Troubleshooting Live Streaming

Broadcasting Issues

No stream in the preview player ?

For all broadcasts:

Make sure you follow our broadcasting guidelines
Make sure you’ve copied the broadcast URL and stream name correctly to your encoder (no leading or trailing spaces)
Make sure you have sufficient bandwidth and the broadcast is not blocked by your firewall

For multi-language live streams:

Make sure to follow the guidelines for the protocol you use: Translate at Home, SRT multi-track, RTMP multi-channel.
Make sure the Event status in Clevercast is set to Preview or Started

The preview player is spinning or stuttering ?

Make sure to follow our broadcasting guidelines. In particular, the video frame rate and keyframe interval should be set correctly (if possible).

Make sure it’s not a local bandwidth issue (eg. broadcasting and streaming over the same connection)? Try lowering the bitrate of the broadcasted video or watching the stream on another connection.

If you are re-streaming from a third party solution and therefore have no control over the broadcast, you could try the following. Go to Account -> Settings: in the Languages panel, set the option ‘Multilingual broadcasts with invalid metadata‘ to Yes. If this doesn’t fix the issue, contact support@clevercast.com.

Parts of the video are pixelated or distorted ?

The broadcasted bitrate of the stream is probably too low for its resolution.

Streaming Issues

The player on my site doesn’t work ?

If no video is shown in the player on your site, check the following:

Has the event been started in Clevercast?
Is the player working in Clevercast? In that case, something is wrong with your embed code.
The player doesn’t work in Clevercast. If it worked before, check your firewall. Try playing the video outside of your network.

The player is spinning or stuttering ?

Check your bandwidth. Try watching the video outside of your network.

Note: when you switch languages, the player has to clear its audio buffer. In some cases (eg. connection with low bandwidth) this may cause the player to spin shortly before switching languages.

The live stream has some latency ?

A latency between 16 and 30 seconds (depending on device, connection) is the default for HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). If necessary, it can be lowered for your account (but this may cause problems for clients with slow internet connections).

There are black bands in the player?

Your player has a fixed width/height that doesn’t corresponds to the aspect ratio of the streamed video (usually 16:9).

Stream appears to be in slow motion?

This can happen exceptionally if you send a broadcast without keyframes (you shouldn’t do this).

I can’t hear multiple languages in my recording?

The live stream can be recorded and downloaded as a single mp4 file containing the video stream and all audio streams (= languages). VLC player, for example, lets you select the different audio languages.

SRT multi-track issues

Make sure to always follow our SRT multi-track guidelines.

No stream in the preview player ?

Check the following:

Is your event status set to Preview or Started ?
Are you broadcasting the same number of tracks (not channels) as the number of languages in Clevercast ?
If you’re using OBS Studio, make sure to press the ‘Start Recording‘ button (not ‘Start Streaming‘) ?

If it doesn’t work, try removing all additional languages from the Clevercast event and just broadcast a single track. If this works, something is probably wrong with the configuration of your input or encoder.

Some languages are not working ?

Check if the configuration of both your input and encoder is correct.

Make sure not to mix tracks and channels.

By default, Clevercast expects a single channel per track. You can change this to two channels per track (in the Event -> Advanced panel) for SRT encoders that support stereo tracks.

OBS Studio disconnects for no apparent reason

The (variable) bitrate in OBS Studio’s Recording mode can fluctuate hard and peak high above the configured bitrate. Which in some cases can saturate the connection and result in a disconnect error.

To avoid this, make the bitrate more constant by setting the preset and x-264-params in your Video Encoder Settings of OBS Studio (see the broadcast guidelines for SRT Multi-Track). Or use another SRT encoder.

RTMP multi-channel issues

Make sure to always follow our RTMP multi-channel guidelines.

No stream in the preview player ?

Check the following:

Is your event status set to Preview or Started ?
Are you broadcasting multiple channels (= NOT tracks) ?

If it doesn’t work, try removing all additional languages from the Clevercast event and just broadcast a video stream with mono or stereo audio. If this works, something is probably wrong with the configuration of your input or encoder.

Some languages are not working ?

Make sure that your audio channel selection (eg 4.0) is the same for:

your Clevercast event
the configuration of your input device (eg Blackmagic DeckLink)
the ‘Channels’ control of the Audio settings in OBS Studio (OBS needs to be restarted after you change it)

Don’t mix channels and tracks! Make sure you only send one track (containing multiple channels) to Clevercast. To use channels with RTMP, audio panning must be done in hardware, not through OBS Studio.

Make sure that you are broadcasting the same number of audio channels as the number of languages in your Clevercast event.

If you are using 5.1 or 7.1 channels, you must leave the 4th channel empty. OBS will encode it as LFE (for surround sound), so is not useable. Just leave it empty, Clevercast will ignore it.

Translate@Home issues

Make sure to follow our instructions for setting up a live event for Translate@Home and our broadcasting guidelines.

Can not see the stream in the language room

Make sure the event status is set to preview or started. If the video is available in the preview player, it should also be available in the languae room.

Translated audio issues

If the quality of the translated audio is bad, you should consult our requirements and best practices for interpreters.

Translated audio is ahead of the original

There’s a known issue for T@H that only occurs under very specific conditions: if you are broadcasting a still image or animated intro with variable bitrate (VBR) at the time you set your event to preview or started. By broadcasting this type of content with VBR, Clevercast will receive a very low bitrate when the translation rooms are initialized. This may cause the translated audio to be slightly ahead of the original audio.

We are currently working to resolve this issue. In the meantime you should avoid streaming very low bitrates when you set your event to preview or started. You can do this either by broadcasting moving images or by broadcasting with a constant bitrate (CBR) of about 5-6 Mbps (for 1080p).

Note: this issue doesn’t apply if you do multilingual streaming using an RTMP multi-channel or SRT multi-track broadcast!

Player issues

Player sometimes spins or blocks when continuously switching languages

This a recurring source of frustration for our support team. It happens when potential customers, with the best intentions, test our player by constantly switching languages on all available mobile devices. This will eventually cause a spinner to appear and may even require a page refresh.

The behavior is the result of limitations in the browsers – some are more sensitive than others – when the video player’s buffers are continuously cleared and re-synced. It almost never happens to real viewers, since they listen to a language instead of continuously changing it.

We expect this issue to eventually disappear as browsers, streaming protocols and video player frameworks gradually improve. For now, you should realize that the language choice doesn’t exist to be continuously changed.