95% CPU usage on MAC with Elgato HD60s+

[papiborrito]

Hi,

I am running into this horrible overload of CPU usage on my 2016 MacBook Pro 13". As I have been trying to fix it for over two weeks I will try to narrow down the issue:
Whenever I start up OBS it completely clogs up my Mac's CPU, averaging between 87-95% (even when idle). I recently bought the Elgato HD60s+, which supposedly is one of the best capture cards for Mac, but this also seems to be the culprit of the high CPU usage. Mind you, I (feel like I) have tried everything; switching resolutions, encoders, removing scenes, upgrading to MacOS Monterey etc. When I remove the capture card from the scene, OBS shows 5-12% CPU usage (and Mac's total CPU around 40-50%), and when I add it it shows 20-35%, with mac hitting the aforementioned 95%.

When starting OBS with the capture card enabled, the Activity Monitor also shows a new process called "UVCAssistant", seeming to take up a lot of CPU. This disappears once I remove it from the scene again. I assume this is required to use the Elgato... maybe someone can enlighten me.

I know my MacBook isn't state of the art anymore, but I do not get how the CPU goes up that much and I cannot seem to do anything about it. The only thing which I hope might still solve it is removing the USB 3.0 to USB-C adapter which is currently in use for the capture card (as the Elgato didn't come with a USB-C to USB-C), and replacing it with a cable that will come in in a few days.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

The USB cable adapter, if working properly, shouldn't make any difference
Hopefully you understand real-time video encoding is VERY computationally demanding.

And no surprise... you are running the StreamElements plugin, which pukes all over the OBS log... complete PoS s/w
then with a constrained CPU, you are running a bunch of CPU impacting audio filters
and then processing 2 video stream, capture card and video camera with color filtering

13:45:33.189: Output 'adv_file_output': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 144 (13.4%)

You need to make sure your OS (Operating System) is optimized (unnecessary background processes turned off)
I'd ignore the OBS CPU usage... as it is irrelevant for the most part, what really counts is overall system CPU usage...
Your CPU usage goes up based on your video rendering of the video streams. With the lower resolution of your Sony a6300 camera, I'd expect CPU impact to be a little lower that of the PS5, though the filters and effects may change that
Your OBS settings appear to me to be following advance setups for people with far more powerful computers and/or GPU with encoding offload.

In OBS, are you using Studio Mode? if yes turn that off as it doubles the rendering workload
So, try keeping it simple... no Studio Mode... and scenes with no filters/effects. How is System hardware utilization (CPU, GPU, RAM, Disk I/O, etc) then? if ok, then add filters/effects based on your priority 1 at a time so you can see impact. And be sure to stop and leave plenty of headroom. I'd get nervous with sustained 80% CPU usage, and plenty can happen to spike that (which then might impact audio quality of stream/recording)

 

[papiborrito]

The USB cable adapter, if working properly, shouldn't make any difference
Hopefully you understand real-time video encoding is VERY computationally demanding.

And no surprise... you are running the StreamElements plugin, which pukes all over the OBS log... complete PoS s/w
then with a constrained CPU, you are running a bunch of CPU impacting audio filters
and then processing 2 video stream, capture card and video camera with color filtering

13:45:33.189: Output 'adv_file_output': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 144 (13.4%)

You need to make sure your OS (Operating System) is optimized (unnecessary background processes turned off)
I'd ignore the OBS CPU usage... as it is irrelevant for the most part, what really counts is overall system CPU usage...
Your CPU usage goes up based on your video rendering of the video streams. With the lower resolution of your Sony a6300 camera, I'd expect CPU impact to be a little lower that of the PS5, though the filters and effects may change that
Your OBS settings appear to me to be following advance setups for people with far more powerful computers and/or GPU with encoding offload.

