Facebook Live occasionally crashes for me. How stable is it for you?

Jim Feeley

Jim Feeley

Veteran
So I've done a dozen or so Facebook Live streams in the last few weeks. I had three crash and stop just on their own; the camera & audio feed were just rolling along, and then the stream/application just crashed. Unfortunately, there wasn't a clear action I or a colleague took before the crashes. Two crashes were over 45min into a stream. One was before the event started. But no issues on a three-hour stream, or most others.

Streaming to Facebook pages, also embedding stream onto web pages. Typically 60-90min, a couple up to three hours. Some cameras (HDMI and SDI converted to HDMI) to a BMD ATEM Mini to new 16-inch MBP running Chrome to ethernet to fiber, some audio (music) fed from a mixer into iPhone and picture and stream coming out of iPhone (once to 4G/cellular, usually to a dedicated WiFi router to fiber. No other traffic on our end.

Two crashes on the iPhone, once on Chrome browser.

(We're doing FB more because that's what people want, and because YouTube presents more copyright, and troll-vs-access issues. The performers have licenses for the music they're playing).

Based on my limited experience, the iPhone app is more unstable. But I had that one crash on the laptop running Chrome.

Is Facebook Live just kinda flaky/buggy on streams in general? More unstable on streams over an hour?

But what are you all finding with Facebook Live stability from the streamer/producer end of things?
 
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Looking forward to responses on this one - I have many musician friends who are streaming performances now. The only one I know who has regular issues in terms of crashing and/or (in their case) audio not working, is my one friend who uses a mac. The pc folks will have the regular network traffic glitches- but everything keeps going.
 
I'm looking forward to hearing responses to this as well. My experience with Facebook live is limited, mostly I've used YouTube and often sending from Zoom so usually not as elaborate a set up as with the Atem mini. Not saying this would cause a crash but I have found that running a utility like Onyx beforehand helps to prevent issues such as freezing when screen sharing a video. I'm also on a MacBook Pro, although somewhat older than yours Jim. Next week I'll be streaming to Facebook via Zoom and do plan on running some extensive tests to see how it goes. Tips and tricks much appreciated.
 
Using the ATEM Mini should take a whole lot of the processing needs off the computer. If it’s not due to choking your processing resources, it may be upload bandwidth. What’s your Internet plan’s speed? I’m finding that our UVerse plan actually sucks now, though it was pretty beefy when we last upgraded our plan.
 
Thanks for the comments so far. A couple followups:

Mac vs PC
That's a possibility. Will try to explore that more. Thanks.

macOS/Onyx maintenance
I'm pretty good about keeping up with that. I went to UC Berkeley so have been using BSD Unix longer than the Mac has. ;-)

Zoom + Facebook Live
Not doing that at the moment; might not do it at all. Poking around the web, looks like some people are having issues with the Zoom+FP combo. But could be user error. Don't know yet. On its own, Zoom seems to hold up and decay pretty elegantly.

YouTube vs Facebook (and copyright issues)
The issue has been, based on my poking around and on direct experiences from friends who do a lot more live work than me, that YouTube gets pretty worked up about suspected copyright violations in live streams. As in: if their system detects what they think is copyrighted music (either live or prerecorded), they send an automated notice and you/streamer/producer has like two minutes to respond (or just click?) or YT will kill the stream. Facebook gets worked up about prerecorded music, but if their system thinks you're streaming a live performance, it assumes there isn't a violation (or so it's been explained to me). And note that I'm working with people either streaming their own music, truly public-domain music, or music that they have a performance/sync license for. But it can be difficult to get that all across to YT.
Also, YT comments seem to get bombed and out of hand faster than FB comments. And comments are something everyone I've worked with would like to keep (so Vimeo becomes a less appealing option).

Internet speed issues
We're lucky around here. Lots of gig fiber from Sonic and from ATT. I check that regularly (via Ookla Speedtest). Ethernet-->Fiber is almost always around 950Mbps or higher up and down. Dipped to 600 for a day or two on Sonic, but it's back up now. WiFi is pretty consistently 250-350Mbps up.
Also, the Facebook iPhone app, when streaming live, gives feedback when the network gets slow. A yellow (or orange?) bar with a warning that the connection is getting weaker...then back to green when it's all good...then no bar at all after a few seconds of green. It appears like the app buffers enough to handle occassional drops like that (people checking the stream seem to not notice any issues around the times the screen goes to yellow)... And I've only seen that a few times (when moving the camera to a place I knew would have weaker WiFi), so I don't have a detailed understanding of how that works, but it seems to work pretty well in that regard. (Though note that the FB Live video app doesn't provide access to the multiple cameras of the iPhone 11 Pro...at least, not that I've found. And FiLMiC Pro doesn't currently support live streaming (not sure I'd want it to... again, I want to move away from streaming directly from a phone).

Processing load
That could totally be an issue. I'm hoping to use the iPhone less to not at all. But weirdly, both crashes on the iPhone were during extended locked-down camera shots (tiny phone on a big Vinten tripod), with consistent audio. So pretty much "drop an occassional I-Frame and chill" mode, rather the "process all my arty camera moves" mode. And there was that one crash on the laptop. In Facebook, I have Upload HD turned off. Will investigate using an ATEM Mini some more (I have OK but not all-the-time access to one); probably not going to be renting anything bigger.


For now:
I hope to stop using the iPhone this week. Still on the fence about the ATEM Mini, BMD Intensity, etc. Maybe I'll buy an ATEM Mini Pro. Have a BMD Mini Recorder on the way from Geoff here on dvxuser. Will be nice to get back to SDI (though will probably be still using HDMI on a couple small Canon XA10 cameras).

Thanks everyone for your comments so far! They're really moving me forward!


Jim
PS- Wish I could go back out and finish shooting that documentary... Challenges I understand are better than those I don't...
 
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