My video or audio quality is bad

If your live picture or sound looks worse than expected, work through this checklist in order.

Check these, in order

1. Are you sending more than your plan allows? Every plan has a maximum resolution and bitrate. For external encoders like OBS, Free caps at 720p and 3 Mbps, Hobby at 1080p and 6 Mbps, Creator at 4K and 9 Mbps, Scale at 4K and 15 Mbps, and Enterprise at 4K and 50 Mbps. Web Studio has its own resolution cap: 720p on Free and Hobby, and 1080p on Creator and above. If your encoder or Web Studio is sending more than your plan's cap, ApexStream stops the stream rather than deliver a broken feed — lower your output settings or upgrade your plan to match.
2. Is your internet upload speed enough? Streaming needs a stable upload connection, and a wired connection is far more reliable than Wi-Fi. Keep your total streaming bitrate at or below about 75% of your tested upload speed so you have headroom for dips.
3. Are your encoder settings off? If you're streaming from software like OBS, use a constant bitrate (CBR), a 2-second keyframe interval, and the H.264 video codec. Bitrate that's set too low for your resolution is one of the most common causes of blocky, blurry video.
4. Does the problem only show up on Facebook? ApexStream automatically converts your audio to the format Facebook requires, so there's nothing to change on your end for that. What Facebook does enforce is its own bitrate limit — around 4 Mbps — separate from your ApexStream plan, so if your video bitrate is set higher than that, Facebook specifically can degrade or drop the stream even while your other destinations look fine. Lower your bitrate to stay under that limit.
5. Is your computer struggling to keep up? Before you go live, Web Studio's camera preview watches for dropped frames caused by your device struggling to keep up with encoding (common on older or overloaded laptops) and shows a hardware warning so you can fix it before it turns into visible corruption once you're live. Close other apps to free up resources.
6. What does your stream health data show? If you're on a paid plan, check the bitrate and frame rate for your session in your stream's analytics to see whether the drop in quality lines up with a specific moment.

Good to know: Quality problems that hit every destination at once usually trace back to your own connection or encoder settings. If only one platform looks bad while the others are fine, the cause is more likely that specific platform's own requirements (like Facebook's bitrate limit).