Question / Help Encoding Error Overload on Gaming PC?

[GrimPixls]

Hi guys! I'm hoping someone can help! I record Sims 4 Let's Play's for Youtube and use Camtasia Studio 8 to edit these videos, but OBS to record.

I'm running an i-5 8400,
8gb of RAM (Another 8 is on it's way)
I have the GTX 1060 (3GB)
and a 500GB SSD
1TB HDD.

My game is installed on my SSD, however, OBS is installed on my HDD.

For some reason, even though my CPU usage is only somewhere between 10-27% and my game running 50-160 FPS, I'm getting encoding overload errors and OBS is dropping the frames. I do have the priority set higher than the game at Above Normal, but I'm not sure what other steps to take to make this as smooth and as good of quality as I can. This computer is only a few months old. Should I install OBS onto my SSD? How much will this new RAM help? I have so many questions and despite watching dozens and dozens of videos online about this stuff, I can't seem to find a sweet spot. Any help is much appreciated! Log included below!

These are my OBS settings:

Log file link: https://obsproject.com/logs/VU5-AmZNygcmhx-2

 

[GrimPixls]

bump

 

[Narcogen]

https://obsproject.com/wiki/General-Performance-And-Encoding-Issues

 

[Narcogen]

12:12:15.618: - source: 'Game Capture' (game_capture)
12:12:15.618: - source: 'Display Capture' (monitor_capture)

Don't mix game and display captures in the same scene, it can degrade performance.

12:57:39.564: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 586/46446 (1.3%)

It looks like you're just on the edge-- just enough lag to be noticeable, but not so bad that you're completely overloaded.

If it were rendering lag I'd say cap your in-game framerate, but you're getting encoding lag even though you're already on ultrafast, so the best way to free up some resources may be to drop your canvas resolution to 900p and set your output to upscale to 1080p; this will give the encoder fewer pixels to work with in the same time and hopefully reduce the lag.

 

[GrimPixls]

https://obsproject.com/wiki/General-Performance-And-Encoding-Issues

Thank you, I'll read through this!

12:12:15.618: - source: 'Game Capture' (game_capture)
12:12:15.618: - source: 'Display Capture' (monitor_capture)

Don't mix game and display captures in the same scene, it can degrade performance.

12:57:39.564: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 586/46446 (1.3%)

It looks like you're just on the edge-- just enough lag to be noticeable, but not so bad that you're completely overloaded.

If it were rendering lag I'd say cap your in-game framerate, but you're getting encoding lag even though you're already on ultrafast, so the best way to free up some resources may be to drop your canvas resolution to 900p and set your output to upscale to 1080p; this will give the encoder fewer pixels to work with in the same time and hopefully reduce the lag.

Weirdly enough they capped the frames at 200 fps and we cannot modify that without another program from what I know. I will try out those new settings today! My RAM just got here so I'll install it and test and see what it does. Thanks for the help!

 

[Narcogen]

Just to be clear: capping in-game framerate won't help you, because you have encoding lag, not rendering lag.

Rendering lag is basically competition between the game and OBS for the same resource-- the GPU.

Encoding lag means that whatever hardware you're using for encoding can't produce the quality you want with the frame size you want with the resources available in the time required by the frame rate you've set.

Giving your encoder more time (lowering framerate) can help. Giving your encoder less work (smaller frames, faster preset) can help.