Question / Help Avermedia LGX Video Freezing

[greatmilenko911]

Hello,

I didn't have this issue before, but both OBS and OBS Studio freeze the video feed in both preview and live feeds. It's intermittent and has no rhyme or reason. Not sure if any other LGX users are having the same issue?

It did not freeze using RECentral....but what POS program. I need OBS in my life.

 

[EliGabriRock44]

Yep, same problem here.

 

[greatmilenko911]

I tried all sorts of drivers for the LGX, and noticed that the older ones work but the problem with the older drivers is that you cannot output sound just to stream. It only works if it goes to the Desktop. Crappy. Not sure if OBS devs can assist with this if its drivers but was just wondering.....

 

[talung]

Quick question, did you just update windows to the 1607 Anniversary update. That has caused my OBS tons of problems.. rebuilding the machine to hopefully fix the issues.

 

[greatmilenko911]

Quick question, did you just update windows to the 1607 Anniversary update. That has caused my OBS tons of problems.. rebuilding the machine to hopefully fix the issues.

It has happened before and after. I had to reinstall drivers after the update though to get it working properly. I'm almost tempted to put by 2nd PC on Win 7 to see if that helps with the freezing at all.

 

[vapeahoy]

I never really used recentral but i did manage to make it halt the video feed on there as well. The funny thing is im connected to usb 3.1 asmedia ports. Running the avermedia check-if-ready-tool, it says the usb 3.1 is incompatible, yet if running the stream with a keen dicipline on window changes, it will stream just perfectly for hours on end.
The tool as mentioned does say the usb 3.0 ports are supported tho, yet on this motherboard they are internal, and i am currently waiting for an adapter. So i will hook up the capture cards directly to the motherboard.

I have further tried to set the extension block on connected pc (hdmi out from game pc), in every single configuration you can absolutely attempt to try (only took me 5-6 hrs). It definitively responds better to lower res as 720p then 1080p. On current driver, it defaults to 59hz as well, which was what triggered my investigation into the matter. There are odd flickerings happening on 1080p, which oddly enough disappears at custom res where the extension block is custom (cru 1.26).
-
note this flickering, is actually 'interlacing' gone wrong. By recording and pausing single half frames, this can be seen where typically the frame is teared into half of it is ok, other half is torn in interlaced black pixelled lines/normal. And that can occur randomly.
-
OBS does however treat the card differently then recentral, i dont have any issues with window/fullres changes, where as sometimes the render on obs will thus halt. The thing here is that the capture card is actually still responsive, moving the cursor over to the capture card screen, it's still active and responds fluidly.
Thus my conclusion is while avermedia could provide a better driver, OBS still has issues with the card nonetheless, even tho avermedia's recentral is quite worthless. I'm not really impressed that all of avermedia's drivers are labelled as beta and tbh shouldnt even be released. Imo they should ditch recentral and focus entirely on driver development.
-
Having said all of that, there isn't a single capture card out there today for 60fps that doesnt have it's issues.
Do not confuse issue with system requirement tho. All of these usb 3.0 cards work much more stable on intel's usb chipset from what i can gather. a whole 3 dollars worth more in cost up from asmedia's.

 

[greatmilenko911]

I never really used recentral but i did manage to make it halt the video feed on there as well. The funny thing is im connected to usb 3.1 asmedia ports. Running the avermedia check-if-ready-tool, it says the usb 3.1 is incompatible, yet if running the stream with a keen dicipline on window changes, it will stream just perfectly for hours on end.
The tool as mentioned does say the usb 3.0 ports are supported tho, yet on this motherboard they are internal, and i am currently waiting for an adapter. So i will hook up the capture cards directly to the motherboard.

