Bug Report After 25.x update 15% Skipped Frames Due To Encoding Lag - FIXED

[Caerdwyn]

Sharing a problem and solution for others who will be encountering the same.

After updating from 24.0.3 to 25.0.8 (Windows 10/64, update 1909, Intel i5-4770k, GTX970, all SSD storage, 32gb mem) I began having severe problems with "Skipped frames due to encoding lag" ranging from 5% to 15% dropped where previously it had been a glorious 0. I don't have a heavy duty stream encoding config (CBR 2500kbps, 720p30, no local recording); it certainly should not even make the system break a sweat even when gaming at 1080p/full quality in-game. Reverting to 24.0.3 did not help.

No hardware changes. No Windows Update during this timeframe. No encoding config changes made... at least not by me.

After a couple of hours of tearing out what little remains of my hair I found the problem: the upgrade had silently changed the streaming encoder from "NVIDIA NVENC H.264" to "x264", which dumped all the encoding burden on my CPU. I have noticed no other config changes or scene bustage; it seems to have been limited to this setting.

Settings - Output - Output Mode: Advanced
then
Streaming tab - Encoder --> changed back to NVENC.

0 dropped frames. MAGIC

If you update and find sudden encoding lag and tripling of the CPU burden shown on your Stats dock, check this setting first. Software updates should not make changes as fundamental as this unannounced.

 

[not_tourist]

Same problem here, ever since the "new memory management" came out with 25.0.8 but i have no solution as of yet.

My rig is a Ryzen5 3600x with 16 GB Ram, a GTX 1660 Ti 6Gb, 1 TB SSD and a 2 TB HDD storage.
I am using this setup since I have bought it in July 2019, with the same OBS settings wich were 1080p recording and streaming with 6000 rate and highest quality possible using new NVENC codec.

These settings never took the workload higher then 90% on the GPU and 60% on the CPU. Now, after 25.0.8. they produce the same workload, but the recordings started dropping frames very badly and when Psychovisual tuning and Forward looking are turned on, the recording starts stuttering even more almost a standstill. Tried reducing the canvas size from 1080p to 720p, even for the recording but it makes no difference either.

Checked the codec setting as the main poster mentioned, but my settings are still the same (NVENC and high). In the last few days I have tried reverting the update (uninstalling and deleting everything) to even as low 24.0.3., but the stutter remains the same.

 

[BionicClick]

I use the x264 encoder. I have the same issue of quite a few dropped frames now as well. no settings changed on my end for stream/encode. cpu workload is the same. thank fully its less than 0.5 percent. but still. a headache.

 

[not_tourist]

Same problem here, ever since the "new memory management" came out with 25.0.8 but i have no solution as of yet.

My rig is a Ryzen5 3600x with 16 GB Ram, a GTX 1660 Ti 6Gb, 1 TB SSD and a 2 TB HDD storage.
I am using this setup since I have bought it in July 2019, with the same OBS settings wich were 1080p recording and streaming with 6000 rate and highest quality possible using new NVENC codec.

These settings never took the workload higher then 90% on the GPU and 60% on the CPU. Now, after 25.0.8. they produce the same workload, but the recordings started dropping frames very badly and when Psychovisual tuning and Forward looking are turned on, the recording starts stuttering even more almost a standstill. Tried reducing the canvas size from 1080p to 720p, even for the recording but it makes no difference either.

Checked the codec setting as the main poster mentioned, but my settings are still the same (NVENC and high). In the last few days I have tried reverting the update (uninstalling and deleting everything) to even as low 24.0.3., but the stutter remains the same.

FIXED

Magically fixed it by using OBS on the main screen, sadly I have no direct cisual contact this way while recording... atleast there are no more stutters and fps drops, log states 0 memory leak