Configuring Frankie - the Slipmat Native Video Encoder

This document describes the required streaming settings for Frankie, the Slipmat Native Video Encoder (that allows you to stream natively on Slipmat w/o YouTube). Note that these details are for the beta version and may change at any time.

Also note that because the engine is not yet fully tested nor configured for error handling, if you don’t follow these instructions very carefully to the letter, it’s more than likely that you (or more importantly your listeners) will encounter problems with your stream.

1. Basic setup

If you are already familiar with OBS or any other streaming software, skip to the next part.

If you’re just starting, @trancedaddy has written superb, very detailed instructions on how to configure OBS and XSplit for YouTube. You just need to change the following details for Frankie instead of YouTube.

2. Frankie-Specific Details

Make sure to follow these requirements exactly. If your configuration is wrong, your stream may either have problems or not work at all. Also, during the testing phase it’s important that we get consistent data from the streamers!

Your stream must use following settings:

  • Audio:
    • format: AAC
    • bitrate: 256 or 320 Kbps
    • sample rate 44100
  • Video:
    • resolution: 1280x720 px
    • bitrate 2500 Kbps,
    • framerate: 30
    • keyframe interval: 2 s

Note: the server monitors closely what you send to it. If you use wrong settings, your stream may be automatically dropped.

About Frankie and These Settings

Frankie is 100% built-for-purpose. It means that we got to design every aspect of every single detail, and also make some design choices based on our specific use case: live streaming for DJs. We focus on two, and only two, aspects; sound quality and streaming.

Sound quality is pretty self explanatory. Most streaming platforms provide only low bitrate streams and they often also convert the bitrate so the end result is sub-optimal. Frankie does not touch the audio bitrate or samplerate if it’s in the right format. It’s passed as is to the listener so the quality is as good as possible. We also keep the audio quality constant even when the video quality changes, so even if you can watch only 240p video on a mobile, you still can enjoy the best possible sound quality.

Streaming quality can be measured in several ways but for Slipmat it means uninterrupted live streams with good audio. In other words, things like video resolution, bitrate and super low latency are not important for a live stream for a live DJ set. Due to the HLS streaming protocol, the latency for Slipmat streams is about 13 seconds.

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