I have further tried to set the extension block on connected pc (hdmi out from game pc), in every single configuration you can absolutely attempt to try (only took me 5-6 hrs). It definitively responds better to lower res as 720p then 1080p. On current driver, it defaults to 59hz as well, which was what triggered my investigation into the matter. There are odd flickerings happening on 1080p, which oddly enough disappears at custom res where the extension block is custom (cru 1.26).
-
note this flickering, is actually 'interlacing' gone wrong. By recording and pausing single half frames, this can be seen where typically the frame is teared into half of it is ok, other half is torn in interlaced black pixelled lines/normal. And that can occur randomly.
-
OBS does however treat the card differently then recentral, i dont have any issues with window/fullres changes, where as sometimes the render on obs will thus halt. The thing here is that the capture card is actually still responsive, moving the cursor over to the capture card screen, it's still active and responds fluidly.
Thus my conclusion is while avermedia could provide a better driver, OBS still has issues with the card nonetheless, even tho avermedia's recentral is quite worthless. I'm not really impressed that all of avermedia's drivers are labelled as beta and tbh shouldnt even be released. Imo they should ditch recentral and focus entirely on driver development.
-
Having said all of that, there isn't a single capture card out there today for 60fps that doesnt have it's issues.
Do not confuse issue with system requirement tho. All of these usb 3.0 cards work much more stable on intel's usb chipset from what i can gather. a whole 3 dollars worth more in cost up from asmedia's.

In terms of streaming, I could use their "NON-BETA" driver but the problem is that I cannot get audio to go to just the stream only. I have to choose the Desktop sound in order to get it to work, and that's just silly =(. Seems like every driver from them is Beta which is annoying. In the end I assume PCI-E Cards are probably the way to go, but I don't feel like shelling out the dough for another desktop.

I'd use RECentral if they had a microphone noise gate but of course like their drivers the software to me is unfinished....oh wait its BETA TOO

 

[vapeahoy]

you could maybe use a virtual audio cabling software to deal with that, there's quite a few different programs out there for that, typically ranging from 20-50 dollars. the card does provide it's own audio bus on the installed system so that should be quite doable.

For the record, just picked up the internal usb 3 adapter, no flickering yet, but it still halts a bit. I'm optimistic tho, the latency response was stellar compared to before.

 

[vapeahoy]

Fixed my flickering issues by moving other usb devices to other hubs.
I had simply forgotten that the cards doesnt like neighbours :\

I still get screen paused on single frame at certain window/fullscreen changes tho. But it doesnt flicker now.
I observed something very strange with one of the capture cards when placed in the usb 3.1 port, and a different usb 3.0 hub placed in it, with a few usb devices in it, every now and then, maybe each hour or so, it would reinstall the devices on the hub. I used to have each capture card utilizing both usb 3.1 ports and didnt notice any problems then, so apparently anything else on the hub besides same capture card, or similar device, will make it quite unhappy :)

hopefully this helps.

 

[greatmilenko911]

Last night I tested a bit, and I got a freeze with LGX video source.... then when I alt tabbed out of the game and back in the video playback came right back... I just don't understand why. Maybe an alt tab deactivates the video source for a moment then turns it back on. I know if I do that in settings where I deactivate and renable the LGX video it comes back as normal. But then the freezing went away the rest of the night. I think it was more fluke than anything....but still. I may just revert back to the old drivers, use desktop audio then just mute my laptop. Only work around I can think that will work till they make RECentral better or a driver that miraculously cures all the issues I got with this thing. OBS Studio and OBS AND xsplit do the same thing in terms of the LGX video freeze so it kind of leads me to believe its more LGX driver issues with my laptop.

It's infuriating but what can ya do =(

I found this post: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/avermedia-live-gamer-extreme-freezes-on-obs.36978/

Basically a guy was saying a 3.0 port wasn't enough to power it and to try maybe a USB 3.0 Y cable.

Edit: For testing purposes gonna try the cord for shits.

 

[talung]

Mmmh, I am running mine off a powered USB 3.0 hub. So power should be fine. Again, everything seemed to be working fine till the Windows anniversary nightmare update.. Currently running on the "GC550_driver_v3.0.x.74_20151012" driver as it seems to be the only one that can at least do video and sound without introducing a ton of static into the sound for the first few minutes.

TBH, I believe something is seriously wrong with their drivers.

 

[greatmilenko911]

Mmmh, I am running mine off a powered USB 3.0 hub. So power should be fine. Again, everything seemed to be working fine till the Windows anniversary nightmare update.. Currently running on the "GC550_driver_v3.0.x.74_20151012" driver as it seems to be the only one that can at least do video and sound without introducing a ton of static into the sound for the first few minutes.

TBH, I believe something is seriously wrong with their drivers.

