When the "Dropped frames" counter is increasing and the connection square is yellow or red, this means that your connection to the server* isn't stable or that it can't keep up with your set bitrate. Because of this, OBS was forced to drop some of the video frames in order to compensate. OBS opts to drop the frames to avoid buffering and keep your stream playing. You can check out our detailed guide here for more info, and what options you have to correct the issue: //topboatsites.com/wiki/Dropped-Frames-and-General-Connection-Issues
* When we say "server", this means the server of the service that you're streaming to (eg Twitch, YouTube, etc). There are no OBS servers - the connection goes directly from your computer to the streaming service. Even if the OBS website and everything else run by us went offline, you can still stream with OBS as there is no dependency on anything run by the OBS Project. Any connection problems are between you and the service you're streaming to.
The quickest way to make sure you have good settings is to use the Tools / Auto Configuration Wizard in OBS. This will get most basic settings correct for you. If you are streaming, check out our Streaming with x264 guide for a primer on video encoding and how to adjust settings further to get the most out of your stream.
If you are recording, try using Simple output mode and the recording presets. If you have an available hardware encoder, try to use that for your recordings. For more in-depth options, see our local recording guide.
Since the OBS Contributors are a small group, we can only test against the hardware and software that we have available. If we do make a mistake with an update, you can bet we'll be on top of it, honest about it, and correct it as soon as we can. Stop by our Community Chat if you need more assistance.
There's lots of ways! If you want to donate, we have a page set up for that. If you're looking to contribute to OBS' code, check out our developer quickstart guide. If you're multilingual, and want to help with OBS translations, check out the .