Question / Help Frames Skipped Due To Encoding Lag [RESOLVED]

[RhapsodyPlays]

Recently I've been having a lot of issues with frame skips in my recorded content. OBS will display the "Encoding overloaded" warning while my CPU is around 50% usage during recording, coinciding with significant video stutter. The reason I'm asking for help is because this has only arisen recently, for the last half year I've been recording these same games on the same settings on the same PC with no problems whatsoever, only in the last two weeks have I been getting frame stutters.

I know the typical course of action is to change the CPU Usage Preset, but interestingly changing that has little to no effect on the stutter. For example, at veryfast I skip 2.1% of frames due to encoding lag, at superfast I skip 1.6% and the same again at ultrafast (using Enter the Gungeon to test). I'm not running any other software in the background competing for resources, either.

OBS 0.15.1
OS: Windows 10
CPU: i5 4670 @ 3.4GHz
GPU: 4GB GTX 970

Recording 720p@60fps using CRF rate control as 20.

Full log file here.

 

[Joe33345]

I believe when you're using a CRF it overrides CPU Preset settings. What you could try and do is instead of using CRF. Set your bitrate to like... 30,000 and record that on very fast. You shouldn't skip frames anymore.

 

[RhapsodyPlays]

I'm concerned mainly that what worked previously isn't working now. I chose CRF because file size is an issue, so recording at 30,000 bitrate won't really work for me. That said, I did test it and got 4.1% frames lost to encoding lag and 1.1% to rendering lag/stalls.

 

[RhapsodyPlays]

Also I'm almost certain that CRF doesn't override CPU Preset, can anyone confirm either way?

 

[RhapsodyPlays]

Interesting development, I tried using simple NVENC at High Quality, Medium File Size which my system definitely ought to handle. I didn't notice any encoding overloaded messages but I still get an average of 2% frames lost to encoding lag.

 

[RhapsodyPlays]

RESOLVED: After some further testing, I found that it only occurs while recording to a specific drive (don't worry, I wasn't playing a game and recording it to the same drive). Turns out that drive is failing. If I had to guess, I'd say that the write speed was affected and OBS was picking this up, but displaying the CPU encoding overloaded warning because that seems to be the only warning message available.

TL;DR - Recording to a failing drive gives "CPU encoding overloaded" warning despite the issue being with drive write speed, not with CPU.

 

[TtvDilstream]

yo i triedd streaming with 30,000 bitrate and it actually worked