Games feel off when recording

[loafin]

First, a log file. I just played some Valorant DMs as an example, but the issue was definitely still there. https://obsproject.com/logs/OUCVKCQFd5Bl3fkM
I also attached the log, not sure if that has more info or not.

Hello, short summary of my issue. Happy to answer more questions though if needed.

Whenever I record my games just feel off. Like there's this micro lag. My sensitivity does not feel as precise or snappy. Just has this very small lag. Still feels good, until I turn off OBS and my aim magically feels perfect.

In game enemy players also just feel like they're a few frames ahead. I have 9 ping and play locked at 210hz. But it feels like I'm playing either on 40 ping or 60hz in terms of advantage. People just move unnaturally, react in an unnaturally fast way. But the second I turn off OBS the game feels so much easier. (I'm mainly referring to Valorant ftr.

My exact specs are here: https://www.newegg.com/abs-ali536/p...Notification-Responsive-USA-_-N82E16883360141

I added an NVME that I put the recordings on but idt that would matter. I've watched my CPU and GPU usage on my side monitor and my %s never go past like 50%. I play on a 240hz and my side monitor is 60hz. I've seen people say that causes issues, but I've tried playing with the 60hz disconnected many times and it feels absolutely no different.

Sorry if this is scattered, but at this point there's so many variables that I've tried changing that I'm about to just give up and never record. I'd love if someone could help, but it4 seems like an impossible fix to me. My frames are fine in game. I get the same issue in other games too, so I know it's not just Valorant.

Tysm to anyone willing to help. Kinda ruins gaming for me. I love playing, but hitting cool shots and them being gone forever sucks. And when I do record the game just feels so oddly laggy to where I never play well.

 

[qhobbes]

In the Output Encoder Settings, set Multipass Mode to Single Pass. The other 2 use GPU.
I don't know why you have play locked at 210 when your log shows a at 238 refresh rate. You also have a G-Sync capable monitor and graphics card. Just use G-Sync.

 

[loafin]

In the Output Encoder Settings, set Multipass Mode to Single Pass. The other 2 use GPU.
I don't know why you have play locked at 210 when your log shows a at 238 refresh rate. You also have a G-Sync capable monitor and graphics card. Just use G-Sync.

I locked it at 210 to counter this issue. I've seen other people with similar issues say locking their fps somewhere it never drops below makes the game feel better. And I turned of G-sync because every single pro chooses not to use it, plus it doesn't feel like it changes anything in a positive way. So I figured less syncs the better in terms of input lag.

I'll try out your suggestion for multipass mode, but I thought it's best to put everything on my GPU since my GPU is much better than my CPU.

Anything else I should try changing?

 

[loafin]

In the Output Encoder Settings, set Multipass Mode to Single Pass. The other 2 use GPU.
I don't know why you have play locked at 210 when your log shows a at 238 refresh rate. You also have a G-Sync capable monitor and graphics card. Just use G-Sync.

Is there any other solution you might think of? I watched my cpu and gpu usage on my second monitor and it never goes past 50%. Like how am I lagging if neither one is remotely bottlenecked. I want to record so bad, I'd pay more if it would just work without lagging my system.

Here's another example using Valorant. https://obsproject.com/logs/MqEpGTcKHY47HsfZ

I turned off the recording midway and could instantly feel my sensitivity feel faster and more responsive. I can 1000% tell a difference when recording :(

 

[qhobbes]

Game on your 60 Hz screen.

 

[loafin]

Game on your 60 Hz screen.

I tried that. It's hard to get any results from it though because 60 looks so awful compared to 144 or 240. I still feel like there's a noticeable lag added even when playing on the 60hz and recording vs not recording. I tried playing on my 240hz without my 60hz plugged in and it still felt bad when recording. I stop recording and it feels like my aim is suddenly free from the sluggishness and like the game is easier to see idk.

Here's the log for when I was playing on the 60hz monitor even though idt you even want that, but yeah https://obsproject.com/logs/iotM1o8vyFijvhqO

At this point I'm about to just give up and not record cuz it doesn't seem like there's any solution for it. My friends playing on much worse PCs have no issue streaming or recording. But me who doesn't go past 50% usage on cpu or gpu can notice a night and day difference between recording and not. I guess I'm just crazy.

 

[qhobbes]

Disable Psycho Visual Tuning. That uses additional GPU.
Prior to recording, disable the preview and minimize OBS to the system tray. Then start and stop the recording using a hotkey.

bits_per_color=12
Is your 60 Hz Samsung set to HDR?

 

[rockbottom]

Yep, HDR is enabled, not only on the Sammy but the Asus too.

