Hey, just profile the encoder first—look at cache misses, not just CPU cycles. Pin the encoding thread to a single core and pin the hardware decoder to another; that eliminates context switches. Use a low‑overhead packetization, like gop‑skipping or adaptive bitrate, and drop the keyframe interval if you can tolerate occasional drops. Turn on the fastest mode in the hardware encoder, but make sure the bit‑rate target is just enough to keep the buffer at the minimal level. Finally, keep the network socket in non‑blocking mode and send each frame as soon as the codec finishes; the jitter buffer can stay at 5 ms instead of 20. That should shave a handful of milliseconds off the pipeline.

Sure thing, just keep the buffer target to the smallest multiple of your frame period you can manage—usually 2 or 3 frames. Use a fixed‑size ring buffer and let the decoder pull from it with a zero‑copy approach. If you hit a hiccup, drop the next keyframe and reset the buffer counter instead of letting it grow. And always double‑check that the host OS’s scheduler isn’t pulling a thread in the middle of a packet flush; pin those threads and you’ll see the jitter drop into single‑digit ms.