Your stream recap

Every time you finish streaming, the dashboard leaves you a recap of what went out: how long it lasted, the quality of your signal, how many drops there were and in how many your stream stayed up because automatic scene switching put your Offline scene on air.

Where you see it

On the home dashboard, the Your last stream card shows the recap of your latest stream, long or short: Duration, Average bitrate, Quality and Drops. If automatic scene switching covered any drop, it tells you how many right below.
In the bell, the Your stream recap notification, when the stream lasts at least 5 minutes and you end it yourself. Short tests don’t fill up your bell: their recap is on the card.
If the stream drops, you don’t get a second notification: Your signal dropped carries the recap at the end, starting with Until the drop:.

What each figure means

Figure	What it is
Duration	From when your signal arrived until it stopped arriving. A coverage blip of under a minute doesn’t split the stream in two: it counts as a drop within the same stream
Average bitrate	The average of what reached us while you were streaming
Quality	How much your bitrate moved around that average. Stable: almost always close to the average. Variable: it dipped at times, which is normal with adaptive bitrate and changing coverage. Unstable: it spent a good part of the stream far from the average. Streams from before the recap existed don’t have it
Drops	The times your signal stopped arriving, including the final drop if the stream ended that way. If you stop it yourself, that’s not a drop

Covered drops

With Cloud OBS and automatic scene switching turned on, when your signal drops your Cloud OBS keeps broadcasting and puts your <key> Offline scene on air until you’re back. Your audience sees the last frame that arrived, frozen, for a few seconds, and then that scene (with the No signal overlay, if you have it on) instead of a dead stream.

So covered doesn’t mean nobody saw the drop: it means your stream stayed up and your audience saw your Offline scene in the meantime.

To count it, when your signal drops we check what your Cloud OBS has on air a few seconds later. If it’s broadcasting your Offline scene, that drop counts as covered, and the recap says so: 2 drops, all covered.

Only the Cloud OBS key counts, because it’s the one that drives automatic scene switching. Extra inputs don’t have an Offline scene.
If your signal comes back before scene switching gets to react, that drop doesn’t count as covered, even if your stream didn’t go down either. We’d rather undercount than tell you more than happened.
With your own OBS we can’t see which scene you have on air, so the recap doesn’t count covered drops.
With automatic scene switching turned off, or with your Cloud OBS not broadcasting, there’s nothing to cover.

Your first stream

The first time you really go live, the bell confirms it, just once:

With Cloud OBS: Your first stream is on air, once your Cloud OBS has been broadcasting your camera scene for a minute. Your signal arriving isn’t enough: with the Cloud OBS stopped or on the no-signal scene, your audience doesn’t see anything yet.
Without Cloud OBS: Your first broadcast is coming through, once your signal has been reaching your stream key for a minute.

If the numbers don’t add up

What you see	What it means	What to do
Quality Unstable	Your bitrate spent a good part of the stream far from its average	Lower the bitrate or turn on your app’s adaptive bitrate: The bitrate keeps bouncing or the picture stutters
Several drops and none covered	Your Cloud OBS wasn’t broadcasting, automatic scene switching is off, or it can’t find the Offline scene	The scene doesn’t switch when the signal drops
The recap doesn’t reach your bell	The stream lasted under 5 minutes, or it dropped and the recap is inside the drop notification	Check Your last stream

Next step

Your home dashboard: everything the dashboard tells you while you stream.
Setting it up on a Cloud OBS: the scenes and thresholds of automatic scene switching.