Disable it on both monitors & it should be smooth with no rendering lag.

Encoding @ 60FPS, set Keyframe Interval to 2 Seconds, Preset P5, Multipass qres, 0 B Frames.

If you want to record @ 240FPS, just lower the Preset to P3 or P2, there should be no need to change any other settings.

 

[loafin]

Disable Psycho Visual Tuning. That uses additional GPU.
Prior to recording, disable the preview and minimize OBS to the system tray. Then start and stop the recording using a hotkey.

bits_per_color=12
Is your 60 Hz Samsung set to HDR?

I did disable psycho visual tuning after that, I usually do have that off per your recommendation from another post. It doesn't seem to have an effect, but I do leave it off. But again, my GPU when playing Valorant doesn't usually go past 30% and Apex it rarely goes past like 60 or 70, so I'm really just trying to figure out how there's an issue if my GPU is barely even doing anything.

I also always disable preview and minimize OBS as well. I used to do the hotkey recording, but stopped. I started using replay buffer and set it to only 2 minutes. Idk if it's placebo, but it feels slightly less laggy the last day I used it. Will test more though.

Does 12 bits mean HDR? I thought HDR was like it's own thing. I did set it to 12 though. And I switched my asus to 10bits. But it says HDR is off on my ASUS on the monitor itself. My samsung is so old I don't even see an HDR option in the settings. Is there somewhere else I should look to turn it off?

And ftr, idk if any of this sounds like I'm angry etc, but to be clear I am very thankful for any help, I'm legitimately just asking questions.

 

[loafin]

Yep, HDR is enabled, not only on the Sammy but the Asus too.

Disable it on both monitors & it should be smooth with no rendering lag.

Encoding @ 60FPS, set Keyframe Interval to 2 Seconds, Preset P5, Multipass qres, 0 B Frames.

If you want to record @ 240FPS, just lower the Preset to P3 or P2, there should be no need to change any other settings.

Where do you see that? Is 10bit and 12 bit considered HDR? Cuz my monitor has an HDR option and I have it off. And when I have it off it doesn't even show up in my NVCP. Is there somewhere else I need to turn off HDR? I have very little knowledge on anything color related, but the 10bit and 12bit makes the monitors look so much better.

I only encode at 60fps. Tbh I don't even mind 30, but I haven't really noticed any improvement even when I set every setting to like awful quality settings. I still get the lag. But I do play at 238fps.

I'll try the multipass on qres and 0b frames. Never tried that combo before. I normally have it on 3 cuz I thought some1 said that would help with this issue on another post, but I'll try your combo tonight. Thanks for the suggestions. Much appreciated.

 

[rockbottom]

Yes, both have/had HDR enabled. I have the VG259QN & when HDR is enabled it's 10-bit. What's strange is my monitor runs @ 240FPS, not 238. I even enabled HDR last night to see if it would run @ 238 & no dice, it was still @ 240. Not sure what's going on there.

1 other change I would make to your encoding settings is the Tuning, change it to High Quality. Your system is killing it, no need for low latency, it reduces quality anyway.

 

[loafin]

Yes, both have/had HDR enabled. I have the VG259QN & when HDR is enabled it's 10-bit. What's strange is my monitor runs @ 240FPS, not 238. I even enabled HDR last night to see if it would run @ 238 & no dice, it was still @ 240. Not sure what's going on there.

1 other change I would make to your encoding settings is the Tuning, change it to High Quality. Your system is killing it, no need for low latency, it reduces quality anyway.

I have it at 238hz because you have to create a custom res in order to enable 10bit on this monitor. For whatever reason it doesn't come with 10bit by default. And I've seen various recommendations that capping it a few frames below your monitors capability is best. Which I now realize is irrelevant cuz mine can technically get to 280 if overclocked, but then I can't use 10bit.

I'll try turning off the 10 and 12bit today. I really hope that's not the issue cuz the monitor looks so much worse on 8bit.

The only reason I had my tuning to low latency is because of my issue with the lag. I've basically tried putting every setting to like absolute worst quality to see if it would help the lag. Nothing seems to change it, so I might as well up the quality like you said. Cuz I stg my system is not lacking resources.

I'm also just curious if this is an unfixable issue. I've seen people say you need a second PC to get absolutely 0 latency, which is why all big streamers/creators have 2 PCs. Tbh the lag is very unnoticeable if you aren't extremely competitive. I'm immortal 3 in valorant and masters in apex. Both 1 off max rank which isn't godly, but I am very in tune with my aim. So what some people might not perceive as input lag, I think I can feel input lag. These games are a matter of literal milliseconds, so I'm just tryna maximize it. I can definitely still play at a high lvl while recording. When I'm not recording, the games just feel effortless like there is 0 lag at all.

