Audio dropping completely during facebook live stream

[bkm7925]

Hi,

I am having an issue streaming our church service to Facebook. When listening to the stream on Facebook the audio is choppy (crackling & stuttering), video freezes, and at times the audio completely drops out. I have attached the log file. Can someone please take a look at them and give me some guidance on what I am doing wrong. I am only volunteering my time to do the church stream so I am in no way an expert in sound or video. The cameras we are using to stream are SMTAV NDI Camera. I've added the Newtek NDI plugin in OBS and can see the video and the audio comes through fine in OBS. However when I start streaming to Facebook and then listen to how it sounds on Facebook Live the audio is choppy (crackling & stuttering), video freezes and sometimes the audio drops out completely. Thank you for your help.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Here is your problem
11:05:18.917: CPU Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4200U CPU @ 1.60GHz

That is a REAL old, low-power (U=ultra low power) CPU, optimized for battery life, not the computationally demanding task of real-time video encoding.
I recommend monitoring hardware resource (CPU, GPU, RAM, Disk I/O, etc) utilization [for ex. using Task manager’s Performance tab and/or Resource Monitor] to see if your system is being maxed out with your settings https://obsproject.com/wiki/General-Performance-and-Encoding-Issues and https://obsproject.com/wiki/GPU-overload-issues

I'm impressed your setup is working as well as it is

11:30:34.330: Output 'simple_stream': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 134 (0.3%)​

11:30:34.330: Output 'simple_stream': Number of dropped frames due to insufficient bandwidth/connection stalls: 251 (0.6%)​

11:30:34.330: Output 'simple_stream': Reconnecting in 10 seconds..​

11:30:34.330: [rtmp stream: 'simple_stream'] Freeing 371 remaining packets​

11:30:34.345: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 999/43619 (2.3%)​

I'm suspecting your CPU is pegged at (or near) 100% and is overloaded. So, the bandwidth issue may be a CPU performance issue vs actual bandwidth

I'd start with trying to record (not stream) and check recording. Is it suffering? I'm suspecting it is, and that the short version is that you are asking more of that computer than it is capable of

There are those on this forum who are master at optimizing the operating system and OBS to work with older, under-powered computers, but even then, you may be asking for a miracle to pull off 2 NDI video feeds to an ultra-low power 10 yr old laptop....
for reference - 2 years I tried to stream with an Intel i5-6300HQ (2.3GHz 4c/4t circa Fall 2015), 8GB RAM, SATA SSD Win 10 Home edition, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M and failed as the PC wasn't up to the task (HoW livestream as you are.. no gaming, just alternating between USB webcam and simple pre-recorded videos, alongside a PPTx slide show window capture, streaming at 720p 30fps with no OBS effects/filters). I’ve learned a lot more about OBS since then, including use of a NDI PTZ camera, and I probably squeak it out now, but wasn’t worth it, and we got a newer, more powerful computer so I could focus on the presentation/viewer expereince vs the tech

So 2 generations older CPU, and lower end GPU (doesn't it even support NVENC??) than what I had ... uh, be careful with expectations.
And your situation may be even more challenging in that you have 2 incoming NDI video sources that may have to be real-time decoded constantly, adding to the workload.

 

[bkm7925]

Hi. Thanks for the response, it was really helpful. I tried using a new model laptop and the stream to facebook was alot better. For about 45 mins the video and audio was excellent at 1080p 30fps. The only problem I had was when I switched the scene in OBS to use my second NDI camera. Once I did that the audio immediately became choppy and was popping just as it was when I was using the older model laptop. Everything was perfect until I switched scenes. I tried switching back to the first NDI camera and it also had the choppy, popping audio. I then restarted OBS and that also did not help, the choppy, popping sound continued. If you can, may you please take a look at the logs again and let me know what I did wrong or what needs to be improved. Thank you.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

notes from your latest log

You probably should disable this
11:23:44.036: Windows 10 Gaming Features:
11:23:44.036: Game DVR: On

review the log yourself... I'm not sure exactly, but looks like some source (camera) settings issues.. and audio not starting???
did you mean to enable audio via a NDI camera?
For our House of Worship, audio on the cameras are all disabled, and audio comes in via physical mixer directly connected to OBS streaming PC

in your logs, clearly an issue with audio via the NDI link. IF these are lower end NDI PTZ cameras, they may be chocking on the combined audio and video feed? only a wild guess .. maybe a firmware update is required?
And there is reference in the logs to a Sony camera?
maybe a settings cleanup is required?

And probably not important, but out of caution, I'd change the source names and remove the trademark TM superscript text. In your case, I'd remove the entire NDI camera descriptor, and just have the following Video Input Sources
Cam Center
Camera 2
Webcam
Sony Handycam FDR-AX33-CamLink

and then doublecheck the audio settings for each (and disable if not in use)

For further assistance, a diagram laying out your sources, how connected, etc would be helpful, as not everything is in an OBS log. And you may need to check Win10 Audio Syb-system settings directly