Question / Help Game Feed Stuttering in OBS (FIXED)

[Jester Kirby]

Hey everyone! Dedicated OBS user for the last 6 months! The program is great but I've been having a strange issue with my video feed from my capture card stuttering! I've streamed many hours of gameplay on my laptop without any issues before but recently (without any changes to my settings) the gameplay stutters and jumps in and out of sync with the sound. I have upgraded to Windows 10 and these issues did start since suing the new OS. I've tried all sorts of trouble shooting; including downloading the latest drivers for my capture card (which the website says includes windows 10 support), reinstalling OBS which is also up to date, messing with every encoding setting, video and audio setting I could find. Lowering the FPS and quality did help the stuttering problem but I've recorded things at 1080p before without any CPU issues so I can't imagine it's an issue wiht my pc not being able to handle encoding 720p (what I normally stream at). I've tried recording with RECentral (the included software with the capture card) and it records gameplay footage without a problem. I've also tried recording with my desktop (windows 7, slightly stronger processor and graphics card) using the exact same settings and there wasn't a problem either.

Any ideas what else I can try?

I'm using an Avermedia Live Gamer Portable Capture Card
I'm using the LGP stream engine (Avermedia's app to get OBS to recognize the capture card)
Here's my most recent log file: https://gist.github.com/cedc027e25fa07d72c5e

Really appreciate any tips for fixes and let me know if any additional info is needed.

 

[Jester Kirby]

Tried putting things in compatibility mode. No luck.

 

[dping]

Hey everyone! Dedicated OBS user for the last 6 months! The program is great but I've been having a strange issue with my video feed from my capture card stuttering! I've streamed many hours of gameplay on my laptop without any issues before but recently (without any changes to my settings) the gameplay stutters and jumps in and out of sync with the sound. I have upgraded to Windows 10 and these issues did start since suing the new OS. I've tried all sorts of trouble shooting; including downloading the latest drivers for my capture card (which the website says includes windows 10 support), reinstalling OBS which is also up to date, messing with every encoding setting, video and audio setting I could find. Lowering the FPS and quality did help the stuttering problem but I've recorded things at 1080p before without any CPU issues so I can't imagine it's an issue wiht my pc not being able to handle encoding 720p (what I normally stream at). I've tried recording with RECentral (the included software with the capture card) and it records gameplay footage without a problem. I've also tried recording with my desktop (windows 7, slightly stronger processor and graphics card) using the exact same settings and there wasn't a problem either.

Any ideas what else I can try?

I'm using an Avermedia Live Gamer Portable Capture Card
I'm using the LGP stream engine (Avermedia's app to get OBS to recognize the capture card)
Here's my most recent log file: https://gist.github.com/cedc027e25fa07d72c5e

Really appreciate any tips for fixes and let me know if any additional info is needed.

Dont use compatibility mode with OBS. try a different USB port, and you could even increase scene buffering to 1000ms. set the buffering for your video captures device to 1ms and enabled or disable it all together. that is what you need to be tweaking.

 

[Jester Kirby]

Cool, I'll give that a shot

 

[Jester Kirby]

Messing with the scene buffering and capture card buffering settings didn't yield any differences.

 

[dping]

Messing with the scene buffering and capture card buffering settings didn't yield any differences.

sometimes, reinstalling the driver will fix it. its a different process than just doing and uninstall of the software.

while its plugged in, go to device manager and click uninstall on the capture card, then check the box that says "uninstall driver" after that, unplug, run the newest driver install file from Avermedia, then plug it in. see if that helps. you might also check to make sure that the chipset drivers are up to date, but I wouldn't "uninstall" those like you do with the capture card. just run an updated install for your chipset from your motherboards website as those are often the best drivers.

 

[Jester Kirby]

Updated to the latest chip set and reinstalled the drivers just like you said. Still having issues. This is just so random. I think I'm going to try OBS multi platform and see if I can get that working with it. If not, then I'm really contemplating going back to Windows 8 and trying to go from there.

 

[Jester Kirby]

I uploaded a sample recording of the issue, maybe that will help with trouble shooting. Can upload more with different settings if needed but scene buffering changes and stuff all looked as this one did. Take special note how the audio jumps in and out of sync and the video stutters and literally speeds up to try and catch up to where it should be. This issue lessons when I lower the quality to 480p but I never had a problem before recording at even 1080p before changing to Windows 10.

Video: https://youtu.be/teFjOxqpxok
OBS log file: https://gist.github.com/e90499eb161ed1646ecf

Also I appreciate all of the feedback, assistance, and patience with my issue so far :)

 

[dping]

I uploaded a sample recording of the issue, maybe that will help with trouble shooting. Can upload more with different settings if needed but scene buffering changes and stuff all looked as this one did. Take special note how the audio jumps in and out of sync and the video stutters and literally speeds up to try and catch up to where it should be. This issue lessons when I lower the quality to 480p but I never had a problem before recording at even 1080p before changing to Windows 10.

Video: https://youtu.be/teFjOxqpxok
OBS log file: https://gist.github.com/e90499eb161ed1646ecf

Also I appreciate all of the feedback, assistance, and patience with my issue so far :)

The setting you change was not scene buffering, that was the buffer on the capture card. change that to 1ms and enable it.

the scene buffering is in OBS settings, I believe under advanced tab (I think) it should be 700ms right now.

