How to Stream on Discord Or Why Streaming on Discord Might Be Misunderstood
If you have never used Discord, but are interested in streaming you might have heard that Discord users now can stream as well. In today’s article, we will try to explain and debunk how Discord streaming is not exactly “streaming” in the same way you would stream on Twitch.
How to Stream on Discord Otherwise Known as Screen Sharing
If you do use Discord or you have read our article on sharing your screen on Discord you might be a little bit confused since sharing your screen sounds exactly like what people call “streaming” on Discord.
BINGO! That is exactly why we are here today. There might be a weird misconception about what people think as Discord “streaming”. When someone says they are streaming on Discord what they actually mean is that they are sharing either their screen or a certain application to a select group of friends that are in the same Discord call/server.
Discord streaming is not related to YouTube or Twitch streaming and is a local service. It does not involve any other applications like OBS, no extra PCs, no capture cards, etc.
When people ask you how to live stream on Discord you better make a clear distinction for them so they do not misunderstand what is going on and start looking for your stream on Twitch!
How to Stream on Discord Server – Discord’s Limitations
Another big reason why you should not compare regular streaming services with what Discord offers is that the screen sharing feature in Discord is extremely limited.
Although called “streaming” by some, the quality of the video feed in Discord is significantly worse than streaming on Twitch/YouTube with specialized software like OBS.
This is because we have no access to the encoder used and can only choose from a basic set of video quality ranging from 480P to 1080P and 15 to 60 FPS. Because of the same reasons, you will also notice that sharing your screen on Discord will affect your FPS in games more than streaming to Twitch!
If for actual streaming services you can choose to use NVENC and significantly increase the FPS in your games, with Discord you are stuck with whatever the application uses, therefore, degrading your experience.
Another very important thing to mention regarding Discord “streaming” is that the service is heavily dependent on Discord’s servers and because of that your video feed often turns into a PowerPoint slide or looks like a pixelated mess.
Audio often gets desynced from the video and many other issues happen quite often. Considering that for Discord the screen sharing feature is just a bonus you cannot really blame them too much, but at this point, if you want to share your gameplay with your friends without any hiccups and with better quality, you might as well just stream it on Twitch/YouTube with OBS.
So what did we learn today? Discord has many cool features like bots, roles, and screen sharing! What Discord doesn’t have is a streaming service, so when people say they are streaming on Discord, they mean they are just sharing their screen with their friends!