Frozen Twitch stream is one of the common issues Twitch streams – and followers – have these days. Here we discuss the possible causes for the issue and offer some methods to fix it.
Why does Twitch keep freezing?
Possible reasons for experiencing frozen Twitch streams could be various, but among the most common ones we could suggest the following:
Hardware issues: failing parts or components in your computer or laptop could be the cause of the frozen or lagged streams. These components are the main parts which could often be the reason for the problems: hard disk, graphics card, and RAM.
Codecs: although most modern browsers try to keep updated, but sometimes due to various reasons – such as no Internet connection or turned off updates by the user – the codes are very old and need to be upgraded manually.
Slow Internet connection: sometimes ISPs don’t provide the expected Internet speed and that could be the main cause for Twitch streaming issues.
How to fix the issue
Obviously, the first step to solve the problems related to frozen streams on Twitch is to find out what the main cause is.
And that’s way easier to say than to do.
So, let’s begin from the simplest possible fixes: Internet connection. In order to test your connection speed and ping, you could use various tools and programs. Fast.com website is one of the best online tools to test your Internet speed.
The good thing about this website, and some other similar tools, is that you use with your mobile devices as well – such as your Android phone or tablet or iPhone. Sometimes, they even provide special apps for checking your Internet connection speed too.
In order to watch game streams on Twitch, you need to have at least a 3Mbps (Megabits per second) Internet connection. Make it 5Mbps to be sure that you could access HD streaming on Twitch – or other video streaming websites – with no freezing or delay problems.
The same issue could be for streamers as well, who want to make sure that their viewers have a nice experience while watching their live streams.
So, if you’re done testing, and have 10Mbps or above speeds, you could be almost sure that the freezing issue on the game stream website isn’t related to your Internet connection.
Another great method to know what’s wrong with your Twitch is using the tools available to analyze your streams:
Twitch Inspector
The first tool is Twitch Inspector which could be used to analyze freezing errors and other problems regarding encoding or Internet connection for Twitch streamers.
Please note that in order to use the above tool you need to sign in with your Twitch account before you’re given access to take advantage of the online tool. Once signed in, you could add other accounts to test them too.
And the good thing about running a stream test though the Inspector tool is that your followers won’t be able to access this live stream, but instead, you’re running a simulated stream similar to the real one. And to run this test you need to access your Twitch dashboard to copy your stream key and paste it into the proper place in the Inspector tool.
And don’t forget that the end of your stream key needs to have the test flag – provided by Twitch Inspector – in order to make the stream, well, a test one.
For more technical information, you could take a look at https://stream.twitch.tv/encoding/ to learn more about video quality details, bitrate or Internet speed, encoding and other stream broadcasting guidelines.
Please allow a minimum of 15 minutes for your test stream to encounter possible freezings and make better use of the analysis offered by the tool.
The analysis includes helpful information such as the average speed, framerate, bitrate and so on.
The “Help Guide” button on top of the screen to access recommended advice and possible fixes for your streaming issues based on your test stream.
Twitch Analyzer
This is another useful tool to help you solve the issue if your Twitch keeps freezing. It could be accessed using the URL: https://r-1.ch/analyzer/.
These items could be checked by this tool: stream info (such as FPS, resolution, bitrate, etc.), quality check, video frame rate, stream availability from different regions, keyframe check, dropped frames and more.
Please note that in order to perform an analysis session with this tool you need to have a live steam running for more than 2 minutes.
