Why is there a latency for my event livestream?

You might notice there is an around 8 seconds delay from when you film an event with your phone to when you see it on your stream website. Don’t worry, this is actually normal for all live-streaming services (e.g. Youtube and Facebook each has a 20 seconds delay). In fact, this slight delay is the key to helping us deliver the highest quality* video of your special day to your remote guests.

Why is there a trade-off between latency and quality?

The lower the latency, the less read-ahead buffer your guests’ video player will have.  With lower latency, your remote guests are more likely to run into buffer issues.

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Network congestion and other factors may also cause livestreaming issues, which can delay your stream. Delays can happen even when you have a great network because of the computation work involved in processing the HD video.

Generally, your guests’ player can handle these changes in internet speed by keeping some extra video data. Therefore their player will usually be slightly behind your realtime camera capture.

Why don’t I see the latency on video chat apps (e.g. Zoom) ?

Video chat apps need to be highly interactive, therefore they optimize for low latency by compromising on some other things, such as video quality and the number of viewers allowed.  

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For your special event, the video quality is the most important considerations. Lovecast will always stream with the best quality* video based on your event venue’s Internet connection, and that means a lot of video data needs to be processed and delivered. In order for your remote guests to not keep buffering on their end, their player will wait until it received a little more video data before it starts to play.

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* Actual streaming quality is dependent on your event venue's Internet quality.