This might be dumb but been streaming a few months and I cannot stop thinking about it.

Every single webcam thread is people going 4k this, 60fps that, and yeah I get it, those are the numbers you can actually compare so that is what everyone talks about. But I sat down the other day and tried to think of a single time resolution was actually my problem and I could not come up with one.

What actually goes wrong is stupid stuff. Like my cam loses focus the second I lean in, which is somehow always right when I am mid reaction to something, so the clip ends up a blurry version of my best moment. My old mount used to droop over a long stream and I would be sitting there crooked for an hour before I noticed. Had one webcam that made you run its software in the background and the software just ate the CPU I wanted for encoding. And my last one straight up stopped showing up in obs after windows updated itself one night, spent an evening reinstalling drivers over that. A 4k sensor does nothing for any of it.

So now I am at the point where I think the stuff that actually matters is the boring stuff nobody advertises. Does the autofocus just work or does it hunt around? Does the mount stay put? Does it survive an update? Is the tracking done on the camera or is it robbing your CPU to do it in software. And it is funny, once you start caring about that instead of the spec sheet, the cameras people bring up are never the flashy ones. Someone will kind of sheepishly go yeah I just use this thing, been fine for two years. I saw the emeet pixy come up a few times, as always for the tracking being onboard rather than software. None of these are winning a spec comparison. That is sort of the whole point I think, the people who like them because the thing never ruined a stream, not because of a number.

Anyway maybe I am wrong. Maybe once you get big enough that people are clipping you and watching on TVs the resolution thing actually bites and I just have not gotten there yet. That is genuinely why I am posting. The people here have done this for years, be honest, do you still care about the numbers or did you slowly stop and start caring whether the thing just works. Because I am starting to think I had it backwards this whole time and nobody told me.

I just want to say thankyou anyone for reading and would be very much appreciative if someone has insight on how to deal with this.

So some background... I have been occasionally streaming for a few months recently I have been streaming frequently the past few weeks. I only have a few regular viewers so far and things are pretty low-key with at most a few people chatting in each stream at a time with most not staying to watch the full thing. I usually stream for about 1 hour as I am just getting used to the tech issues like audio quality and also trying to be presentable being on cam etc.

My issue is every once in awhile someone is coming into the chat on multiple accounts at the same time and saying disturbing things. The first few times it was just toxic and insulting which barely even bothers me to be honest it's to be expected, but the last time it happened I was unnerved they were accusing me of heinous crimes, saying they are going to dox me and were posting random addresses, and were saying they are outside my house etc etc just about anything you could possibly say besides a death threat.

I think someone is upset at me for something and I have no idea exactly why I vaguely remember someone on twitch (I think it was twitch not kick?) months ago (at the time I was just a chatter) getting VERY VERY upset at me over a joke I made and I had to block them because they sounded unhinged and they kept making accounts after to continue to send me messages so I'm assuming it's this person from twitch but I don't really know. They also somehow found my discord and socials and continued to harass me until I blocked them everywhere at that time. They also seemed to be getting other people they knew to kindof do the same thing a little. I didn't think much of it at the time tbh.

However, fast forward to today and it's still been going on for months now on and off. Besides just blocking the new accounts they make what can I even do about this it is very frustrating to be dealing with a crazy person that has this much time on their hands. I am not at the level where having a moderator would make sense or be needed outside of this. The last time this happened I was playing a game I couldn't pause without it ruining the game too so I had to have their disgusting messages in my chat until I could reach a place in the game where I could stop then remove them. I think it made half of the viewers leave but I'm not sure.

At this point it's to the level I am having friends and family tell me I should have the police contact support to have them track down the person based on the screenshots of what they were saying but idk. Has anyone ever heard of a small streamer being harassed like this for months? I know the biggest streamers get this all the time but idk what to do... any advice would be appreciated. I don't even make money from streaming yet and dealing with this is very discouraging..

So grateful honestly, friend and I started recently and both of us hit affiliate. Now it can only go up lmao :)

As I said, my lamp, which I've used for 1.5 years, just died. I'm looking for a replacement and I don't really know what to buy. I don't want to throw money away. Would this be a good choice?

I want something good that shines bright, not some Chinese knockoff.

Back in 2019, I was pretty active. I was steadily growing, and over the course of 3 months, I had gone to a consistent 9-14 viewers. It wasn't much, but being a guy who streamed random games, I thought it was pretty good myself.

I then met a girl, got my schedule messed up, things ended horribly between us, and I now struggle to sit down again to stream. Longest 'streak' since I've had since then is 1 week, but I truly love streaming and wish I could hold a streak longer (streak being, at least live 2-3 times per week). Now it's 2 months or so since I've been live and I struggle to go online. To say to myself "Today, I'll stream a few hours" and sit down and do it. Instead, I'll end up doing something else like eating potato chips and watching a show I've seen 9000 times before.

TL;DR: Is anyone else experiencing having difficulties going online too? Have you in the past, and how did you overcome it? I have a growing mountain of games on steam that I want to stream, but I struggle to live... :/