In OBS, are you using Studio Mode? if yes turn that off as it doubles the rendering workload
So, try keeping it simple... no Studio Mode... and scenes with no filters/effects. How is System hardware utilization (CPU, GPU, RAM, Disk I/O, etc) then? if ok, then add filters/effects based on your priority 1 at a time so you can see impact. And be sure to stop and leave plenty of headroom. I'd get nervous with sustained 80% CPU usage, and plenty can happen to spike that (which then might impact audio quality of stream/recording)

Thanks so much for your help! I really appreciate it. I have a couple of comments and some questions, really hope you can let me know what you think.
First, I am using the Streamelements plugin (OBS.Live) just so that I can see the twitch chat. Is there a solution to not use this and still see the chat? Also, do you think that this plugin is raising CPU?
Second, I have followed your tips, turned off the filters and it seems to be running more smoothly. However, the biggest issue remains; they dont seem to be the culprit. I just did a test run with a scene with ONLY my camera and capture card, and my CPU still hits 95%. And that only seems to be because of the capture card. However, according to your answer, I feel like I just have to live with that and upgrade my laptop asap (maybe M1?)

With the adjustments made, my laptop doesnt seem to struggle as much anymore so I really appreciate that. Yet, if you have any more tips please let me know. Also: how come my CPU usage is higher on 720p 60fps than 1080p 30fps?

THANKS IN ADVANCE <3

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

I'm a computer guy, not a gamer, so can't help with twitch and OBS.live. but I can tell you that plugin is VERY poorly written. A search on this and the Windows forum should guide you to alternatives. I've seen people have all kinds of issues with that plugin. the true root cause ?? I have no idea what combination of bad code and user mis-config causes which problems. I haven't seen discussion in these forums on that plugin. Asking at StreamElements site how to streamline/optimize the plug-in and minimize system impact would be more appropriate and yield better info for you.

so ALL audio and video filters/effects turned off?
Have you made sure the correct capture card driver installed?
As for CPU usage, 60fps is 2X the frames of 30fps, so yea, LOTS more work

Don't overlook cleaning up your Operating System (an art). Even a powerful computer can be crippled by poor user choices in setup (like a bunch of the defaults) and operation. A newer/more powerful computer can sometimes had the effect of those performance-impacting settings

As for M1 - see threads on missing OpenSource components not yet released by others preventing a functional equivalent native M1 release by OBS Studio team

 

[papiborrito]

I'm a computer guy, not a gamer, so can't help with twitch and OBS.live. but I can tell you that plugin is VERY poorly written. A search on this and the Windows forum should guide you to alternatives. I've seen people have all kinds of issues with that plugin. the true root cause ?? I have no idea what combination of bad code and user mis-config causes which problems. I haven't seen discussion in these forums on that plugin. Asking at StreamElements site how to streamline/optimize the plug-in and minimize system impact would be more appropriate and yield better info for you.

so ALL audio and video filters/effects turned off?
Have you made sure the correct capture card driver installed?
As for CPU usage, 60fps is 2X the frames of 30fps, so yea, LOTS more work

Don't overlook cleaning up your Operating System (an art). Even a powerful computer can be crippled by poor user choices in setup (like a bunch of the defaults) and operation. A newer/more powerful computer can sometimes had the effect of those performance-impacting settings

As for M1 - see threads on missing OpenSource components not yet released by others preventing a functional equivalent native M1 release by OBS Studio team

Thanks again for your response. With regards to your comment about OBS.live I have tried to run a simulation in normal OBS and I get the same results as in OBS.live. I will however make sure to try and contact StreamElements on how to optimize their plugin (as far as I can tell they just tell people to limit browser sources, which is only 1 for me so can't do much more than that).

Nevertheless, I ran a stream yesterday and it worked flawlessly (although my CPU usage was still very high).
I will keep trying to find solutions for my issue - the biggest problem still is the extremely high consumption of the Elgato capture card. Thanks for all your help!

 

[halfnormalledtonowhere]

Hi @papiborrito did you find a resolution to this? I'm also using a Cam Link 4K and simply viewing the camera feed in any app (Teams/Quicktime/Zoom/OBS) causes UVCAssistant to use between 30-40% CPU and spins my fans up...