While it may appear random, I'm curious if you were doing real-time monitoring of hardware resource utilization, if a pattern might not become apparent. that is an old CPU (Intel 7th gen, current gen is 14th with some 15th out .. or soon to be) so CPU overload is certainly a risk depending on other factors... setup with recognition of under-powered nature... should be fine. BUT, with a bunch of default background processes running, eye candy type stuff enabled, etc... combined with computationally demanding real-time compositing... real easy to overwhelm such a system (okay a lot of the time, but a sustained CPU spike or delay caused by using a HDD instead of SSD, etc) and is can be easy and quick that the 'wheels fall off the bus'
Beware of potential Operating System user profile implications of running as Administrator
For testing, I'd NOT make the admin change (I consider that a last resort thing, due to negative security implications),, but sometimes it is required. It does tend to be easier to prioritize OBS Studio vs other apps, while risking system security in the process [that security compromise could then entail, worst case, financial fraud, ID theft, etc. If OBS Studio is on dedicated computer, in isolated VLAN, that one never does email, or anything financial/social media related, etc... then maybe... why the diatribe? I've seen too many compromised systems, with real negative personal consequences, often the result of choosing convenience and ease over other far more important priorities.]
qhobbes knows FAR more than I about OBS Studio. But I'd do the following in this order (with real-time hardware resource utilization monitoring):
- Qhobbes suggestion 1. Game Mode & 3. capture card video encoding format change from H264 to NV12
then, also
- you have mismatched audio sampling rates, often a bad thing to have especially on older, under-powered systems. Fix that at the Operating System level. Considering your issue is audio, you might even start here.
- beware CPU impact of chroma key and/or color correction, also with certain audio filters/effects like noise suppression. Test with all of those turned off/disabled/removed
Then re-run OBS Studio with a Recording/Streaming session per pinned post in this forum (link in my .sig)
- then if still having issues, I'd test then also test after dropping to 30fps
Fingers crossed - that gets you to a stable system. If not, then a log review certainly in order, and probably some results from the real-time monitoring, and possibly some Operating System optimizations for an under-powered system (disable auto-start of things that don't need to be... which is often many/most of them.. but it depends), etc..
Once you have a stable streaming setup, then you can slowly, methodically start increasing system load by picking what is most important to you (streaming FPS or color or audio) until you find the breaking point, ... then back off and leave some 'breathing room' there will almost always be the unknown, unexpected, and presuming you don't want that the break your future streams, you need some buffer capacity to handle that unexpected spike. For example, a common recommendation is to figure out your particular upload bandwidth available (low point, not peak) then pick something around 80% of that... just an example of leaving room for the unexpected to avoid a 'crash' or other undesirable impact
