Question / Help Black Screen with Game Capture [solved: alt-tabbed]

[BizzyBum]

I've tried all the troubleshooting and checklists to make sure everything is good.

All my settings followed in the setup guide, Scene created, Source created with the game in the drop down menu. I get sound but just a black screen when trying to stream, both for games in full screen and window mode. Tried a bunch of different games and nada.

To further test, I tried other things like window capture and monitor capture and both work fine, just game capture doesn't work.

I'll upload my log file and hopefully someone can figure this out. I appreciate the help!

 

[Lain]

Re: Black Screen with Game Capture

If you could, specify the game you're trying to capture.

 

[BizzyBum]

Re: Black Screen with Game Capture

Originally DotA 2, but then tried other games like Skyrim and Defiance and same thing.

 

[RamuneGaming]

Re: Black Screen with Game Capture

In my experience Game Capture is the buggiest mode on OBS. I tend to almost always ignore it and use window capture however sometimes if window capture is bugging out I will try game capture and it will work on certain games. I also find game capture uses more resources to function compared to window capture.

I would reccomend updating to the latest version of OBS as it improved the game capture in my opinion to make it more reliable. Also use the 32 bit version of OBS over 64 bit as I find it more stable.

I won't pretend to be tech savy but it jsut a few things you can try to fix your problem. I am sure one of the other more tech savy people can help more(like Jim, he is very helpful :D)

 

[BizzyBum]

Re: Black Screen with Game Capture

Okay, I'll give it a try and report back.

 

[Lain]

Re: Black Screen with Game Capture

BizzyBum - I think I need a different log file, that one just says "couldn't find window". Think you could get me another with multiple tests? As was said, window capture is a good fallback. On windows 8+, it's about as good as game capture if you're not running the game in fullscreen mode.

RamuneGaming - Unless you're on a really old video card, game capture should always be best (except on windows 8+, where window capture is actually about equivalent to game capture because microsoft programmed it to perform the same sort of capture, though window capture still can't capture fullscreen games like game capture can).

It's designed to capture without any CPU usage at all, instead utilizing the GPU alone for capture. Of course, video cards with low parallel processing (mostly really old cards like the geforce 2xx series) don't always work well with it, but for the vast majority of the currently available cards out there it's the most optimal means of capturing currently available.

It is true that it can be unstable sometimes, but that's due to the nature of having to "hook" in to the target process. Generally, the only things that cause it to be unstable are other capture applications interfering, video utilities interfering (often afterburner), and any overlay programs (teamspeak/mumble overlays) which also interfere. Sometimes anti-virus can itnerfere as well due to it's hooking nature, very annoying to deal with, but is usually fine with them. If you don't have those sort of things on your computer, you should be fine. Due to the way it works it's also advised to run OBS as administrator.

 

[RamuneGaming]

Re: Black Screen with Game Capture

Might just be my GPU then, I am running it on a laptop so my GPU is actually my weakess component on the machine :P. I apologize if my infomation was slightly off but I was talking from my experience only as mentioned above I am not the most tech savy when it comes to software side of things.

I would still reccomend being up-to-date and using the 32 bit version.

 

[BizzyBum]

Re: Black Screen with Game Capture

BizzyBum - I think I need a different log file, that one just says "couldn't find window". Think you could get me another with multiple tests? As was said, window capture is a good fallback. On windows 8+, it's about as good as game capture if you're not running the game in fullscreen mode.

Sorry, here's a log with me running DotA 2 in fullscreen mode.

 

[peanutlord]

Re: Black Screen with Game Capture

I am also having the same problem. I have tried both monitor capture and game capture but it shows a black screen. I somehow can't window capture because it was not one of the options. The game is League of Legends. I am playing it fullscreen.

My log file:
https://gist.github.com/9d44b963c97139a416cf

 

[Lain]

Re: Black Screen with Game Capture

BizzyBum - after one minute, it says that the window becomes invalid again with that log file. Multiple tests in a single session would be nice. Something fishy is definitely going on here though, because that card works great with game capture, and so does dota 2. Are you running OBS as administrator? I'm concerned that there may be other software on your computer interfering with it or something, though I can't say for sure yet.

Wait, it also says you only have one monitor. Just in case this is the issue I want to point out that when the game is running in fullscreen mode, you cannot view the capture while alt-tabbed out of the game, so it may just be some confusion there as well, because you might be alt-tabbed out thinking "where's the capture?", when it may actually be capturing, but only when you're actually alt-tabbed in to the game.

PeanutLord - Your issue is due to "Access denied". You need to run OBS as admin, and if that fails, it could just be the particular anti-virus software you might have running (sometimes that can happen but not usually), and you have to add an exception for OBS in it.

 

[BizzyBum]

Re: Black Screen with Game Capture

BizzyBum - after one minute, it says that the window becomes invalid again with that log file. Multiple tests in a single session would be nice. Something fishy is definitely going on here though, because that card works great with game capture, and so does dota 2. Are you running OBS as administrator? I'm concerned that there may be other software on your computer interfering with it or something, though I can't say for sure yet.

Wait, it also says you only have one monitor. Just in case this is the issue I want to point out that when the game is running in fullscreen mode, you cannot view the capture while alt-tabbed out of the game, so it may just be some confusion there as well, because you might be alt-tabbed out thinking "where's the capture?", when it may actually be capturing, but only when you're actually alt-tabbed in to the game.

You're right, I checked my stream on my iPad and it was showing. It was very choppy though so I need to lower the bitrate. Right now I have it set to 2500, native resolution is 2560x1440 but I'm downsampling it to 1280x720 and 30FPS. Should it be incredibly laggy with that? My internet connection is not the best, so what would be a good bitrate for smooth gameplay?

Another thing, I didn't try DotA 2 in window mode, but I tried other games in window mode to see if the preview works on OBS and it didn't, that's why I assumed it wasn't working in full screen as well. lol

 

[RisupFIN]

I have same problem. I always run OBS in administrator mode, but sometimes it bugs and shows only black screen to stream.. Sometimes it helps when I restart the stream and then press the hotkey, but in some games (like LFS today) didn't work at all.. Tried everything but still not. Then I just decided to run LFS on windowed mode and then I used window capture. That's very annoying.

 

[BizzyBum]

If I'm in a group talking in Skype is there a way for the stream to record everyone talking?

 

[dodgepong]

BizzyBum, make sure that Skype is outputting to the same audio device that everything else is outputting to (that is, make sure it's outputting to the same device that you're capturing in OBS).