Browser sources overloading GPU

thatroot1

New Member
Hi there,

I'm running OBS 31.0.1 (tried both the flatpack and obs-studio-browser versions of 31.0.0 and 31.0.1, issue happens on all) on a Fedora based distro (Nobara) and having some real issues when using browser sources.

Whenever a browser source encodes a video I experience a huge performance hit. To the point where my normal settings for the past 2 years have to be changed just to keep from dropping frames. I'm unable to stream at 60fps, only outputting 720p, anymore as anytime a stream at 60fps receives information from a browser source I experience an encoding overload.

I am running Nobara 41 with Wayland, on an RTX 3070 running the 570 drivers. I'm stumped. Did some troubleshooting, some of which was I opened the exact browser URL, it's a local bot overlay, in Firefox and played the videos while streaming and there was no issue. The problem seems to lie in how OBS is encoding browser sources.

I've also tried looking for the option to remove hardware acceleration from browser sources, but that's not available in the Linux version it seems.

Whenever I look at the logs, I just see the: encoder overloaded, please try lowering settings.

I don't know where the limitation is coming from. I did not experience this previously to such a degree. I did notice a performance hit but it wasn't this extreme.
 

thatroot1

New Member
Hi Tuna, thanks for pointing me to that.

Am I correct in that seems to be related to CPU usage? Would this change help with the encoding overload on the GPU? I'm using NVENC instead of CPU based encoding. My CPU usage as reported inside of OBS does fluctuate but averages around 8-10%

Is there a way to change that flag on launching OBS? use_gtk=

I should also mention that I've tried this on CachyOS under Wayland and experienced the same result.

Things just worked better with x11 for me!
 

Tuna

Member
It is CPU related, yeah. It may make a difference even with GPU encoding, although not sure that is the root cause. Nvidia and wayland has been a gamble for quite some time.
Just make sure you limit your FPS when playing a game. Does it also happen when not putting the GPU under significant load?
 

thatroot1

New Member
I just ran a test on a Windows drive using the same hardware and I did not experience anything like the drops seen on Linux in the browser source. This was also while it was streaming at 60fps. All other settings were the same. No encoder overload, no maxed out GPU usage.

Any ideas as to why on Linux it seems to be doing the opposite? Maxing out GPU usage thus causing encoder overload and dropping frames.
 
Top