will it use. Because when you set this, your computer will store the recording, between the real time recording and the airing.
After you set the amount of time you want to delay, you can simply hit OK, and you’re ready to go.
Now your stream will be live after this amount of time, when you hit “Start Streaming”. Keep in mind, that this is a fix settings, so It will be enabled with the same duration, at the next time you open up OBS.
How to enable Stream Delay in Streamlabs OBS?
As we mentioned earlier there are two softwares that currently dominate the streaming market, and besides OBS Studio, the other one is Streamlabs OBS. It has more built-in functionality, like transitions, and widgets which helps you to create more interactive stream. All of them are produced by Streamlabs. So let’s go ahead and download and install Streamlabs. After that open the software and hit the gear icon at the left-bottom corner to open up Settings.
After that a popup will appear, where we should select Advanced tab at the left side. On the center you will find the Stream Delay option.
Click on the Enable option, and set the amount time you want to between the recording and the live streaming. The last thing is to hit Done.
In the end, you just need to Go Live, but again keep in mind, that your viewers will see the stream after the time you set.
How to Decrease Twitch Stream Delay?
What we don’t speak about yet is that by default there is a 5-10 minute stream delay in Twitch. It’s because of the time, while you stream to the Twitch server, then the Twitch server broadcast it to the platfrom, and lastly when the individual viewers can see the video, there is a “transit time” between them. But there’s a solution for that, called Low Latency mode. This Twitch function gives you a “boost”, so the response time between the server and the viewer is reduced.
We can say that almost a real-time live stream is happening. So you can interact with your users instantly, and reflect on feedbacks or to donations.This function is mostly enabled by default, but in some account it’s maybe disabled. Also keep in mind, that this boost, can create some issues, for example your stream can lag or the video can break, because of the quick encoding time.
After all, If you want to enable this function go to Twitch and at the top-right corner, under your profile picture, select Creator Dashboard.
After that, open up Settings tab, at the left panel and select Stream option. In the middle you will find the Latency mode option. After you click on the option, you’re ready to go.
Is there a Way to Stream with No Delay? Also Why You Should Use It?
In quick, probably not. But why you should? With the best internet speed, and the nearest location you can reach about 2-5 second stream delay, but you can be in San Francisco and your viewers can be in London. This amount of time is unbelievable, also you can get the donations as well at this same duration.
However as we mentioned in the beginning of this article, in events and tournaments, you should set this about 5-10 minute, probably not because of the stream snipers, or anything. But because of the moments, that you can cut, If any bad scene or issue happened. Also, as we mentioned If the stream delay or latency is so low, It is because of the hardware resources, not because of the internet speed. And If the software is overloaded, or the memory is reached full, because of the quick encoding, there’s a good chance that the stream will be interrupted.
