Bitrate

Bitrate decides how much information survives compression. Push more of it and fine detail, fast motion and gradients hold together; starve it and you get blocking, smearing and mush in anything that moves. For live output you set it against three things: resolution, frame rate, and how much upload bandwidth you can hold reliably. Going above what the connection sustains is the most common self-inflicted streaming problem, because dropped frames look far worse than a lower setting ever would. Leave headroom and test at the hour you actually broadcast, since a line that measures well at midday can sag badly in the evening.