Question / Help 2 Mac Pro's - different OSX , OBS , NDI, and GPU

InSinkProductions

InSinkProductions

New Member
Hi. I'm a little bit of a newbie to OBS. Wanting to eventually stream live music from my music studio ( in these crazy Covid times we are in). I don't want to waste anyones time, so I'll get straight to my issue. I have 2 almost identical Mac Pro's. 1 has El Capitan, the other has High Sierra. Hence I have 2 different versions of OBS, and NDI on each. El Capitan is my video editing computer. High Sierra is my Music Studio computer. The video computer seems to run OBS fine with an NDI Cam and my iPhone 8 plus as a camera interface. The Music computer, on the other hand, will pause or lock up video and then pick back up later. This happens regardless of whether I'm recording or not. I haven't tried streaming yet. But one thing at a time. I haven't noticed any issues with CPU or anything inactivity monitor seeming "tasked". The only real difference between computers, other than OSX ver. and OBS ver. is the Graphics card is about twice as much memory in my Video editor. FYI, neither is a power house. With everything I've researched, my feeling is that the GPU is the issue. But I'm also I'm wondering if it's because High Sierra uses more resources. Or if the newer version of OBS or NDI has a bug with my system. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Mike B
 
InSinkProductions

InSinkProductions

New Member
I think I figured out the main problem.

(While I still may obtain better GPU's for both computers. I know mine are old an out of date. Even an old GTX 680 3gig would be fine, and much better than what I have.)

I think NDI was the problem. Or rather my use of it. (user error).

My Music computer is on a different floor than my Video editing computer. The Music control room accesses 5g WiFi at around 300 Mbps down and 12 Mbps up. The Video computer is directly next to my router. I connect it directly to the router via ethernet so I can transfer large video files faster across the web. When I disconnected the ethernet on my video computer and tried OBS with NDI cam via Wifi, I experienced the same freezes and lags as I did downstairs on the music computer. While the camera itself is connected via wifi only, having the computer hard wired seems to fix the issue. Strange, I know. But I went to NDI newtech's web site, and everything I saw suggested that going hard wired was the way to go, They are using far more complicated setups than me. i'm only using one iPhone running the NDI Cam app. But still. I guess I'm gonna have to install some cat 6 down to the studio control room. Alternatively, maybe buying a webcam or two might be a decent solution. I've seen some decent reviews of Logitech Brio and then a second C920 or something. Thanks for your time if you've looked through my logs. If anyone has more to offer, I'm still happy to listen.
 
InSinkProductions

InSinkProductions

New Member
Narcogen said:
Current NDI runtime is causing a crash.

https://obsproject.com/forum/thread...ing-source-mac-high-sierra.117404/post-445745

El Cap is below current minimum requirement for OBS.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your response.

El Capitan is the one that working perfectly for me. It is running on a slightly older version of OBS (and NDI), to make it stable.

Its the High Sierra that has the issue in my case. And there is never a crash. Only temporary freezes in the video coming from iPhone when using NDI (a second or two at random times.). I have since installed a different iPhone to OBS connection interface, the Epoch Pro App. Not in love with it, but I can at least use a usb to lightning cable and this seems to solve the issue on High Sierra as well. The app will only allow 720p through usb. In order to achieve 1080p it requires using it through NDI, which as you pointed out seems to be causing the issue. But at least it works via usb.

Question. If I were to try the NDI runtime 4.0.0 as you suggest, do i need to uninstall the previous version? And if it crashes OBS, could I go back to what I have now easily? I'm a little leery of trying the switch, seeing all the crash references that the other users were having. My issue is pretty much solved minus the 1080p limitation on NDI.

Thanks again for your help.
 
InSinkProductions

InSinkProductions

New Member
Narcogen said:
Yes, I would uninstall and reinstall.

The old version is available here:

https://obsproject.com/forum/thread...ing-source-mac-high-sierra.117404/post-445745
Click to expand...
Could use your help one last time. I have spent countless hours trying to locate NDI to uninstall. Searched the OBS forums and the web. I can only find uninstall methods for PC. The only thing I found was "just move it to the trash". There doesn't appear to be an actual app, Nor does anyone seem to know the folder location of any files that I can delete.
 
Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
Have you installed the old version, or are you not intending to?

You should be able to just install the old version and it will overwrite.

If you don't intend to use NDI anymore, you should be able to remove the NDI plugin from its folder for OBS and then OBS won't crash, whether or not you have the NDI runtime installed.
 
Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
Ideally if it had an uninstaller you'd use it, but if it doesn't and everything works, I wouldn't bother looking for one.

If you want to look for files, OBS plugins go here:

/Library/Application Support/obs-studio/plugins

NDI files go here:

/Library/Application Support/NewTek
 
InSinkProductions

InSinkProductions

New Member
Narcogen said:
Ideally if it had an uninstaller you'd use it, but if it doesn't and everything works, I wouldn't bother looking for one.

If you want to look for files, OBS plugins go here:

/Library/Application Support/obs-studio/plugins

NDI files go here:

/Library/Application Support/NewTek
Click to expand...
Thanks. I'll try that next. Thee is no difference after the new install. I'm guessing the old files are are still being read. I'll report back how it goes for any one else who is experiencing similar partial freezes in video via NDI..
 
InSinkProductions

InSinkProductions

New Member
Update. No success. Couldn't find any sign of NewTek files anywhere in the location or anywhere else. I'll keep looking.

What I tried. Installing different sets of runtime and NDI lib etc. in different orders. I could successfully get OBS to crash as you suggested. Then reinstalled in old runtime again. And the crash went away. So, I'm assuming that the install is working. Just not fixing the video freezes. I still believe it's an NDI issue. Because I don' have it when using other media sources such as epoc Cam app which can use its own protocol or NDI. They have a multi cam app I'm considering trying in place of NDI. NDI just appears to be extremely powerful and versitile, if I can ever get it working properly.
 
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