 

[Jester Kirby]

I had reset those parameters as I didn't previously use them on windows 8, but I recreated a log file. Changing the Scene buffering to 1200 and setting the capture card to buffer did not help the video feed issue.

https://gist.github.com/540fabe9be0ad73c5d08

I ran three tests in this log. First test was on previous settings that I used to use when streaming. Second test was with the buffering settings. Third test was with buffer settings and resolution lowered to 480p. The video feed was fine on 480. There isn't any reason why my laptop should be having issues with 720 or higher though :\

 

[dping]

I had reset those parameters as I didn't previously use them on windows 8, but I recreated a log file. Changing the Scene buffering to 1200 and setting the capture card to buffer did not help the video feed issue.

https://gist.github.com/540fabe9be0ad73c5d08

I ran three tests in this log. First test was on previous settings that I used to use when streaming. Second test was with the buffering settings. Third test was with buffer settings and resolution lowered to 480p. The video feed was fine on 480. There isn't any reason why my laptop should be having issues with 720 or higher though :\

Its a laptop, dont get your hopes up. i7 mobiles are not the same as desktop i7s.

Are you using a USB 3.0 port? try a different port. 720@30 should be fine but also remember that capture cards can easily saturate a USB 2.0 bandwidth. and on a laptop, everything is USB.

 

[Jester Kirby]

Like I said, it's a recent issue since the move to Windows 10. My laptop has handled 720p streams without any issues for 7+ public events, like the following vid (https://youtu.be/EGuijsz-PNs) and that's even with webcams and a microphone setup hogging up the exta USBs, so I know it's not a hardware limitation.

Each of my 3 USB ports is 3.0, I've tested with all three of them now. No improvement.I really think it's something with Windows 10 not playing nice with OBS. I'm seeing other people having this issue around the forum with different cards as well. Avermedia software lets me record game play at any resolution without any issue so I don't think it's a local driver issue anymore either.Windows 10 also isn't any more resource intensive than windows 8 was so lowering the resolution helping just doesn't add up. I'm going to keep testing some stuff though.

I literally only use this laptop for streaming public gaming events, so push comes to shove I may just do a factory reset.

 

[dping]

Like I said, it's a recent issue since the move to Windows 10. My laptop has handled 720p streams without any issues for 7+ public events, like the following vid (https://youtu.be/EGuijsz-PNs) and that's even with webcams and a microphone setup hogging up the exta USBs, so I know it's not a hardware limitation.

Each of my 3 USB ports is 3.0, I've tested with all three of them now. No improvement.I really think it's something with Windows 10 not playing nice with OBS. I'm seeing other people having this issue around the forum with different cards as well. Avermedia software lets me record game play at any resolution without any issue so I don't think it's a local driver issue anymore either.Windows 10 also isn't any more resource intensive than windows 8 was so lowering the resolution helping just doesn't add up. I'm going to keep testing some stuff though.

I literally only use this laptop for streaming public gaming events, so push comes to shove I may just do a factory reset.

Or it could be the USB 3.0 drivers being utilized as 2.0...Just a thought. Drivers have been issues in Windows 10. aside from that, if I think of something, I will let you know

 

[Jester Kirby]

Or it could be the USB 3.0 drivers being utilized as 2.0...Just a thought. Drivers have been issues in Windows 10. aside from that, if I think of something, I will let you know

Is there a way to fix it to use the port as a 3.0? That would explain alot honestly if the usb port wasn't being used to it's full potential as before.

 

[dping]

Is there a way to fix it to use the port as a 3.0? That would explain alot honestly if the usb port wasn't being used to it's full potential as before.

Well I am not sure how to check but I would check your laptop's website for chipset updates.

 

[Jester Kirby]

Already updated the chipset per your earlier suggestion. My friend is running windows 10 and has his aver media working for Windows 10. I duplicated his settings but no luck, the only thing he had different from me was the video adapter being Lanczos. My Laptop overall has more power than his so not pointing towards the hardware.

An interesting note, I tried X-split. Capturing directly from the card yielded good results, though the quality isn't what id expect like with OBS, but when I tried capturing from the stream engine like OBS has to, it was the same kind of choppiness. I thought maybe I had a corrupted file or something in stream engine but a fresh install from the website's download section didn't fix the issue. It shouldn't be compatibility issue since my friend has stream engine working in obs.

 

[dping]

Already updated the chipset per your earlier suggestion. My friend is running windows 10 and has his aver media working for Windows 10. I duplicated his settings but no luck, the only thing he had different from me was the video adapter being Lanczos. My Laptop overall has more power than his so not pointing towards the hardware.

An interesting note, I tried X-split. Capturing directly from the card yielded good results, though the quality isn't what id expect like with OBS, but when I tried capturing from the stream engine like OBS has to, it was the same kind of choppiness. I thought maybe I had a corrupted file or something in stream engine but a fresh install from the website's download section didn't fix the issue. It shouldn't be compatibility issue since my friend has stream engine working in obs.

might try a few different versions of their software. if that is the issue, sometimes going older fixes things. sometimes its a complete uninstall restart and reinstall.

 

[Jester Kirby]

So, it was likely a Windows 10 driver having issues. I literally only use this laptop for streaming, so I didn't have any issues with factory resetting it. Did that, got back on Windows 8.1, downloaded the aver media and OBS software (exact same versions I had previously), tested it with my PS4, recording looked great. Will be sticking to Windows 8.1

Thanks for all of the trouble shooting advice dping!