Live Streaming & Premieres
Stream latency
Also called: latency, glass-to-glass delay
Every live stream runs behind. Encoding, upload, transcoding on the platform side and buffering in the viewer's player each add a slice, and the sum of those slices is the latency. It matters most when you talk to chat, because the question you are answering has been sitting on the viewer's screen for the whole of that delay, and their reply then takes the same trip back to you. Platforms let you trade latency against stability. A lower setting shortens the gap and leaves the viewer's player less buffered video to fall back on, so anyone on a weak connection gets more stalling. A stream with no chat interaction gains nothing from cutting it.