Stats for nerds gives a quick overview of the connection and recording stats for any participant in the session.
Connection Stats
Connection stats are available for anyone on the Stage during a recording session.
These stats indicate the quality of the conference/conversation audio and video streams to other participants and do NOT reflect in the quality of primary local recordings.
Used and Available Bitrate
Each audio and video stream is sent at a variable bitrate to other session participants. This bitrate can change over time and depends on the resolution, network connection, and complexity of the information being sent.
Multiple video streams are sent at different resolutions on browsers that support it. You can see these reflected in the stats, marked as low (L), medium (M), and high (H) quality video resolutions. This allows other participants with bandwidth restrictions to receive a lower bitrate video stream, helping to keep their latency low when needed.
Available bitrate is given when the browser supports it, indicating the overall bandwidth available for the live conference streams. Most browsers limit this to a maximum of ~6 Mbit/s.
Two charts display the bitrate stats: the first shows a history of the last several minutes of each value, and the next shows a pie of the current participant. The charts below show a healthy connection with plenty of available bandwidth.
Jitter and Packet Loss
Jitter reflects how consistently your audio and video streams are being sent over the network and can increase if/when data is delayed. High jitter can lead to an extra delay (latency) in the conversation or mild distortions in the audio or video. Again, this does NOT reflect in the quality of primary local recordings.
Packet loss can happen if/when data is lost over the network. Packet loss can cause many issues with the video and audio stream, including missed words, frozen/glitchy videos, or even a complete dropout from the conference.
Both of these stats are given in a single chart. Jitter over time is shown by the lines matching the stream color. Packets lost will appear as red bars at the point in time they occurred. The chart below shows a low-jitter connection that lost 2 packets while running a network speed test.
Recording Stats
Recording stats are available for all participants on the Stage while the recording is actively being captured.
Primary recording quality is NOT impacted by network conditions. Each primary recording will show the file's current size and the Progressive Upload progress as you are recording.
Each primary local recording displays additional stats such as audio sampling rate, video resolution, and video frames per second.
An approximate real-time bitrate is displayed for each recording as well. This will change based on the hardware device being used and the dynamic content of the media stream. This is mostly seen with screen recordings, where the real-time bitrate can drop very low when showing a static image that doesn't change very often.
Troubleshooting
When a great conversation gets interrupted by something technical, it can be hard to know where to start to get the problem fixed. A quick glance at a participant's connection stats tells you if there is a problem with the network connection. The stats below show an iPad with a poor WIFI connection struggling to send a higher bitrate video stream. The limited available bandwidth, large jumps in jitter, and consistent packet loss can all cause issues with network connectivity to the conversation. Moving closer to the wireless router or switching to a different/wired network and refreshing the page would resolve the issue.