A little bit of history about frame dropping:
I did a large number of experiments with frame dropping in old versions
of OBS1, and it's not an easy thing to deal with. I tried just about
everything from standard i-frame delay, to large buffers, to dumping
packets, to super-unnecessarily-complex things that just ended up
causing more problems than they was worth.
When I did my experiments, I found that the most ideal frame drop system
(in terms of reducing the amount of total data that needed to be
dropped) was in the 0.4xx days where I had a 3 second frame-drop buffer
where I could calculate the actual buffer size in bytes, and then
intellgently choose packets in that buffer to trim it down to a specific
size while minimizing the number of p-frames and i-frames dropped, and
preventing the actual impact of dropped frames on the stream. The
downside of it was that it required too much extra latency, and far too
many people complained about it, so it was removed in favor of the
current system.
The current system I just refer to just as 'packet dumping', which when
combined with low keyframe intervals (like most services use these
days), is the next-best method from my experience. Just dump the buffer
when you reach a threshold of buffering (which I prefer to measure with
time rather than in size), then wait for a new i-frame. Simple,
effective, and reduces the risk of consecutive buffering, while still
having fairly low impact on the stream output due to the low keyframe
interval of services.
By the way, audio will not (and should not ever) be dropped, lest you
end up with syncing issues (among other nasty things) specific to server
implementation.
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