OBS Dropped Frames

Last updated: September 1, 2026

Dropped frames mean the network could not deliver what the encoder produced. They are different from skipped frames, which point at the encoder, and lagged frames, which point at rendering.

Read the statistics dock

Open View → Docks → Stats. "Frames dropped due to network" is the one that matters here. If instead you see skipped frames from encoding lag, read high CPU usage — the remedy is different.

Lower the bitrate

Upload speed varies through the day and is often far below the advertised figure. Set the bitrate to roughly 70% of a measured upload test and see whether drops stop. This is the single most effective change.

Change the ingest server

The geographically nearest server is not always the best-performing one. Try one or two alternatives from the service list before assuming your connection is at fault.

Use a wired connection

Wi-Fi introduces jitter that shows up as intermittent drops even when average bandwidth looks fine. Ethernet resolves it in most homes. Also pause cloud backups, game downloads and large uploads while broadcasting.

Enable automatic reconnect

In Settings → Advanced, automatic reconnect brings the stream back after a short outage instead of ending the broadcast. Full streaming guidance is in the streaming guide.

Related guides

• All troubleshooting guides
• Streaming guide
• Twitch settings
• Recommended settings