Question / Help Audio / Video De-sync on Uploads? Is this OBS or YouTube?

Shelved Games

New Member
I've been having an issue with uploading my past Twitch live-streams to YouTube and I'm not sure if this is a problem on my end with OBS, or an issue with YouTube. I figured this community might be my best shot at figuring this out.

For the past couple of years, I would archive my live-streams on YouTube and up until a couple of months ago, I would have no issues doing this. What's happening now is that my uploaded videos are progressively losing sync between the audio and video. At the time, I hadn't changed anything about how I was recording/live-streaming or how I was uploading my videos.... at least not to my knowledge.

What seems to occur is that the audio/video sync will be fine at the beginning of a video, but by the end will be totally out of sync. The local .mp4's recorded with OBS playback without any issues. I've tried uploading the videos from both PC and Mac, and with both Chrome, Safari, and Edge. I've tried manipulating some of my settings in OBS to figure out what could be causing the issue, but to no avail. A friend suggested converting the videos with Handbrake and ensuring a constant frame rate, but that didn't seem to solve it. And I've always left CFR in OBS enabled.

Now for the crazy part. All of my uploads are fine when watched on mobile devices. Whether in a browser or the YouTube app, the de-sync issue is not there. I have no idea why that's the case. I think it may have something to do with HTML5. A friend suggested using a browser extension called Flash Player for YouTube when watching on my desktop. Using that, the videos are fine and have no audio/video problems.

But this doesn't solve the problem for my viewers. I may only get a few views on my stuff, but I have a very loyal and passionate community and I really don't want to disappoint them.

Here's an example of my most recent upload: https://youtu.be/NkhsrXsGCso

If you skip between the beginning and end, you can see the difference.

Here's the OBS log for that live-stream:

https://gist.github.com/b38290b2d62f65ee0ea474465663742a

This video, however, is a Let's Play that I strictly used OBS to capture and not live-stream. I then converted the video in Handbrake (I don't really change anything, but for some reason my OBS videos don't like to have sound in Final Cut unless I do this...) and then edited the video in Final Cut Pro. It doesn't seem to have that same de-sync issue: https://youtu.be/nhoj94fCdrY

Here's the log file for the Let's Play:

https://gist.github.com/2f14c0f856e8953b8cf0dcf6287bc919

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, that would be a huge help. I'm usually pretty savvy with this stuff and using Google to figure things out, but I'm really at a loss for what to do. Thanks.
 

sam686

Member
When I play your video on your first youtube link, I get desync problem on both chrome and firefox near end of video.

But, using Firefox Extension "Download YouTube Videos as MP4" (only allows 240p, 360p, 720p), the downloaded MP4 is totally ok with no audio desync problem near end of video.

Might be YouTube HTML5 player problem?
 

Shelved Games

New Member
So if that's the case, is there something on my end that I can do to fix it? Or am I just screwed forever?

I've also tried getting help on YouTube's official forums (twice) with no response. So I'm not very hopeful that I'll get help there. :(
 

sam686

Member
I might as well right click your video with a desync and report a playback issue. By doing this, the desync problem to some, but not all youtube players, might get totally fixed in the future, while keeping video up.

The desync problem also don't happen on my old web browser (windows XP internet explorer 8) where the resolution are limited to 240p, 360p, and 720p.

A few years ago YouTube dropped support for old web browers's 480p and 1080p which can't do HTML5 and DASH.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube
 
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