Half of the Recording Missing

[Shayal]

Hi everyone,

I've been using OBS to do recordings of my World of Warcraft gameplay for the last 4 years without strange issues but during today's recording some weird stuff happened and half of my recording has gone missing.

In my log you can see I recorded quite some hours today across the day, using the pause recording setting to do stuff in between. I have multiple scenes set up because I play different versions of the game and normally my recordings are fine.

However today, despite showing to be recording, the recording from 20:17 onwards is not in the final file. This was after I took a break and then pressed unpause. After I was done, I tried pausing and stopping the recording but it wasn't working and I had to force shut OBS (thinking there'd be a recording considering it's MKV anyway). When I looked at the video file it was only the first few hours. Everything after my break isn't in the recording.


Just before I force shut OBS, I noticed CPU usage was rather high (14% I remember reading).

I think the second half of my recording might be gone permanently but if anyone knows anything that might get me it back, I'd appreciate it.

 

[AaronD]

I've never used the pause function. Always just stopped and started, and then edited together if needed. Each continuous session is then an independent file, with no bearing on the others.

Sounds like the pause function (or rather, unpause) might have a bug, which effectively amounts to a crash no matter how you end up stopping it. Thus showing the resiliency of MKV. At least you still have everything up to the problem point, and didn't lose *all* of it like MP4 does!

...CPU usage was rather high (14% I remember reading).

Pssh! That's nothing! One of my rigs sits at 50% as a dead-flat line, and another around 80% or so, also dead-flat. Not a problem at all.

That consistency is what allows me to run it that high. If you have some variability, then you need enough headroom to cover that variability without exceeding 100%. If you're dead-flat, then you can run it flat-out and be perfectly okay.

I think the second half of my recording might be gone permanently but if anyone knows anything that might get me it back, I'd appreciate it.

Unfortunately no. What's there is there, and what's not is not. There's no "hidden backup". Sorry.

On the off-chance that it did record, then it's possible that a data-recovery program *might* be able to find at least part of it, essentially by reading the free space and trying to make some kind of sense of what it finds there...but the chances of success plummet immediately as you continue to use the computer AT ALL after the potential loss. Yank the power cord NOW, without shutting down, so that it doesn't have the opportunity to overwrite what it still has marked as "free". If you decide then, that you need to install a recovery program, then that installer could easily wipe out the thing you want to recover. Use a different computer to read the drive, and do the recovery.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Just before I force shut OBS, I noticed CPU usage was rather high (14% I remember reading).

Beware the OBS Stats CPU counter... which will tell you only a portion of what OBS Studio impact is... and by itself, usually isn't all that meaningful. What really matters is overall system hardware resource utilization (including CPU)... even 80-90% is often fine ... but beware thermal throttling


Your log appears to indicate a number of pause/unpauses, then and then a failure at the end...
As for not seeing the later recording, have you tried a different viewer? like audio tracks, different media players will handle things differently...

And not sure if related or not, but notice in the log the initial unpause and capture failure (took a minute or so to res-start??) ... anyway, I'm wondering if that glitch is causing your viewer/editor a headache..

 

[AaronD]

Beware the OBS Stats CPU counter... which will tell you only a portion of what OBS Studio impact is... and by itself, usually isn't all that meaningful.

Ah yes! That too.

What really matters is overall system hardware resource utilization (including CPU)... even 80-90% is often fine

That's what I was measuring above, just in case there was some confusion.

... but beware thermal throttling

Also yes. Most laptop users don't seem to realize this...