DistroAV - Network Audio/Video in OBS-Studio using NDI® technology 6.0.0

[Acey05]

OK, I found out some more things with NDI.

Goods News: If you use the NDI Filters you can bypass the latest OBS NDI issues it seems like, completely.

You can also run NDI-Main Output on Low Latency and each audio as it's own Filter, this seems to be the best and lightest option for performance without breaking the bank.

I think you can also slightly improve the performance of NDI and Audio buffer issues by using the mute Filter on your Stream-PC - https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/mute-filter.1478/ However, it could be all a placebo effect since OBS doesn't have a true real-time CPU Usage viewer.

Bad News: The NDI Video Filter is still insanely expensive, I still have no idea why it needs so much power to run, even though it would be lighter since it lacks Audio Output in the Filter hence removing the Audio Buffer issues. The only thing I can imagine is the NDI VIDEO Filter is actively Outputting the ENTIRE ORIGINAL desktop resolution of your PC to the second PC without any of the processing or scaling.

I don't think Hardware Acceleration helps with anything in NDI in terms of performance, at least on a CPU dedicated Streaming PC, maybe if you have a Browser open as well or a decent graphics card, but other then that I didn't see any benefit.

NDI Audio News: Even Audio Filters have a cost, it's small, but still there, I'm not sure if there is anything that helps here.

NDI-Main Output actually has poor Audio Mixing that can bypass the Volume Limiters. I noticed this during my tests. NDI-Main will actively ADD the Audio layers incorrectly, which is why sometimes Audio will spike above the Red-Meter or if your Desktop has overlapped Audio, it can bypass the -20db Limiter.

The NDI Audio Filters don't break on the other hand, and infact respect the Audio Filters correctly, including stuff like Ducking which was breaking with NDI Main.

If anyone knows how to Record a Specific Audio Channel while also Streaming, without getting the weird Reverb Audio Effect, I would appreciate that very much, since you can technically have only 1 extra Audio Channel at that point instead of 2 or 3 on your second PC.

 

[ambates]

Does anyone know if there are launch params? I want to be switch off ndi output settings on launch.

Many thanks

 

[Acey05]

Update: Both Microphone and Desktop Audio Filters needs to be set to Low Latency (Experimental) to ensure they keep on working correctly throughout the Stream, otherwise they will drop to a flat 2 second delay suddenly about 1 hour into a Stream depending on several factors such as Audio Buffers or Filters on Audio, etc.

As far as I can tell this doesn't bring any extra CPU cost and there isn't a negative to it apart from the occasional micro-stutter on the Video Main/Filter trying to fix it's Desync issue, so test as your own leisure.

You'll also need to Start/Restart OBS after each NEW Software you start up, otherwise OBS will SHOW you that the Stream Audios are Synced but they are in fact broken and Desynced, and yes, this also extends to OBS itself and not only NDI. This is again an OBS issue since the 27.2 branch.

I literally tried this, Unity, Unreal, Cry Engines, even Adobe Software or 3D Software (Asset Exrtractors or DCP Art Programs), OBS will stop the Audio and add an extra 2 second delay if you start up a program AFTER OBS.

The previous version don't have this issue as far as I can tell.

 

[Mirek]

Hello!

I'd like to ask you for some advice. I was using OBS & NDI for a couple of years and everything was fine. However recently I did encounter a serious problem with audio.

I do have a dual setup - gaming and streaming PC. The signal from the first unit goes via LAN to the second PC. Based on the OBS preview everything is ok. Video is correct and audio volume is visible in the audio mixer. Unfortunately, when I do check recordings only video is fine and there is no sound at all.

Do you have any ideas about what could be a problem here? I did reinstall NDI software twice and still doesn't work.

 

[KattPhloxworthy]

Hello!

I'd like to ask you for some advice. I was using OBS & NDI for a couple of years and everything was fine. However recently I did encounter a serious problem with audio.

I do have a dual setup - gaming and streaming PC. The signal from the first unit goes via LAN to the second PC. Based on the OBS preview everything is ok. Video is correct and audio volume is visible in the audio mixer. Unfortunately, when I do check recordings only video is fine and there is no sound at all.

Do you have any ideas about what could be a problem here? I did reinstall NDI software twice and still doesn't work.

On the receiver PC, double-check your Advanced Audio settings. The single-most common issue I see from anything like this is that the checkboxes for the six tracks on sources are unchecked. You may wish to verify that. AT THE VERY LEAST, track 1 must be checked (for Twitch, track 1 is your main track, while track 2 can be an alternate track for alternate material in case your main soundtrack leaks any copyrighted materials that would end up getting silenced. It won't' hurt to have them all checked unless you have a special reason not to or only have specific checkboxes checked.

Also, you may wish to double-check your "studio PC", making sure all sources have the appropriate checkboxes checked as well.

This happens a lot after OBS crashes in my experience.

Hope this helps.

--Katt. =^.^=

 

[yonkiman]

My PTZ Optics NDI cameras were freezing for a second every minute or so. It took me forever to figure out what was causing it.

The freezing problem turned out to be NTP Time Sync (near the bottom of the Network section of the camera config page). Once I turned NTP Time Sync off, the freezing stopped.

The problem was that it was looking for a timeserver, but my cameras are on a subnet without internet access. Not sure why that would cause this problem, but that seemed to fix it on my two NTI cameras.

Posting here in the hope that Google will index it for anyone else with the same problem. Keywords NDI, PTZ Optics, freezing, pausing.

 

[Acey05]

Update: Multiple NDI Filters actually break the 27 versions of OBS. For a while I had the issue where the Streaming OBS would completely drop the connection and even disconnect from Lan, but not really at the same time.

