Bug Report Black screen when game capturing DX11 (0.625b)

[Westy543]

Hello. I have a problem when streaming DX11 games. I am running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit on an nVidia 560 Ti. Intel i7 2600k and P8Z68-V Pro motherboard. I am running OBS 64 bit as administrator. There are a couple of log files, here is the most recent one. https://gist.github.com/8c36b0b1299af9fad3b6

I found this thread from earlier in the year https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/obs-wow-dx11-blackscreen-since-last-update.10118/ but I am on version 0.625b which is beyond the version the OP has an issue with. It does not record locally or show up in the preview box, just a black screen. Sound is recorded.

If there is any additional information I can provide, let me know. The games in question I have tried streaming at MechWarrior Online and Star Citizen's pre-alpha.

 

[dodgepong]

Mechwarrior Online might have some anti-cheat protection preventing the capture. Make sure you run OBS as administrator, and also try anti-cheat compatibility on the game capture.

 

[Westy543]

I checked that setting, and started a preview, it showed a couple frames of the game and then froze the picture, then went to black. Attempting to preview or stream (either to local file or Twitch.tv) resulted in a black screen and this log file.

https://gist.github.com/50ad65ef8f33b9a0e110

Edit: Also, I have been running OBS 64 as admin after my first attempt. No dice there. The log I posted in OP was when I was running OBS as admin.

 

[accre]

Im having the exact same issue Westy543 has. I am trying to record World Of Warcraft at 4096X1080. I hear audio, but theres no video but a black screen. I always run OBS as admin. No change if i change WoW to DX9.

Edited to include the 3 most recent logs. I understand that the bitrate is high, and the log says theres dropped FPS. Im only using OBS to record as it uses less CPU than other options. On the rare occassion that i do livestream, theres nothing wrong with the stream of Dolphin Emulator. I have the bitrate at 120000kbps because sometimes i get pixelation at 30000kbps or even 60000kbps. I am able to play at 5820X1080@60FPS, and record at 4096X1080@60FPS at the same time. OBS reports that "its taking too long to encode" when i first start the recording. After about 5-10 seconds maximum, it rights itself. Ive never heard any hitches in the audio, and of course theres no video to gauge FPS drops with. I dont think there are any actual dropped frames, as theres no video.

 

[R1CH]

Your CPU is not capable of handling 4096x1080 encoding.

 

[accre]

Your CPU is not capable of handling 4096x1080 encoding.

Excuse me? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jNfOslmrVo

Thats at 120000kbps. Im aware that its not an action scene, but im not having an issue with pixelation. Im having an issue with a black screen when trying to record WoW, and ONLY when trying to record WoW. I dont play Mechwarrior, so i wouldnt have this problem with that game.

 

[R1CH]

Just saying what the log says:

06:49:56: Total frames encoded: 883, total frames duplicated: 188 (21.29%)
06:49:56: Number of frames skipped due to encoder lag: 157 (17.78%)

You're losing 40% of your frames. Drop your resolution / FPS.

 

[accre]

Just saying what the log says:

06:49:56: Total frames encoded: 883, total frames duplicated: 188 (21.29%)
06:49:56: Number of frames skipped due to encoder lag: 157 (17.78%)

You're losing 40% of your frames. Drop your resolution / FPS.

Well like i said, it takes OBS a moment to get up to the 120000kbps mark. Once it gets there its golden. If there are indeed dropped frames (and not just an issue with a slow start) then its probably from when i was in the middle of an alt+tab to the desktop. I dont know how OBS handles recording switching windows.

I apologize for being snippy the first time i replied to you. Im just sick of people who resort to "get a new PC yours suxxors" whenever i ask for tips or help. Not that this really matters in this conversation, but im pretty sure my PC costs more than alot of peoples used cars :P

After rereading your post again i noticed that you referred to a 883/60=14.71 second recording. It takes 5-10 seconds for OBS to get to 120000kbps. Im not surprised that there are a high amount of dropped frames in the first 2/3 of a 14 second recording.

