Hi Twitch!

I'm certain y'all know about this problem already, but I wanted to tack on some details in case it might help along with solutioning.

Since COVID-19, DJs all flocked to streaming, many of them on Twitch. Low Latency Mode is creating jarring pitch bends that most DJs nor their listeners know about. Savvy listeners think the DJ is just doing a bad job. Even non-savvy listeners can tell something's not right. But DJ's have no idea that this is happening; even if they enable past broadcasts, their VOD won't have this problem. When listeners point this problem out, DJs often have no idea what the listeners are talking about.

I'm sure you know the cause but I'll elaborate for everyone's sake.

Low Latency Mode, if I understand correctly, tries to catch up viewers who've fallen behind (e.g. due to a temporary blip in their Internet), to the latest point in the stream, by ever-so-slightly increasing the speed of playback. This doesn't matter too much for speech: people notice a change, but it doesn't affect their understanding. It also doesn't matter too much for video game music: people notice a change, but it's the ambience / energy that matters, not so much the pitch.

When it comes to music performance though, it can be a big deal, particularly for DJ streams, which have exploded since the virus outbreak. DJs aim to provide a smooth, uninterrupted feel over extended periods of time. But low latency mode disrupts the vibe and even makes people stop dancing. Look, I know how annoying musicians can be, but I'm not exaggerating: I've been in Zoom dance parties or hanging with a few friends where even non-musical ones stop dancing and feel something "off" has happened.

Even non-trained ears can hear pitch differences with surprising accuracy. I can make a recommendation that would make the pitch difference much more tolerable.

By my ears, the pitch shift I hear is around around 50 cents (i.e. about a quarter tone) for music playing at 123 bpm. I suspect the catch-up speed factor actually varies, but I don't know your algorithm. Anyway, centered around 123 bpm (since pitch is logarithmic), each 1 bpm up shifts pitch ~14 cents. So for me to hearing 50 cents, your algo must be pushing 123 bpm to 126-127 bpm. In other words, low latency mode is increasing speed by as much as 3%. It's understandable that 3% sounded totally acceptable from a general playback product perspective that wasn't geared toward DJs. But, this probably has to be reviewed if you want to continue supporting DJ streams. (Which, if you don't care, that's fair :-)

So what if we take a practical approach. "Instrument Timbres and Pitch Estimation in Polyphonic Music," Loeffler, B. D. (2006) says that the smallest pitch difference human ears can detect is 6 cents. But it's not like you have to fool professional musicians. I'm sure even lowering the shift from 50 to 15 cents will make a world of difference. To do so, you have to cap the speed increases to +1% at most.

So:

1. Is it viable to cap low latency mode's speed increases at +1%?


2. If no, is it viable to do so just for Music & Performance Arts channels?


3. If no, is it viable to make it an opt-in setting for the broadcaster?


4. Or maybe some compromise where, when the user's not too far behind it caps, but when they are, it does whatever it does today?

I trust y'all to make the right call. I also trust that you may have bigger fish to fry.

Appreciate all your work and wishing the best to everyone there.

During a live stream, could a viewer please choose any of the video statistics under Settings > Advanced > Video Stats, and have only that statistic pinned somewhere on the screen? In my mind it would show up like a running FPS counter in a video game, without having to keep the entire blocky chunk of Video Stats cutting off a huge section of the stream's video (and sometimes the streamer's webcam). For example I find myself constantly checking the "Latency to broadcaster" statistic whenever I watch any stream. I always want to know the delay between what I see instantly in chat and when the streamer will have a reaction to the chat message.

In my experience, many viewers are not aware of the Latency to Broadcaster statistic being available, and often find themselves accruing a huge delay and getting behind on things happening without knowing it. Any number of things can cause these micro delays to accumulate: issues with viewer's internet connection, or the streamer's, or with Twitch's servers too. When I see a delay more than 5 seconds, I want to fix that.

Many people think refreshing the page is the only way to reset the Latency to try and make it smaller, but a quick pause/play of the video or a quick toggle on and off of the Low Latency mode also does the trick. Having the latency to broadcaster pinned somewhere over the video would help me know when I need to do these tricks to reset the latency and have a more interactive experience.

Thanks for your time!

Best,
Ettin

My idea is the possibility to select en "HIGHEST quality preference when auto quality mode is active" in order to reduce the number of times it tries to get to a higher quality but my connexion CAN'T follow the flux OR to reduce my flux when my stream raid another one.

The goal is to:
1) reduce the risk of buffering
2) automatically reduce bandwith consumption (it can't get higher than 480p for example) when i don't need more and i'm too far to reduce it [ecological measure]

Most of the time i look games which don't need HIGH quality settings to be watched (Mario maker, 8bits games...) but even more when i'm far of my screen, i don't care of the detaisl because i can't see them that far.

However, when i'm on "Auto" quality mode, the player automatically select the highest quality available (since i get optical fiber but before it was only going upper quality, buffering and going down again and again...) but i don't care of the highest quality.

The goal of this is to reduce incomfort of buffering because "Auto" pick a too high bandwith AND/OR reduce the bandwith consumption when i don't need to use the maximum (for the planet).

The video player will buffer causing a long "Latency To Broadcaster" when the streamer has intermittent connectivity issues. For desktop streamers this is usually not a problem. This is a nuisance for viewers watching IRL streamers who are streaming on less reliable mobile connections. Who wants to watch a stream where the "Latency To Broadcaster" is over 30s? or even 10s?

I have to open the "Video Stats" menu with every stream I watch to keep an eye on the "Latency To Broadcaster" to make sure I'm not too far behind the live stream. Nothing wrong with my internet connection. Problem is on the streamer side because they are on mobile. Twitch has made the viewing experience worse by making the "Video Stats" box even bigger that's not even transparent with the latest site updates. I understand some viewers will always have high latency issues due to poor internet service. But for viewers that want to say close to the live stream we should have that option.

1. Give viewers a live button similar to youtube to skip closer to the live stream... not sure why twitch hasn't copied this basic feature yet




2. Allow viewers to customize contents of the "Video Stats" box... so viewers can just display "Latency To Broadcaster"




3. Have an option in the video player where viewers can set the maximum "Latency To Broadcaster"... if the latency falls over 10s the player will automatically skip to the live stream... Ideally I never like to be over 5s from the live stream for streamers that have enabled "Low Latency"

It's been a few weeks since Twitch changed how stream quality auto changes based on whether the tab is in the current tab/window or not. This change automatically lowers the quality of streams to 480p (or lower) for streams not in the current tab, and when the stream is tabbed back into focus it does not always resume the originally selected quality.

This is affecting multiple browsers, with or without extensions, so this is seems very much a Twitch end feature to lower data use.
This change however has resulted in some issues:
-More buffering
-Streams hanging/pausing when tabbed out
-Quality not restoring when tabbed back
-Playback issues such as audio desync when the stream quality changes and latency has to catch up
-Streams in background no longer has thumbnail view in task view (windows key + tab) to simultaneously view multiple streams and is instead just a black screen video player.

Overall I feel like the changes have not improved the user experience and has instead introduced more issues than it saves. It should be up to the user to open as many streams as they wish at whichever quality and maintain such experience regardless of window focus.