QoE or “Quality of Service” matters more than you think when it comes to broadcasting live video streams.
Did you know that a significant number of viewers start abandoning a streaming video as soon as it starts to buffer? The number of deserters has been estimated at around 6% per 1 second of buffering. One survey even discovered that 62 percent of viewers tend to view an organization more negatively if they put out a low quality video stream.
There are many different elements that determine the quality of a streaming video. While this certainly includes proper video streaming software settings by your streaming producer, one of the key elements is the inability of the available bandwidth (both at the sending and receiving ends) to handle the rate of data being broadcast.
A perfect example of this is a producer sending a single, high-resolution video stream through a bandwidth pipeline that cannot handle the amount of data being sent. But more commonly it is the inability of the viewer’s Internet connection to handle a high-resolution video.
So, if you want to broadcast the highest quality of video, but you suspect your viewers may not be able to handle it, what is the solution?
ABR includes Multi-Bitrate Streaming – a technique that allows producers to send High Resolution streams to viewers who can accommodate it, while simultaneously sending lower resolution streams to users with slow internet speeds.
So why is user experience (QoE) one of the most important factors in the success of your broadcast?
That’s because Quality of Experience (ie. viewer satisfaction) is highest when a viewer is delivered the sharpest possible video and best possible audio, with NO INTERRUPTIONS.
The main culprits responsible for a low quality of experience would be:
- The Stream fails to start
- Freezes during the broadcast
- Buffering or lag
- Video artifacts such as pixellation
- Poor focus and bad lighting
- Unnatural color
- Audio delays or lack of audio-video synchronization
- Video or (more importantly) Audio quality makes content unwatchable
Few producers make an effort to consider the importance of these issues. If you’re losing 6 percent of your audience per second of buffering, quality suddenly becomes essential. You want to do every single thing you can to retain those viewers.