27.2.4 CPU Usage on Mac suddenly spiking?

[Breadcrumbs85]

Below is a screenshot of my CPU load for the last 30 days, as you may have guessed I stream 1-2 times a week. However last nights stream was a total disaster. CPU maxed on all cores within 30 mins and OBS dropped frames every 1 or 2 minutes without fail. After reseting OBS, and then resetting my laptop, and then reseting the stream out of desperation, I gave up and apologised to the viewers, that I had left after losing most of them.

I tried recording some gameplay without streaming tonight to see if it was anything at all to do with my upload but it behaved the same, CPU maxed until frames drop. Devices like my webcam go out of synch with the gameplay capture and then speed up to re-synchronise.

To troubleshoot my end, I then backed up my scenes etc and deleted the app and tried the previous release (27.4.2) to see if it was something to do with the 27.2.4. However this also behaved the same way. At this point I began deleting the scenes and changes I have made over the last few months and purged alot of work I had put into the stream to see if it was something I added. Sadly this didn't solve the issue but I cant seem to get back all the sources and layouts/scenes I purged which is very upsetting.

From memory I think Mac OSX updated in May (27.2.4 was released prior in March I think?) and I think one of the changes has had a very detrimental affect on OBS's performance?

I really hope that Mac hasnt changed something to nerf the intel CPU's models so as to push the need for their own M1 chips. But if so I hope we can find a workaround, seeing as my model uses an Intel CPU I would hope it is more familiar to the windows version than a proprietary Apple CPU.

For reference here are my specs, since December last year when I started streaming I havent had an issue and saw minimal load on the CPU even when streaming and recording at the same time.

Im not sure if the OBS app isn't allowed to fully use hardware or if power delivery for the laptop isn't fully utilised by the app. Previously it was fine but recently it performs terribly. I appreciate all the work that is done by you all on the Mac version of this app, but its currently not functioning well enough on my machine which is fairly powerful and hasn't struggled to stream and record in the past.

Many thanks,

 

[beard.wade]

I am running Big Sur 11.6.5 on a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports) 2.3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 and I had the same issues this last weekend, and only today was I able to diagnose the issue as the CPU. I tried several solutions, but the one that seems to have worked (I haven't fully tested with a stream) was rolling back my OBS to version 27.2.2. I simply installed it over the 27.2.4, allowing the newer version to be deleted. With version 27.2.4 CPU was at 95%, but I now have only 21% CPU usage with OBS running in the background at the moment.

You can download OBS 27.2.2 here: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/releases/27.2.2
Scroll to the bottom of the page and download the obs-mac-27.2.2.dmg

Good Luck!

 

[Breadcrumbs85]

I am running Big Sur 11.6.5 on a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports) 2.3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 and I had the same issues this last weekend, and only today was I able to diagnose the issue as the CPU. I tried several solutions, but the one that seems to have worked (I haven't fully tested with a stream) was rolling back my OBS to version 27.2.2. I simply installed it over the 27.2.4, allowing the newer version to be deleted. With version 27.2.4 CPU was at 95%, but I now have only 21% CPU usage with OBS running in the background at the moment.

You can download OBS 27.2.2 here: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/releases/27.2.2
Scroll to the bottom of the page and download the obs-mac-27.2.2.dmg

Good Luck!

Thanks for your suggestion, apologies I should have specified that I tried rolling back to .2.2 as part of my initial troubleshooting, and saw the same issue.

But as I mentioned it appears the performance issue began shortly after an update to OSX Monterey in May. When .2.4 was realised the month prior. So it seems as if something has changed with the operating system that we need a patch to OBS to accommodate. Ive done further troubleshooting and aim to stream this afternoon with no recording to see if the encoding of video whilst streaming is the issue, after which I will add my findings to a follow up for my inital post.

 

[Talonis]

I’ve been running OS Monterey with OBS 27.2.4 since it came out with no issues, so it sounds like a local issue for you.

 

[beard.wade]

Today, after 3 hours of streaming wonderfully, I experienced the same issue again with CPU usage spiking to 95% and fps dropping to 50% or less of the set 30fps. I have held off updating to Monterey due to the supposed issues, but now I'm thinking about updating to it. It's either that or downgrade OBS further.