 

[loafin]

Yes, both have/had HDR enabled. I have the VG259QN & when HDR is enabled it's 10-bit. What's strange is my monitor runs @ 240FPS, not 238. I even enabled HDR last night to see if it would run @ 238 & no dice, it was still @ 240. Not sure what's going on there.

1 other change I would make to your encoding settings is the Tuning, change it to High Quality. Your system is killing it, no need for low latency, it reduces quality anyway.

I switched to 8bit on both monitors, apparently they still look great as long as I keep their color range on full instead of limited. I think that makes a bigger difference than the 8vs10bit surprisingly to me. And I think that may have solved my lag. I switched tuning to high quality and preset to p5 with two passes. My GPU doesn't go past 24% and the game actually felt great. I'm leaving max b frames and keyframe interval on 2s for now and it seems to do good.

It's actually very strange though because this log shows 0.1% encoding and rendering lag with max audio buffering issue. But this is the best it has ever felt. Wtf??

 

[rockbottom]

Cool. Performance robbing color conversion has been eliminated. You were getting the double whammy with 2 monitors running HDR. Using the Full color range with 8-bit, oversaturates the colors in the recording. They may look nice but the correct setting is partial.

When you get a chance put up the log, I'll take a look. I didn't see any audio lag in the previous logs. Mulltipass shoud be qres. As far as B frames go, using them will save a few MB's of HD space but they are the lowest quality frame type, better used when streaming CBR.

 

[loafin]

Cool. Performance robbing color conversion has been eliminated. You were getting the double whammy with 2 monitors running HDR. Using the Full color range with 8-bit, oversaturates the colors in the recording. They may look nice but the correct setting is partial.

When you get a chance put up the log, I'll take a look. I didn't see any audio lag in the previous logs. Mulltipass shoud be qres. As far as B frames go, using them will save a few MB's of HD space but they are the lowest quality frame type, better used when streaming CBR.

Would full vs limited have any effect latency wise? I don't mind oversaturated recording if it looks better while playing.

I didn't save that last log unfortunately. I played apex and got 0.2% encoding and rendering lag. Do those stats mean actual latency issues with my game or just obs having issues? Here's the log for that

https://obsproject.com/logs/TOqA3EWleV5tJ2xG

Valorant my game feels close to perfect.

 

[loafin]

Sorry to bring up a whole new set of issues, but my apex feels like a completely different game when recording vs not recording. I'm gonna have to do more testing with the second monitor unplugged, unfortunately I have to go to work tomorrow I can't test more lol.

I got 0.4% this time. I also noticed when I record with OBS my night light function on my PC is on in game. But when I stop recording, the night light blue light filter goes away. I'm curious if that means anything about what's happening. When I'm recording on Apex it legitimately feels like I'm playing on like 100 frames or something (but in game and on my monitor it says I'm running at 238). Cuz the second I stop, the game looks so much smoother. Here's the second apex log. My GPU and CPU never even went past 80-90% again. My CPU was around 70 most of the time. Same with GPU, sometimes went to like 80-85.

https://obsproject.com/logs/kTufFGE9WPDo28WN

 

[Matishzz]

Any application which overlaps with your game will add latency, that's for sure.

I recommend you to approach the problem from another perspective, these are not things that should be addressed in this forum but I will comment on them very briefly.

There are 3 very important factors which you can configure and configure:

OS: disable, remove and turn off junk that uses Cycles Delta or CSwitch Delta along with other things which are easier to address by installing a custom OS.

BIOS: This is crucial, you can do GRUB by extracting NVRAM variables with SCEWIN to disable completely unnecessary power savings or ports that use IRQs lines.)

OC: There are a lot of people who are afraid of this but you shouldn't be, there are limitations (which are quite tedious because they hinder the ceilings) that go beyond what you can interfere with as a user like the power limits lowered to vBIOS level talking about graphics cards of course.

All this if you do incapie will improve the performance metrics either Frametime, Avg, 1 %ile, 0.1 %ile, 1% Low and 0.1% Lows also this practice will improve the stability of the polling rate of your mouse.

Also I believe that this monitor has OD 120 you can observe in the following forum a talk about how to approach it. https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7414&sid=606991aba7a2cf63c0e3cb5ca20d7787

Also maybe the inconvenience comes from the 60 fps but it should be able to raise 60fps quietly I do not see a bad configuration in your log, have you tried previous versions of OBS or clean NVIDIA drivers? you can use NVCleaninstall or extract the NVIDIA setup to modify the complements that come with them.

