Question / Help FPS drops not handled by OBS

T

TheFizz

New Member
Hello everyone!
I recently ancountered a strange issue. I get low FPS on stream but OBS says output is constant 60 FPS with zero framedrops (bottom right corner), but i see fps shuttering just with my eyes. The game is fine aswell, FPS never get below 60. I can assume its just a preview lag, but im not quite sure just because im experiencing FPS drops on stream only when there are a lot of particles/shadows in the game.

I use RX460 4GB streaming Dark Souls SotFS Steam edition using latest OBS update and latest AMD AMF encoder plugin. Drivers are updated too. Worth noticing that GPU load never goes above 65% and CPU is about 20% load. I use Twitch balanced preset 1920x1280 rescaled to 1280x720 with bicubic filter. Bitrate is 5000

I started experiencing it a month ago or so, before it was fine.
 
Last edited:
OBS does track the current and immediately previous log files. These can be uploaded either "Upload Current Log File" or "Upload Last Log File". You can find the last ten log files at "%APPDATA%\obs-studio\logs", as mentioned in the link I provided above.
 
That log shows no dropped frames, and only a very few lagged frames (render lag - 0.1%). Check Twitch Inspector for that streaming session to see what it says about your framerate/stability. You're streaming to restream.io though, and I don't know how that changes things. Are the FPS drops in the OBS preview, or on the live stream, or on the stream VOD?
 
RytoEX said:
That log shows no dropped frames, and only a very few lagged frames (render lag - 0.1%). Check Twitch Inspector for that streaming session to see what it says about your framerate/stability. You're streaming to restream.io though, and I don't know how that changes things. Are the FPS drops in the OBS preview, or on the live stream, or on the stream VOD?
Click to expand...

OBS preview drops FPS for sure. Twitch says FPS was constant 60. I cant find moments with framedrops in VOD yet tho. But I just noticed that Twitch and YouTube VODs are waaaaay worse than it shows on preview -.-" Restream doesnt seem to do anything with output. It just duplicates it to other platforms.
1530697958663.png
1530698010806.png
1530698077200.png
 
Last edited:
It's not terribly surprising to me that your OBS preview might stutter a bit with those system specs. OBS requires system resources like any other application.

The FPS on the Twitch and YouTube VODs look fine to me at a glance. The actual streams are going to experience some encoding artifacts (blurriness/blockiness) compared to the OBS preview because it has to be encoded down to the bitrate you specify. In your case, Restream is probably also re-encoding/transcoding it before it gets to Twitch and YouTube. If you can push your bitrate higher on Restream, you should.

If you stream directly to Twitch, you can increase your bitrate, but be mindful of their 6000 Kbps limit. YouTube will accept pretty much any bitrate.
 
RytoEX said:
It's not terribly surprising to me that your OBS preview might stutter a bit with those system specs. OBS requires system resources like any other application.

The FPS on the Twitch and YouTube VODs look fine to me at a glance. The actual streams are going to experience some encoding artifacts (blurriness/blockiness) compared to the OBS preview because it has to be encoded down to the bitrate you specify. In your case, Restream is probably also re-encoding/transcoding it before it gets to Twitch and YouTube. If you can push your bitrate higher on Restream, you should.

If you stream directly to Twitch, you can increase your bitrate, but be mindful of their 6000 Kbps limit. YouTube will accept pretty much any bitrate.
Click to expand...
Alright then! Thanks for the help! Two more simple questions: does OBS still consume resources to draw preview when minimized? I usually read chat directly from preview but i think i can just open up chat windows if OBS won't consume more resources for preview in this case. And does rescalling filter affect blockiness much?
 
I don't think it consumes as many resources if it's minimized, though it may still consume some. You can also disable the preview completely (right-click the preview, deselect "Enable Preview"). In either case, OBS will still need some resources to composite the scene.

It would, most likely be less resource intensive to have your chat open in something other than the OBS preview.

Rescaling can affect blockiness, though probably not as much as your bitrate setting, in this case. You can try setting your downscale filter to Lanczos (OBS Settings > Video).
 
RytoEX said:
I don't think it consumes as many resources if it's minimized, though it may still consume some. You can also disable the preview completely (right-click the preview, deselect "Enable Preview"). In either case, OBS will still need some resources to composite the scene.

It would, most likely be less resource intensive to have your chat open in something other than the OBS preview.

Rescaling can affect blockiness, though probably not as much as your bitrate setting, in this case. You can try setting your downscale filter to Lanczos (OBS Settings > Video).
Click to expand...
OK! Thank you very much, good sir, and have a nice day =)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top