Challenge 2: Walking Through the Troubleshooting Checklist — Solution Walkthrough

The steps, per this chapter's own checklist:

  1. Open the Stats Dock first, rather than guessing at a cause. Check
     specifically which kind of dropped frame is occurring — network-
     related, rendering/encoding-related, or both.
  2. If the Stats Dock shows network-related dropped frames, check the
     actual upload bandwidth against the currently configured bitrate
     (Chapter 4's own material) — a mismatch here means the bitrate is
     too high for the connection to sustain.
  3. If the Stats Dock instead shows rendering/encoding overload, check
     CPU/GPU usage directly. From there, consider switching to a
     hardware encoder if available (Chapter 4), lowering the output
     resolution or framerate, or closing other demanding applications
     competing for the same CPU/GPU resources.

Why starting with the Stats Dock specifically matters:

Per this chapter's own material, guessing at a cause without checking
the Stats Dock risks applying the wrong fix entirely — exactly the
mistake this chapter's own warning box describes (upgrading internet
for what's actually a CPU/encoding problem, or vice versa). The Stats
Dock is what actually distinguishes which of the two problems is
occurring before any fix is attempted.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
------------------------------
This exercise checks that this chapter's own troubleshooting checklist
is understood as an ordered sequence — diagnose first via the Stats
Dock, then apply the fix matching whichever specific cause was
actually identified — rather than jumping straight to a fix based on
assumption.