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What is the difference between bandwidth and disk speed?

These are two different things. It's important to know the difference.

When you're using SlingStudio Console for iPad or the Mac, you may see references to:

  • Bandwidth: These references can include hotspot quality and Internet upload speed;
  • Storage speed: These mentions can include the write speed test and disk optimization feature in SlingStudio Console.

Let's look at both of these in greater detail:

Bandwidth

This involves the two kinds of wireless signals that SlingStudio works with:

  • The hotspot signal that SlingStudio sends/receives to connect your video sources, as well as the iPad or Mac computer that is running SlingStudio Console;
  • The Internet signal that SlingStudio uses to upload/stream/broadcast video to various sources such as Facebook, YouTube, and other RTMP streaming services.

The hotspot signal and its strength/quality is the effectiveness with which the wireless components of your SlingStudio setup are able to send/receive data to/from the SlingStudio unit. The quality of your production depends a good deal on how well you manage the finite resource of the hotspot signal.

For this reason, SlingStudio Console offers tools that help you monitor, manage, and improve the quality of hotspot signals.

Meanwhile, if you are live-streaming or broadcasting your project, then you'll need to connect your SlingStudio unit to an Internet provider, either by connecting wirelessly to a Wi-Fi host, or via an Ethernet cable and the optional SlingStudio USB-C Expander accessory. When SlingStudio Console measures upload speed, it is checking the speed and effectiveness of the connection that your SlingStudio unit has to the Internet provider. With this info, you can then make better choices about bit rates and other settings to use for your project.

When connecting to an Internet service, it's recommended that you do that either with an Ethernet cable, or via a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi connection. Using either of these methods helps minimize the chance of interfering with the hotspot signal being broadcast by the SlingStudio unit.

Note that connecting to an Internet provider is not necessary unless you're live-streaming or broadcasting your project.

Storage speed

Today's video productions can involve a tremendous amount of data that require a large amount of disk space. Even more significantly, storage media not only must have sufficient capacity, they must also be able to record that data quickly enough so that no data is dropped.

SlingStudio Console offers a disk storage Write Speed Test that evaluates how well your chosen storage SD card or hard drive is capable of providing the write speeds (recording speed) that is necessary for your project, taking into account the number of sources that you are working with (especially if you've chosen to record each source individually).

If your recording media isn't fast enough for your project's needs, then you'll either need to rethink what you want to do, or else use storage media that has faster writing times.

Finally, note that, if you're live-streaming your project, then it is not necessary to have an SD card inserted into your SlingStudio unit (or to have a hard disk attached). Having file storage available to your SlingStudio unit is only necessary if you're working with a project that requires project file storage.

For more information about using storage media with SlingStudio, take a look at the article What devices is SlingStudio compatible with? It's linked below.

More information about SlingStudio compatible devices:

SlingStudio compatible device list
SlingStudio compatible camera list