WORK IN PROGRESS: FIXING VDO.NINJA PERFORMANCE ISSUES

SYMPTOMS

Depending on several factors, you might see

stuttery video (aka frame drops)
low frame rates
video being out of sync with audio (typically video lagging behind audio)

CULPRITS

The main reason for performance issues are

Bandwidth. Zoom, Teams, etc. use big servers to do all the work while VDO.Ninja is a peer-to-peer system. That's why it can be free and offer lower latency at great quality. Because of this design, in most cases VDO.Ninja will use more bandwidth than the others.
CPU. Higher video quality requires more work by the sending system to encode the video.
TURN server. Depending on the firewall setup of the involved networks, it can be necessary to route the video and audio traffic through a TURN server. This can introduce higher latency.
iOS. Low frame rates from iOS devices in the guest room and control center is normal and by design. iPhones and iPads can only encode a limited amount of video streams at the same time. VDO Ninja works around that by lowering their frame rates to around 1 fps in the guest rooms as well as in the director's control center. Audio in the guest room will be just fine though. This will not affect frame rates viewed in OBS through solo links or in group scenes.

TOOLS

An important tool to help you troubleshoot connections is the stats view that you can open by holding CTRL (Win) or command (Mac) and right clicking on a guest window.

Status information includes:

remote connection type (TBD = TURN server, ethernet = local)
received audio bitrate in kbps
received video bitrate in kbps
packet loss (lower is better, 0 is ideal)
buffer delay (TBD)
FPS (frames per second)
resolution
codec
quality linmitation reason (only visible on the sending side, can be bandwidth or CPU)

BANDWIDTH

Use ethernet! Ask your guest to use ethernet. Being on WIFI is the most common reason for bandwidth issues. Avoid WIFI if you can. Being closer to your router can help, but often doesn't.
Stop other traffic sources. Those include online backups, dropbox, and even youtube or netflix being watched in the other room.
Use speedify.com, a streaming-centric VPN that prioritizes streaming traffic and can bond your ethernet connection with an LTE phone connection.

Video and audio bandwidth used by VDO.Ninja are determined on the receiving side. TBD

CPU - SENDING SYSTEM

TBD

CPU - RECEIVING SYSTEM

TBD