So you are running on a USB 3.0 hub? Which one?

 

[talung]

So you are running on a USB 3.0 hub? Which one?

Just an Orico 4 port hub. Model: H4928-U3

But I did try plugging the Avermedia directly into a seperate USB 3.0 port on the laptop with same results. Only thing I found to work so far is in the OBS properties have the "Deactivate when not showing" ticked so it only shows on game scene.. that sorta works.. got 3.5hrs on a stream before a crash today.

I left the obs open, and now it has been capturing the feed for about 6 hours.. so not sure wtf is going on. BTW, I am using "Desktop Audio" for sound capture.

 

[greatmilenko911]

Just an Orico 4 port hub. Model: H4928-U3

But I did try plugging the Avermedia directly into a seperate USB 3.0 port on the laptop with same results. Only thing I found to work so far is in the OBS properties have the "Deactivate when not showing" ticked so it only shows on game scene.. that sorta works.. got 3.5hrs on a stream before a crash today.

I left the obs open, and now it has been capturing the feed for about 6 hours.. so not sure wtf is going on. BTW, I am using "Desktop Audio" for sound capture.

In my case, im just using Audio to Stream only.

 

[vapeahoy]

Ok so I'm going to summarize a bit here from my own and shared experiences with these cards.
#1
First let's kill this idea, not enough power. I've had the card run for hours on end, even forgot i left the cam on over night after stream and it was still capturing just fine. This with usb 3 power charge etc disabled in bios.
- In addition Enabling usb 3 power in bios doesnt fix anything either.
- This doesnt mean the card should run with other devices on same hub, but not for not enough power as reason.
- Also see #4.

#2 Running the card *along* with separate, usb hub with it's own dedicated power supply in a usb port next to the capture card, not good enough. Capture card transmission will be disrupted

#3 Must be usb 3.0 - The card can work just fine usb 3.1 and rightly so as it provides twice the bandwidth. But even so, usb 3.0 alone is capable of 100+ mb so for our purposes, it's not an issue with bandwidth over usb 3.
- Avermedia's own tool (usb 3.0 diagnosis tool) detects my usb 3.1 as not supported, yet funnily enough it says 3.0 ports, from same chipset mind you, is supported.
- So much for updated software support.

#4 Drivers. All of the drivers are basically beta.
- in addition also adding windows service to supposedly check which usb port the card is connected to, for god know's what purpose. It's pulling some cpu, albeit minor, it seems to be quite useless, and doesnt help with any issues, more over it seems to halt obs from initializing the card correctly many times. At least for me who have 2 of these cards, i prefer to just disable/delete the service.

#5 Windows as platform. In the latest anniversary update they added some horrible stuff that adds fps problems that can be fixed by doing a registry tweak and basically disabling/removing the xbox app thru powershell. I already run a removal script on pc startup but initially this just added fuel to the fire as monitors here was turning them self off on seemingly random.
- There could be a things to tweak in windows registry to help the capture card stability to avoid problems with alt-tabbing etc.
-Tweaking about with usb3.0 power registry tweaking doesn't help. CC will still halt at random alt-tabs, not all tho.

#6 On a obs freezed frame, because that's what it is, when typically have just alt-tabbed to something, or it just "happened on it's own", unless other stuff is causing a problem such as the latest w10 update, i can still get response from the capture card when moving cursor on to it's 'screen' and going about business there.
- It's typically just that, obs froze on the frame as a window change occured.
- It's not a matter of latency. 1-4ns response from my game pc when idle[overclocked], is as close to perfect as it gets.
- I've seen other people with absolutely crazy pc builds, still has issues with other capture cards in obs, even much more expensive ones.

tldr: avermedia needs to get their shit together, OBS is wonderful and every update to it makes me happy.

 

[hSATAC]

Same issue here...tried everything from the forum but nothing worked.

Really hope avermedia could put someone to fix this...lgx is like their flag product, it shouldn't work like this.

 

[vapeahoy]

I decided to just let display capture let go and stick to clone desktops. It means less control which i'm not happy with, but at least it works quite well. There's also some issues with obs and the scene switch plugins currently, so it isn't all on the capture card to blame. Still experienced a few freezes but it's night and day now. Using the internal usb 3 port also was a massive boost to steady frame rate.