 

[R1CH]

I'm not saying your PC is bad, I just don't think it's realistic to expect to be live encode 4096x1080 on any consumer level system right now. Real time video encoding is incredibly CPU intensive and wasn't even possible a few years ago. There's also not much point to using such a resolution since very few people will have the same setup to be able to play it back properly. Maybe you could crop the center and take a 1920x1080 recording instead.

 

[accre]

I'm not saying your PC is bad, I just don't think it's realistic to expect to be live encode 4096x1080 on any consumer level system right now. Real time video encoding is incredibly CPU intensive and wasn't even possible a few years ago. There's also not much point to using such a resolution since very few people will have the same setup to be able to play it back properly. Maybe you could crop the center and take a 1920x1080 recording instead.

I get a minimum of 50FPS on ultra settings with the gameplay/recording resolutions and bitrate. If i turn the settings down to low, i get a minimum of 90FPS. I could lock the game to 60FPS but thats no fun given that i have 3 144HZ monitors. Im referring to Borderlands 2 by the way. I cant get OBS to record WoW no matter what. Its not a matter of specs it just SEEMS like an issue with hooking into the WoW client.

Its not realistic to livestream at that bitrate. A sort of friend of mine in a gaming clan livestreams 5760X1080 with bezel correction at 60FPS and something like 5-7mbps. He has a first gen i7, and SLI 770's.

http://www.twitch.tv/jaguarmg/c/3657205 is his channel. That video is from a livestream.

 

[R1CH]

WoW may be more CPU intensive, it's best to try a "normal" configuration first just to make sure everything works OK. None of your logs seem to show an attempt to capture WoW, could you include one that does?

 

[Westy543]

Anything else I can try for getting game capture working on DX11? My SO has it working fine on hers under Windows 8... is it a Win 7 issue?

 

[accre]

WoW may be more CPU intensive, it's best to try a "normal" configuration first just to make sure everything works OK. None of your logs seem to show an attempt to capture WoW, could you include one that does?

All 3 logs were from recordings where WoW was the target application. BL2 is much more CPU intensive than WoW. At least 1.5 times as CPU intensive. Best i can estimate. WoW uses 10-20% CPU, BL2 uses 10-40% CPU. I even set core affinities for game client and OBS.

 

[R1CH]

You need to use game capture, not monitor capture.

 

[accre]

All 3 logs were from recordings where WoW was the target application. BL2 is much more CPU intensive than WoW. At least 1.5 times as CPU intensive. Best i can estimate. WoW uses 10-20% CPU, BL2 uses 10-40% CPU. I even set core affinities for game client and OBS.

Only one of the logs should be monitor capture. I tried doing it that way since it wouldnt need to directly hook into the game.

Ive since gotten OBS to record WoW, but only if i downscale the image or set it to 1080P. Its not a computer problem. Im sure id get all of 10-20% less FPS at the gameplay/recording resolutions and bitrate if i turn PhysX up to medium in BL2. I never have these issues when playing BL2. Even if WoW was more CPU intensive, it wouldnt be so much more intensive that its the difference between perfectly smooth video and bunches of dropped frames. Not at those resolutions and bitrate. Max CPU usage with those parameters has been 75% with veryfast preset.

 

[Westy543]

You need to use game capture, not monitor capture.

I am using game capture. When I first start MechWarrior Online, OBS will pick the game capture up in the background until I click in to the window to bring it to focus, then the image freezes. If I stop my preview and restart it, the screen will be black. http://i.imgur.com/r1OZzIE.png You can see here the preview image froze on when I first loaded the game with the mech facing forward (default position on login) - when I clicked into the game and rotated my mech, OBS isn't showing frames anymore.

The only sources in this scene are just game captures for a handful of games as I need them.

 

[R1CH]

I'm going to close this since there are two separate issues being discussed here and it's too confusing. Accre, please stop hijacking other peoples threads.