That StreamElements plugin is known to cause LOTS of problems on some systems. but not all.. just beware. That plugin pukes all over the OBS log, combined with other factors means I'd never consider using it. but that is just me and my circumstance/use case.
I ALWAYS partition my drives, separating OS from Data (seriously old school), so I get that recording to D:\ doesn't necessarily mean cloud service. However, on my latest OBS machine, I have a 256GB C drive (NVMe) and an archive data HDD (d:\). I do NOT record to D:\, even though it should be fine, as I have plenty of Disk I/O on the NVME drive. So I record/remux to C:\ [NVMe], in my case, run a off-site data/sync of the recording, and after that completes, then move recording file to data HDD. My recordings currently are in the 10-13GB each, and I have more than 100GB free so no flash write-levelling concerns for me.
I suspect a CQP of 15 is your problem. see post from folks way more knowledgeable than I on the subject
17:20:48.964: [jim-nvenc: 'recording_h264'] settings:
17:20:48.964: rate_control: CQP
17:20:48.964: bitrate: 0
17:20:48.964: cqp: 15
17:20:48.964: keyint: 250
17:20:48.964: preset: hq
17:20:48.964: profile: high
17:20:48.964: width: 1920
17:20:48.964: height: 1080
17:20:48.964: 2-pass: false
17:20:48.964: b-frames: 4
17:20:48.964: lookahead: true
17:20:48.964: psycho_aq: true
From
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/best-settings.140188/#post-514693 see
@FerretBomb comment #2
2) Record using CQP or CRF, not CBR. CBR is only used for streaming, where the back-end infrastructure requires it. CQP/CRF are quality-target based encodes, and will use as much or as little bitrate as is needed to maintain a constant image quality. No wasting bitrate on simple/slow scenes, no choking on fast-moving or complex scenes. 22 is a good starting point. 16 will result in much larger files, but near-perfect video. 12 should only be used if you plan to edit and re-encode later, and will be VERY large. Anything lower than 12 shouldn't be used unless you know exactly why you need it, and what problems it can cause.
a little more detail posted later/elsewhere on same subject
22 is the normal 'good' point, 16 for 'visually lossless', and 12 is generally the lowest you'll want to go even if you plan to edit the video later (to cut down on re-encoding artifacts). The lower the number, the closer to 'lossless' video it gets. But below 16 the filesizes get ridiculously large very fast.
Which begs the question of your disk I/O capacity when using CPQ=15?
the following is something I'd advise to test/check only if still having an issue AFTER adjusting CQP to a reasonable value
3) Use the Quality preset, not Max Quality. Likewise, turn off Psychovisual Tuning. Both of these options use CUDA cores, and tend to cause significant problems like encoding overload when it should otherwise not be happening.
So
- 1st make sure your recording target can handle the disk I/O.
- do real-time monitoring on GPU NVENC to see if actually overloaded, or if bottleneck elsewhere.
