Question / Help All video frames suddenly drop, but audio continues (!)

[msegado]

When using OBS to stream to YouTube, I've run into the following peculiar issue:

The stream starts up fine and YouTube indicates excellent stream health. After a period of time, the bandwidth suddenly drops to ~160 kbps, and it appears as if all video frames are dropped from this point on until streaming is stopped and restarted. YouTube indicates that it's not receiving data. Audio frames, however, continue being sent and saved to YouTube somehow! This is apparent when viewing the archived (processed) version of the stream on YouTube afterward -- the audio from the frame-dropped region is present in the video, despite the fact that OBS was showing a red square / frames dropping and YT was reporting a lack of data. (To make things worse, instead of the video track being blank during that portion, it skips ahead to the point where streaming resumed, yielding a wildly out-of-sync audio track after that point...)

Any thoughts on what could cause this, or how to go about troubleshooting it? My first thought was ISP throttling, but that doesn't explain how the audio is somehow getting through perfectly fine while the video isn't...

Thanks!

PS: Possibly relevant: https://obsproject.com/forum/thread...stop-until-i-restart-stream.69554/post-306897

 

[Narcogen]

Include a log file if you have a problem: here's how

To upload a log file, go to the Help menu -> Log Files -> Upload current/last log file. The current log file is for the currently active running session. The last log file is for the last time you ran the program. We recommend always including it just in case.

obsproject.com

Open OBS. Start an output session (streaming or recording). Observe your issue. Stop the output session. Upload the Current log without quitting OBS.

 

[msegado]

AHA!! I'm almost certain this is my problem:

from Streaming randomly fails, reporting dropped frames, never recovers:

OBS will run for a random period of time - from seconds to hours - without incident, and then suddenly will begin increasing dropped frames at a rate which seems to indicate all frames are being dropped. The streaming rate in the lower right of the interface will drop from about 4,000kb/s to about 160kb/s. ... If I stop the stream and restart it, it typically connects and begins streaming immediately ... I [am using] the Apple Hardware Encoder ...

from Hardware h264 vs x264:

I was happy with [Apple's] hardware h264 decoder until i discovered a critical problem. No matter which resolution or bitrate i use, after 10-20 min from start the connection in OBS rapidly falls to zero and i need to stop and start again stream to restore. The problem is not in internet connection because when i switch to x264 everything works fine with 5000 bitrate for 2 hours and more.

from Apple Hardware Encoder destroys stream:

I had streamed before with the Apple Hardware encoder but so often the stream will completely screech to a halt and show in the red and like 300bps or something and just literally I get disconnected ...

from Bitrate Drops Significantly Mid Stream:

I wanted to try using the Apple [presumably hardware] encoder ... After a few minutes though, the OBS indicator goes red, and [the website] reports that it's not receiving a stream. I seemed to be able to induce this to happen by moving my camera around a *lot* to generate more motion. I didn't try purposefully degrading my network connection. ... The only way to get it working again is to stop and restart streaming.

While setting up OBS, I had selected -- surprise -- Apple's hardware h264 encoder. The above is exactly the behavior I saw.

Would probably be a good idea to document this bug somewhere official so others can identify it more easily; not sure where the appropriate place is though...

 

[feyrerm]

I am having the EXACT same issue. has there been any resolution for this?