Technical
CBR (constant bitrate)
Sending data at a steady rate regardless of what's on screen. Required by Twitch and Kick because it's predictable for their servers.
Related terms
- Bitrate
How much data your stream sends per second. Higher bitrate = better image quality but needs more upload speed. Twitch caps it around 6,000–8,500 kbps.
- VBR (variable bitrate)
Bitrate that rises for complex scenes and falls for simple ones. Efficient for recordings, but live platforms want CBR instead.
- Encoder
The software or hardware that compresses your video to send it online. 'x264' uses your CPU; 'NVENC' uses an NVIDIA GPU.