A naive, first time user's cry for help.

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Daniel S.

New Member
So, I have been recently messing with OBS in terms of game capture/Recording and I cannot seem to find a good sweet spot in terms of keeping a stable framerate as well as saying that the Encoder is being overloaded. Currently, I am rather fatigued as to what I would need to make my recording/capture more....Smoothly. I am using a Laptop currently and can't really afford to build myself a computer at the moment. But, the processor for the laptop is a quad-core. At this point, I am considering to invest in a capture card but I am uncertain if it would really help my situation....Any help is much appreciated.

Here's the general Spec of the Laptop:
1GHz Intel i5-1035G1 quad-core processor (overclockable up to 3.6GHz)
16GB of DDR4 RAM
512GB PCIe solid state drive
 
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Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
That is a low-power, battery life optimize CPU, with a built-in GPU
so it is fine for lots of things, but NOT real-time video encoding which is VERY computationally demanding.

I recommend monitoring hardware resource (CPU, GPU, RAM, etc) utilization to see if your system is being maxed out with your settings [Task manager’s Performance tab and/or Resource Monitor] and I assume it is.

Don't just focus on just optimizing OBS. You need to make sure your Operating System isn't at the default eye-candy settings, with lots of unnecessary stuff pre-loading

I'd recommend learning H/W monitoring, then trying your game play and see what your utilization is. If you system is near maxed out just playing games, then you simply don't have enough 'horsepower' to then add real-time video encoding on top without becoming quite knowledgeable in optimizing OS and OBS for under-powered system.. and even then, you'll have to be realistic in expectations. I'd recommend to start with encoding at no more than 30fps at 720p, and optimize for performance (not quality). then you can increase until you find your limit

You don't mention - are you just streaming, or streaming and recording, or just recording (planning to edit, then upload)?
 
deFrisselle

deFrisselle

Member
Lock your game to 30 or 60 FPS As Lawrence said stick to 720p30 with OBS on that laptop It's not very powerful 4 core/8threads isn't too bad but your weak points are the low speed of the CPU Sure it will self overclock when needs but that brings heat and throttling Find a way to cool your laptop so you can get the most out of the CPU The other is the integrated graphics That might not be up to encoding as it's linked to the CPU speed as it's on die So, cooling is very important Also, likely won't be able to go higher than 720p30 on encoding
The other variable is the game and how demanding it is You'll have to balance game settings with OBS settings

Please post a log from a game recording session

Please post a log with your issue! Here's how...

OBS Studio creates a log file each time you run it which contains very useful diagnostic information. Without a log file, it's much harder for any support volunteers to figure out problems and your post may be ignored. To upload a log file, go to the Help menu > Log Files > Upload Last Log...
obsproject.com obsproject.com
 
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Daniel S.

New Member
deFrisselle said:
Lock your game to 30 or 60 FPS As Lawrence said stick to 720p30 with OBS on that laptop It's not very powerful 4 core/8threads isn't too bad but your weak points are the low speed of the CPU Sure it will self overclock when needs but that brings heat and throttling Find a way to cool your laptop so you can get the most out of the CPU The other is the integrated graphics That might not be up to encoding as it's linked to the CPU speed as it's on die So, cooling is very important Also, likely won't be able to go higher than 720p30 on encoding
The other variable is the game and how demanding it is You'll have to balance game settings with OBS settings

Please post a log from a game recording session

Please post a log with your issue! Here's how...

OBS Studio creates a log file each time you run it which contains very useful diagnostic information. Without a log file, it's much harder for any support volunteers to figure out problems and your post may be ignored. To upload a log file, go to the Help menu > Log Files > Upload Last Log...
obsproject.com obsproject.com
Click to expand...
I see...Thank you!
 
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Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
Daniel S. said:
I am more interested in recording rather than streaming. But thanks for the heads up.
Click to expand...

Maybe some of this applies to you. The other thing to look up is recommendations for using Intel's QuickSync encoding options (if your CPU supports such)

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/best-settings.140188/#post-514693 @FerretBomb comment #2
1) NEVER RECORD TO MP4 DIRECTLY, FOR ANY REASON. It is not a recording-safe format; if anything goes wrong during the recording, even for a split second, the ENTIRE recording will be corrupted and absolutely not recoverable by any means. Record to MKV, and remux to MP4 after the recording is complete from OBS' File menu, Remux Recordings.

2) Record using CQP or CRF, not CBR. CBR is only used for streaming, where the back-end infrastructure requires it. CQP/CRF are quality-target based encodes, and will use as much or as little bitrate as is needed to maintain a constant image quality. No wasting bitrate on simple/slow scenes, no choking on fast-moving or complex scenes. 22 is a good starting point. 16 will result in much larger files, but near-perfect video. 12 should only be used if you plan to edit and re-encode later, and will be VERY large. Anything lower than 12 shouldn't be used unless you know exactly why you need it, and what problems it can cause.

3) Use the Quality preset, not Max Quality. Likewise, turn off Psychovisual Tuning. Both of these options use CUDA cores, and tend to cause significant problems like encoding overload when it should otherwise not be happening.
Click to expand...
 
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