I recommend you to open MSI Afterburner and observe it with your own eyes, set frametime to overlap with a graph and observe (frametime refers to the time it takes to render each frame while playing) you will surely see a significant fluctuation when you press the start record button.

 

[rockbottom]

Just a touch of rendering lag in those logs, your GPU is slightly overloaded. You want to run high refresh rates so dial back the in game quality settings to reduce the load. Do you have v-sync enabled in the Nvidia control panel?

 

[loafin]

Any application which overlaps with your game will add latency, that's for sure.

I recommend you to approach the problem from another perspective, these are not things that should be addressed in this forum but I will comment on them very briefly.

There are 3 very important factors which you can configure and configure:

OS: disable, remove and turn off junk that uses Cycles Delta or CSwitch Delta along with other things which are easier to address by installing a custom OS.

BIOS: This is crucial, you can do GRUB by extracting NVRAM variables with SCEWIN to disable completely unnecessary power savings or ports that use IRQs lines.)

OC: There are a lot of people who are afraid of this but you shouldn't be, there are limitations (which are quite tedious because they hinder the ceilings) that go beyond what you can interfere with as a user like the power limits lowered to vBIOS level talking about graphics cards of course.

All this if you do incapie will improve the performance metrics either Frametime, Avg, 1 %ile, 0.1 %ile, 1% Low and 0.1% Lows also this practice will improve the stability of the polling rate of your mouse.

Also I believe that this monitor has OD 120 you can observe in the following forum a talk about how to approach it. https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7414&sid=606991aba7a2cf63c0e3cb5ca20d7787

Also maybe the inconvenience comes from the 60 fps but it should be able to raise 60fps quietly I do not see a bad configuration in your log, have you tried previous versions of OBS or clean NVIDIA drivers? you can use NVCleaninstall or extract the NVIDIA setup to modify the complements that come with them.

I recommend you to open MSI Afterburner and observe it with your own eyes, set frametime to overlap with a graph and observe (frametime refers to the time it takes to render each frame while playing) you will surely see a significant fluctuation when you press the start record button.

I very much appreciate the detailed options. I will try these this weekend when I have more time. I'm pretty busy during the week.

I had my OD on 120 for about the last year. I switched to 60 recently because I was still trying new settings hoping that it would magically fix my issues. I think 120 and 60 are surprisingly closer than I used to believe.

As for the 60fps I have tried putting it down to 30fps in the past. I don't really mind the quality difference, but it didn't seem to have a significant impact on my in game fps so I figured might as well have 60.

I haven't tried previous versions of OBS, but I've updated it frequently and have always had this issue. I had a similar issue when using GEFORCE shadowplay. I could feel the difference of when I was recording and when I wasn't so easily. I've also been using NVcleaninstall for about the last year or two. I think that does help.

Which leads me to my main question. What stats should I look at on MSI Afterburner specifically besides frametime? (I'll still do that though) But I swear there has to be some other explanation than just low frames. Because I watch my in game frames. They never dip below 180 in most games. And even if it went to 144, it wouldn't feel as bad as it feels. But even my monitor says I'm playing on 200-240fps at all times. And my GPU/CPU literally never go past 80% usage. I've seen 1 jump to like 99 or 100 when a game loads for 1 second, but my GPU which is the one dealing with the recording, doesn't go past 30% on Valorant. Like I just can't believe I'm resource bound. Could it be a faulty GPU in some way?

Sorry if this is a ramble, but I'm quite passionate about figuring this out, cuz when I'm not recording my games feel SO easy and beautiful to play. But then I record and it feels so awkward and hard to see. It feels like going back to 60fps almost. But I've tried capping my monitor at 60 and it doesn't literally look like 60, so idk...

 

[loafin]

Just a touch of rendering lag in those logs, your GPU is slightly overloaded. You want to run high refresh rates so dial back the in game quality settings to reduce the load. Do you have v-sync enabled in the Nvidia control panel?

Yeah I generally play on all low settings on Apex. Maybe I'll try capping it at like 144 just to see if that makes any difference. But the difference is so night and day that it doesn't feel like it's just a difference that 15-20% more frames would even help. It literally just feels like the second the recording ends I go from like 90fps to 240fps, but the ingame and monitor fps never show my fps change.

I don't have v-sync enabled in the control panel no. I have seen people recommend turning it on in the control panel only with g-sync though. I've just been so terrified of adding any latency while already experiencing latency issues that I have generally avoided v sync and g sync. I only switched to g sync when hobbes told me to above.