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.