Any suggestions?

Log file can be accessed at https://obsproject.com/logs/W4VWDC2J8msJi_Bm

 

[Breadcrumbs85]

Today, after 3 hours of streaming wonderfully, I experienced the same issue again with CPU usage spiking to 95% and fps dropping to 50% or less of the set 30fps. I have held off updating to Monterey due to the supposed issues, but now I'm thinking about updating to it. It's either that or downgrade OBS further.

Any suggestions?

Log file can be accessed at https://obsproject.com/logs/W4VWDC2J8msJi_Bm

Sorry to hear the issue is affecting your stream as well. Today removed some sources and charged everything that I left to close when inactive. I started stream without recording and it was fine, 50-60% cpu utilisation and 0.1-0.3 percent dropped frames which is totally acceptable.

Whilst still streaming I started recording after pre warning everyone the frames would get a bit choppy but I needed to troubleshoot. It seemed to be ok and I didn’t have much if an issue until I tried to change my webcam (brio stream) to 60fps. This totally crashed OBS. I reconnected the stream and tried again and the same thing happened. So I think my webcam might be doing something odd as well as the performance issues.

Previously I had been recording in .mp4 as they are easier to edit and trim stream highlights from. But I changed to .mkv to see if this helped. Plus as I said I trimmed down my media sources and changed each ones properties to “close when inactive” as they might be causing undue load on the CPU. I have 64gb of ram so I doubt it but it was worth a try.

Hopefully you can make similar changes to your setup and see an improvement. Mine wasn’t perfect it did drop a couple of frames noticeably but well within what’s acceptable for a live stream

Best of luck.

 

[beard.wade]

We think we've discovered an underlying issue. Today, the only issue we experienced was a drop in FPS, which then affected the stream YouTube was receiving. We are currently broadcasting from a tent, have been for several weeks, and the computer was getting pretty warm. Once we were able to get some of the heat to dissipate away from the system, the fps came up to greater than 20, and once the computer had significantly cooled, fps held pretty steady at 30. We had also closed Firefox browser as an initial response. We restarted Firefox, and fps dropped again and bounced between 11 and 27. Soooo, I think part of the issue is the heat, and secondarily is Firefox using too much CPU. I'll be installing Brave as the browser to use and will see how the stream operates at that point.

 

[Breadcrumbs85]

We think we've discovered an underlying issue. Today, the only issue we experienced was a drop in FPS, which then affected the stream YouTube was receiving. We are currently broadcasting from a tent, have been for several weeks, and the computer was getting pretty warm. Once we were able to get some of the heat to dissipate away from the system, the fps came up to greater than 20, and once the computer had significantly cooled, fps held pretty steady at 30. We had also closed Firefox browser as an initial response. We restarted Firefox, and fps dropped again and bounced between 11 and 27. Soooo, I think part of the issue is the heat, and secondarily is Firefox using too much CPU. I'll be installing Brave as the browser to use and will see how the stream operates at that point.

I too have noticed Safari warning me the browser was using alot of resources so I will also try running my twitch chat through OBS and see if this helps.

I did a PVRAM and SMC reset which seemed to help a bit as well, maybe something was slightly under-volted or under-utilised in error.

I will report back with my findings. Best of luck to you.

 

[Breadcrumbs85]

Apologies for not updating sooner.

After doing multiple combinations of things that are said to lower CPU usage. I have seen the most improvement by adjusting my previews scaling and by turning it off entirely. It seems that changing it to the base resolution of 1080p and turning it off with the x264 encoder on Superfast, I didnt drop a single frame ( 0.0% on both ) for an entire 6 hours stream. Afterwards I checked and the video quality was OK but definitely exhibited some artefacting and the frames were overly soft at times.

For the next stream I bumped the setting to Veryfast and with the preview disabled this dropped a very minimal amount of frames (0.5% to 0.8% on each) which I personally see as acceptable as the vast majority of the time the frames rarely dipped and only by 1 or 2 frames which can happen even when your well within spec etc.

So please feel free to experiment with the previews resolution and disable it to see if this helps.

Thanks, best of luck