Question / Help Encoding overloaded - no settings changed, no new programs running

[Waldfreunde]

I streamed and recorded two days ago and everything worked perfectly fine, and then last night my stream and recording were both unstable for the majority of the time I was live, due to "encoding overload." I haven't changed any settings, nor did I have any additional programs running that would put extra strain on my system.

For reference, when I stream, I also run Elgato Game Capture, Discord, an audio routing software, and a web browser with a single tab open.

Here are my specs:
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016), 2.4 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1867 MHz LPDDR3 Memory.

My stream is audio-only and runs a standard video over the sounds of our gameplay, so video fidelity isn't super important, but I have noticed that even when the stream is working properly the video will slow down considerably. Is my Macbook just not equipped to stream, or is there something I can do?

Stream Archive (issues start about ten minutes in and get worse the longer it goes)
Log File

 

[Narcogen]

MacBooks are not particularly good for streaming, no.

Without a logfile from an earlier session that didn't have the problem it's hard to make comparisons, but here is what I notice:

1. 22:49:33.999: adding 42 milliseconds of audio buffering, total audio buffering is now 42 milliseconds

This happens right after the first mp4 source is added. Increasing audio buffering is usually a sign of system overload.

It looks like you're using a collection of media files as sort of a soundboard, or a cart system? One I assume is the loop you're running, but all of them are on with no hardware decoding, which means they are producing load all the time they exist, and they are all in the same scene, since you only have three scenes: Citizens Band, Sync Cinema, and Netflix Recording.

I think you may really want another way to trigger these, because just showing/hiding them in the Source pane does not stop them consuming resources.

You've got your base resolution set to 1080p and the output set to 720... but if this is basically an audio-only stream, is there any reason not to set the canvas resolution to 720p and not scale at all?

The overload is encoding overload... is the Apple VT H264 Hardware Encoder available on your setup? If so, have you tried using it instead of just x264 or the software encoder?

You've got six tracks of audio at 320kbps... I assume this is because you are doing local recordings as well, not just streaming? Because for streaming there's not much reason to go higher than 160kbps... the platform is going to transcode anyway.

Do you have your recording output set to use the same encoder as the stream encoder?