Windows itself would still be connected to Lan and Internet but any Application including OBS would drop the connection completely.

Turns out it was NDI filters, even if using 2 Audio Only Filters, it still was too much for the system I guess, although I don't know why.

 

[jbcurler2010]

I've not seen that issue with NDI filters. However, I have another question:

Does anyone know if there's a way to apply NDI Groups for NDI Access Manager to Dedicated NDI Outputs in OBS?

 

[JPXR]

Hello, is there any way to get NDI working with Win-capture-audio plugin? It's not sending the audio through to the other pc.

 

[KattPhloxworthy]

Hello, is there any way to get NDI working with Win-capture-audio plugin? It's not sending the audio through to the other pc.

How are you attempting to send the sound to the other PC? I use a nearly-identical setup on a PC running VTube Studio and the Twitch Interactive Throwing System so the latter can send its audio over an audio-only NDI stream to my "studio PC". I do this by adding the NDI audio-only filter to the source and it works fine.

First things first: Are you getting Win-Capture-Audio working on the PC you're attempting to send from? That's a priority before you can even think of sending it to another machine. This part is best served either by the Win-Capture-Audio Discord server or thread here on the forums.

--Katt. =^.^=

 

[JPXR]

How are you attempting to send the sound to the other PC? I use a nearly-identical setup on a PC running VTube Studio and the Twitch Interactive Throwing System so the latter can send its audio over an audio-only NDI stream to my "studio PC". I do this by adding the NDI audio-only filter to the source and it works fine.

First things first: Are you getting Win-Capture-Audio working on the PC you're attempting to send from? That's a priority before you can even think of sending it to another machine. This part is best served either by the Win-Capture-Audio Discord server or thread here on the forums.

--Katt. =^.^=

Hi, so i got it working, i had to select soundtracks for the audio sources to get it to send the audio to the streaming pc

 

[KattPhloxworthy]

Hi, so i got it working, i had to select soundtracks for the audio sources to get it to send the audio to the streaming pc

That is a frequent occurrence here when I stream games. You may wish to make a note of it in the scene name to check your source's audio track checkboxes to be sure it's being sent SOMEwhere.

--Katt. =^.^=

 

[VenomGT]

Good day all. I am a avid OBS user and have created many video using OBS and NDI. Only since the last update we are having random audio recording issues.

2 systems running OBS
First system is sending audio via NDI on local network
Second system has a USB camera and NDI feed (This OBS has 2 scenes)
- scene 1 live video and audio including NDI audio
- scene 2 just NDI audio

The problem I am experiencing is that on Seconds OBS system I can always hear the NDI Audio however the recording of this audio is random. Without changing any audio settings I am having the following issues:
1) I press record and all seems well until I play back recording. The recording only captures NDI on 1 of the 2 scenes
2) I press record another time and both NDI audio is able to be heard on recording playback
3) I press record another time and both NDI audio is lost

So you never know when this will fail only to find out afterwards that audio is lost..
Any advice. Pleas note that I do not change any setting as this has worked for long time and except for updates. Logs do not show anything unusual.

Does the NDI addon for OBS need to be upgraded to match NDI v5 update. I believe the latest OBS\NDI addon is v4.9.1.

Anyone else experience random lost audio over NDI on recording? Thx

 

[Talonis]

The NDI plugin seems to be abandonware at this point. You may want to look into alternative solutions.

 

[roleli]

After installing the NDI plugin visit https://www.ndi.tv/tools/#download-tools download the latest NDI Tools. Install the latest NDI Tools and after rebooting the PC and restarting OBS you should have the latest NDI tools

Ensure your PC/Laptop has 1 GB Ethernet/Lan port , for best performance, and that the devices working with NDI are connected using at least a 1GB switch.

 

[Héraès]

Is there a way to decrease the load of NDI video transmission (CPU/GPU) as if we where not encoding at all and using RAW data of the graphic card directly ? I know there is limitations to RJ45 cables, but still, I would like to tend to the less encoding usage and maximize the Gigabit cable, in order to relieve my main CPU used for gaming while streaming.

I'm using a 2nd PC to stream, and for now I don't see the difference on the 1rst (main) PC with A) encoding directly on it through OBS, or B) using NDI plugin in OBS to send the stream to the 2nd PC. So I'm desperate to find a solution.

HDMI acquisition is an ideal solution, but right now I can't use it and I won't explain you why (complex dual-GPU setup).

 

[afedericojr]

Multicasting
It appears that this NDI plugin may not support multicasting. With multicast enabled 1Gb switches, and endpoint NDI decoders set to pull from a single multicast feed, the signal is still replicated in OBS. A single signal results in eating up ~700Mbps due to our multiple endpoints, and this is problematic since we are also live streaming, so had to turn down the baud to prevent dropped frames.
Can anyone confirm if it supports multicasting, and how to enable it?

Alternative NDI integration with OBS
If it does not support multicasting, is there another efficient way to integrate NDI with OBS?
We use both encoding and decoding of NDI in OBS.

Thank you

 

[Talonis]

You could try screen/window capture of NDI Scan Converter.

 

[imeiul]

Hello. I'm trying to use the obs-ndi plugin to transmit the capture of an application window (Zoom) from one pc to another, through a filter in the scene or in the source. While the scene is selected and consequently displayed in the preview, the transmission occurs normally, however when I select another scene, the transmission stops, freezing the image. I would like to stream the window to the second pc constantly. can anybody help me?

 

[rockbottom]

I believe that is the way NDI is supposed to work. It will transmit as long as it is being received but when playback stops so does the transmission so bandwidth isn't being wasted on the network.