Capture black on laptop

[Maurice Snell]

Hi all,

I have another variant on the common problem of black capture on laptops. I'm only trying to capture the desktop, not games, and not specifically browsers. After the initial install of OBS everything was black, but I updated the NVidia program settings to force OBS onto the Integrated adapter, and this made it better - see screenshot. Now the OBS pop-up window to select which screen to record shows the correct contents of the screen, but the main OBS window is still black.

The results are the same capturing either the external second screen, or the laptop integrated screen. As shown in the attached screenshot, I've also used the Windows control panel to set OBS to "Classic App". I've tried running OBS as Administrator - made no difference. The 32-bit version doesn't start, so I've only used the 64-bit Windows version.

Attempting to capture an individual app window, as opposed to full screen, I get black in both the pop-up selection window and the main app window.

Can anyone explain how the OBS pop-up window is successful with screen capture but the main app isn't?

Thanks for any suggestions,

Maurice

 

[Harold]

can't see anything from the second monitor in your screenshot.

 

[Maurice Snell]

can't see anything from the second monitor in your screenshot.

Sorry - I don't understand? My screenshot shows that the OBS pop-up to select which screen to capture is correctly capturing the second screen, which has the default Windows blue backdrop plus the Windows calculator, Windows control panel graphics setting and NVidia control panel showing. But the main OBS window is black.

 

[Maurice Snell]

can't see anything from the second monitor in your screenshot.

If you meant that my screenshot didn't include the second screen itself, then here is another screenshot showing the OBS pop-up window with working capture, the main OBS window behind with failed black capture, and also showing the second screen at full resolution.

 

[Harold]

Because you're on a laptop, you need to make BOTH displays run on the power saving graphics in order for OBS to be able to capture them both.

 

[Maurice Snell]

Because you're on a laptop, you need to make BOTH displays run on the power saving graphics in order for OBS to be able to capture them both.

Both displays are running on the Intel integrated adapter, which is the power-saving adapter:

 

[Maurice Snell]

Like I said, the problem is the same trying to capture either of the screens. The second screen isn't the issue. With the second screen disconnected, so there is only one screen, I get the same behaviour: the OBS pop-up window is correctly capturing the screen, but the main OBS window is still showing black:

 

[Harold]

physx configuration doesn't affect which display is assigned to which graphics controller.
And laptops are a royal pain in the ass for display capture.

 

[Maurice Snell]

physx configuration doesn't affect which display is assigned to which graphics controller.
And laptops are a royal pain in the ass for display capture.

I agree. The NVidia screenshot is there to show not the irrelevant physx configuration, but the fact that both screens are being provided by the integrated controller, and neither is being provided by the NVidia GPU. I believe this is what you mean by "which display is assigned to which graphics controller", and I believe this is confirmed in the OBS logs I attached:
Available Video Adapters:
Adapter 0: Intel(R) HD Graphics 630
Dedicated VRAM: 134217728
Shared VRAM: 4232740864
PCI ID: 8086:591b
Driver Version: 24.20.100.6286
output 0: pos={0, 0}, size={1920, 1080}, attached=true, refresh=60, name=
output 1: pos={1920, 0}, size={1920, 1080}, attached=true, refresh=60, name=DELL U2212HM
Adapter 1: NVIDIA GeForce 940MX
Dedicated VRAM: 2107703296
Shared VRAM: 4232740864
PCI ID: 10de:179c
Driver Version: 26.21.14.4283
But if I can provide any other information, please let me know.

Thank you.