Question / Help Encoding Overloaded (Super common, I know)

[CaptainMack]

I've been streaming regularly for about a year and a half now and until just recently, I was not having any issues. However, about a month ago I started getting that super common "Encoding Overloaded" error pooping up. It's not super common, at the highest my logs are only showing 1% of the frames being affected. I didn't even catch it until a friend of mine pointed it out. I thought it was an internet issue until I saw the skipping in my recordings. Over the course of the last couple weeks I have researched every possible cause and solution I could find. I tried everything I saw suggested, I ran tests of my own. This error pops up even when I'm not playing CPU/GPU intensive games. I even resorted to reinstalling Windows, which was a dreadful process, only to see it resolved nothing. I tried so many solutions that I cannot remember them all to list them. I turned down recording settings as much as the video-editor in me would allow. I updated every driver I could find that needed it. I updated OBS. I reinstalled OBS. I reduced the number of sources in my scene. I changed OBS' priority in task manager. There are a lot of other things I'm sure but again I can't remember. I understand this problem occurs regularly when the CPU is overloaded but again I've been doing this for over a year with no issue and it happens when the CPU is hardly over 30%. Anyway enough words, here's some stats.

My rig:

CPU: Intel i7 7700K​

GPU: Nvidia GEforce GTX1070 8GB​

Memory: 2x16GB (32 total)​

Motherboard: ASUS Maximus IX Hero​

I'm running Windows 10 Home on a 250GB SSD with 3 HDDs at 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. OBS is also installed on the SSD, and recordings are being stored on the 4TB HDD​

My settings:

Streaming:​

Encoder: x264​

Rescale to 720p from 1080​

Rate Control: CBR​

Bitrate: 2500​

CPU Usage: verfast (I was using fast until this issue popped up)​

Recording:​

Standard, not rescaled​

Format: mp4​

Encoder: NVENC H.264​

Rate Control: CQP​

CQP: 13​

I stream and record at the same time as I cut up my streams and upload them to YouTube. I was recording using CBR at 45000 bitrate until this problem started, but while researching solutions I found CBR is supposedly more taxing and inflates file size without added quality, so I started using CQP instead.

I have attached log files from four separate streams. It is worth mentioning that the log from the 12th experienced only 1 lost frame from this issue. It is also worth noting that the log from the 18th was from playing Monster Hunter: World at full settings while the log from the 16th I was streaming from a 2DS capture kit. CPU usage is definitely having a hand I believe, but again I very literally never experienced this issue before a month or two ago at best. I don't unfortunately have any earlier logs, as I had to reinstall Windows as previously mentioned

I really hope someone knows what I can do to fix this because I'm beyond out of ideas. Please ask anything else you might need, I will answer as soon as possible.

Thank you so much

 

[carlmmii]

Logs are showing Game DVR is on. Turn this off, as well as any other Windows Game mode / Game bar "features".

From what I can tell, the first two logs show very minor encoding lag from the x264 stream encoder while the Nvenc recording was fine. The last two logs are where it shows the Nvenc recording hitting the ~1% encoding lag (with the x264 stream having no issues)... so it's an issue with the GPU encode. Turning off Game DVR should help, as that should prevent any additional encode streams.

 

[CaptainMack]

Sorry I didn't see this for a bit. Thanks for the response! I did have the windows game bar as well as discord overlay and Nvidia overlay running so I turned all of it off. I've attached a stream from tonight, and I still hit 1.3%. I should mention the first part of the stream I was playing on a PS4 running through an Elgato, then switched over to a game running off my computer. Any ideas on what else it could be?