Bug Report Glitches & Black Screen on MacBook

[spoonyliger]

With either streaming or recording any source I've been getting a black screen.

Here's my MacBook info:

This image shows my OBS preview:

If I move or stretch the output down or right on the canvas it disappears from the preview. Even if it shows on the preview, it doesn't show in the stream or recording.

If I enlarge the output and move it around a bit in the general upper left corner area of canvas it does this:

The last thing I did was use the Setup Wizard:

After that, I tried to record VLC. It recorded Chrome instead but... it ended up looking like this:

Lastly, here's a log for that:
https://hastebin.com/qecefifaru

I've no idea what's going on. MacBook is too old or something?

 

[Narcogen]

Try downloading version 19.x. I'm not sure if 20.x is being tested on El Capitan anymore, but it SHOULD work. The CPU in that unit would definitely be considered not particularly suitable for streaming, but if you're keeping to low resolutions and framerates and aren't streaming a lot of high motion content like games I think it could be serviceable.

That said, the first recording you did after the auto-config wizard did not do well:

18:29:59.796: Output 'simple_file_output': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 510 (85.3%)

That indicates your GPU simply can't draw frames fast enough. I'd suggest lowering your canvas resolution to 1280x720.

Had you been using OBS prior to now on the same machine? If so, what versions? Older Mac versions include 21.0.3, 20.1, 20.0.1, 20.0 and 19.03. Maybe start with 19.x and if that works, move up until a problem occurs.

All versions can be seen and downloaded here:
https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/releases

Window capture is generally not recommended as it performs poorly. Did you see the same results with Display capture?

 

[spoonyliger]

Did you see the same results with Display capture?

Yeah, and with a few other options too.

This is my first time using OBS. I'll give the older versions a go. Thank you so much for the link, I appreciate it.

 

[Yvo]

I had this issue too and switching the Macbook to its native resolution fixed it for me. The MacOS scaling of desktop (Preferences->Displays) is quite heavy on the GPU depending on the hardware. My Macbook Pro 13" is not capable of handling both the desktop scaling and a couple of window captures. So switching it to native fixed it.