Question / Help Game Capture is not initializing

[ThatOneDarkAsian]

Hello,

I've been using OBS Studio for the past year and I still haven't been able to get Game Capture to work, despite having it be in admin mode and having the anti-cheat hook (on previous versions) turned on. I've tried the tips from people on YouTube, Steam, Tom's Hardware, and even here in the forums. I really need to help with this so that I can tab out while I'm streaming to change the music or to answer a message without having to show my desktop to my viewers while I'm in game. These are my logs from me trying to use Game Capture again.

 

[RytoEX]

When you say "tab out", do you mean alt+tab out of a fullscreen game? If so, that's not a limitation of Game Capture but Windows, if I recall correctly. Have you tried using Game Capture with "Capture any fullscreen application"? That said, if you want to be able to access other applications and have Game Capture not display a freeze-frame, you'll probably need to play games in Window or Borderless Window and either scale the game to your display or scale your Game Capture source to your OBS canvas/output size.

Unrelated to that issue, your settings indicate that you're trying to stream with NVENC at 60fps at 3100kbps. I don't think that'll look very good, especially in a fast-motion game like CS:GO.

 

[ThatOneDarkAsian]

Thank you for replying. In regards to tabbing out, I want to alt + tab out of the game to make these changes without showing my desktop. I’ve tried setting it to “Capture any full screen applications” in the past but was never succeeded. The resolution that I play CS:GO at scales down to a stretched 1024 x 768, meaning I can’t play the game at full screen windowed or windowed. Plus, I play on a 144hz monitor, so I’d like to have everything the way I already play the game.

As for my bitrate output, do you have any recommendations as to a good setting output?

 

[RytoEX]

For 720p@60fps while using x264 for the encoder, 3500 to 5000 kbps. x264 has better quality than NVENC when compared at the same bitrates. You should really only need to use a hardware encoder like NVENC if your system is struggling between the game and the encoder. On an i7-7700K playing CS:GO, I don't think it would be struggling.

Also, you seem to have the CLR Browser plugin installed, which is a plugin for OBS Classic. Please remove that from your OBS Studio directory.

 

[ThatOneDarkAsian]

Thanks for the tip. I'll test that out later tonight for my stream. I attempted to try game capture again on with Rocket League, which is set to my native resolution, but I was once again met with a black screen...

 

[RytoEX]

Make a fresh scene collection (Scene Collection > New). Create a single Game Capture source. Try that and see if it works.

 

[ThatOneDarkAsian]

I tried it... Still nothing

 

[RytoEX]

That's not a fresh scene collection. That's just a new scene in the same scene collection. Click the "Scene Collection" menu at the top, then click "New", then add a single game capture source in that new scene collection.

[game-capture: 'Game'] error acquiring, scale is bad

You have multiple game capture sources at the moment, and one of them has "Force Scaling" enabled with a bad scaling resolution set (one or more of the dimensions is 0). Unless you need it, you can disable "Force Scaling". If you do need it, set a valid resolution. I'm worried that this may be causing an issue, which is why I want you to test in a new scene collection. If game capture does work in a brand new scene collection, make sure you only have one game capture source active in your regular scene collection.

 

[ThatOneDarkAsian]

Still nothing

 

[RytoEX]

Just to clarify, are you checking if the game capture is successful by alt+tabbing out of Rocket League repeatedly to check the OBS preview? Or are you recording a test file and checking the resulting file?

If you're alt+tabbing to check the OBS preview, that's not a reliable way to confirm that it's capturing. Try this: when you alt+tab out of Rocket League, can you see an actual live (not frozen) image preview of Rocket League when hovering over its Start Bar icon or when checking the alt+tab list? If you can't, then the game stops rendering when you alt+tab out.

Try to start recording in OBS, then going into the game for 30-60 seconds. Then alt+tab out, stop the recording, and check the file.