Beginner Help: Frames drop and laggy video

[Rydizz]

Hey all, been using OBS for a few months now and its worked fine until I started to try and record a heavier game (CoD Warzone). The frames drop very hard and I can't tell if there is something in my settings I'm not seeing, if it within the game itself, or is it my hardware (I have a moderate rig). I attached a log of a Minecraft clip (came out just fine) and two warzone clips (severe frame drop). Site says the file sizes are too big for me to attach the videos so if you want to see them let me know and I can post a link. I messed around with the settings while searching the internet a lot but couldn't find a solution so I went back to my previous settings in these clips. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Sukiyucky]

Something not right here dude. Something is setup wrong.

16:06:37.817: Output 'adv_file_output': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 3248 (26.6%)
16:06:38.004: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 10311/10412 (99.0%)

Lets do this and make life easier eh? Go to OBS Output | Output Mode Simple

• Set the recording path to point to the fastest hard drive you got
• Set recording quality to: Indistinguishable Quality
• Recording Format: mkv

In your game, lower video quality more towards the middle to the lower side for the settings. Don't bother going for ultra, your video card isn't a power house. I wouldn't go anywhere higher than 1920x1080 on that Ryzen 2600 of yours. It is not meant to be a 2K or more system.
Your Rx 5500 XT is liken to a GTX 1060 and I know it doesn't produce very good quality at 1920x1080 at high game settings.

Get that setup to work first before monkeying around with more advanced settings.

 

[Rydizz]

Something not right here dude. Something is setup wrong.

16:06:37.817: Output 'adv_file_output': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 3248 (26.6%)
16:06:38.004: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 10311/10412 (99.0%)

Lets do this and make life easier eh? Go to OBS Output | Output Mode Simple

• Set the recording path to point to the fastest hard drive you got
• Set recording quality to: Indistinguishable Quality
• Recording Format: mkv

In your game, lower video quality more towards the middle to the lower side for the settings. Don't bother going for ultra, your video card isn't a power house. I wouldn't go anywhere higher than 1920x1080 on that Ryzen 2600 of yours. It is not meant to be a 2K or more system.
Your Rx 5500 XT is liken to a GTX 1060 and I know it doesn't produce very good quality at 1920x1080 at high game settings.

Get that setup to work first before monkeying around with more advanced settings.

Thanks! This seems to have fixed it. I also ran it as an administrator to see if OBS would get a bit more priority for power. I still get a stutter here and there but I'm not worried about it. May I ask what these changes did? I usually record/shoot everything in MP4 and have never really used MKV. I also don't know what the difference in recording qualities did. Just trying to understand a bit more so I can fix problems later on. Oh and here is a new log, just in case you see something else that could be improved upon.

Thanks again!

 

[Sukiyucky]

Looking at the log, its a lot better, but its not fixed. You can see in the log there is slight loss:

16:55:09.755: Output 'simple_file_output': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 562 (1.3%)
16:55:09.761: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 127/42602 (0.3%)

This means your setup is struggling with the current settings we have used in rendering (GPU) and encoding (CPU). It can be weak hardware or just wrong settings. Of course, the more powerful CPU/GPU combination you have, the better results you can obtain. Looking at your computer hardware, you should be able to do 720p recordings just fine but 1080p maybe a struggle.

I would suggest doing the following in the order below to try to improve the situation:

1. Disable any applications you don' t need running that are started up when booted. Look in Task Manager | Startup tab
2. Download CCleaner or Glary Utilities and clean up your computer
3. Don't run applications you don't need that are sucking up CPU while you recording
4. Lower your application/game video settings one level down for the features you can tweak (i.e. Ultra to Medium for antialiasing, etc.)
5. Set the Recording Quality one level down to High Quality, Medium File Size if you need to

MKV is preferred over MP4 because if all of a sudden your recording stops like the power is lost, your computer crashes, etc. you will be able to retain everything you recorded up to the time it crashed. YouTube ingests MKV file format but if you want to target MP4, you can use something called Handbrake to convert the recorded MKV file to an MP4 file. Its free too.

 

[Rydizz]

Looking at the log, its a lot better, but its not fixed. You can see in the log there is slight loss:

16:55:09.755: Output 'simple_file_output': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 562 (1.3%)
16:55:09.761: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 127/42602 (0.3%)

This means your setup is struggling with the current settings we have used in rendering (GPU) and encoding (CPU). It can be weak hardware or just wrong settings. Of course, the more powerful CPU/GPU combination you have, the better results you can obtain. Looking at your computer hardware, you should be able to do 720p recordings just fine but 1080p maybe a struggle.

I would suggest doing the following in the order below to try to improve the situation:

1. Disable any applications you don' t need running that are started up when booted. Look in Task Manager | Startup tab
2. Download CCleaner or Glary Utilities and clean up your computer
3. Don't run applications you don't need that are sucking up CPU while you recording
4. Lower your application/game video settings one level down for the features you can tweak (i.e. Ultra to Medium for antialiasing, etc.)
5. Set the Recording Quality one level down to High Quality, Medium File Size if you need to

MKV is preferred over MP4 because if all of a sudden your recording stops like the power is lost, your computer crashes, etc. you will be able to retain everything you recorded up to the time it crashed. YouTube ingests MKV file format but if you want to target MP4, you can use something called Handbrake to convert the recorded MKV file to an MP4 file. Its free too.

Thanks for all the help! I'll do those things before the next time I record. Appreciate the help and the knowledge