Question / Help Heavy scenes drop quality & FPS hard with good hardware

[Sdogga Man]

Hey all, I'll cut to the point.

I record scrims for a team I play on and my last recording was atrocious in fights. I record at 40000 kpbs, 1080p with no downscaling, one 320kbps audio stream (because f*ck you too, Premiere Pro) and output to an .mp4 with CBR on veryfast, I believe.

I have my game on maxed settings and don't drop a frame, ever. Recording has no affect on the game I see playing out. But, later in OBS, I see the FPS drop hard during more intensive scenery, as well as the recording - it looks like when YouTube just drops your quality from high down to minimum. The game is buttery smooth 1080p 60 when between fights.

Does anyone have any tips? What do the different presets like CBR and the 'veryfast' settings actually do? I can play at max and show it off in videos, my PC is powerful enough to, so I might as well. It seems OBS is the unhappy party.

I run an 8400 (6 cores) and a 1070 Ti.

I'm at work, so if you want logs and sources, let me know (and how to find the logs, please!) and you'll get them in a few hours when I get home. Thanks in advance!

 

[BK-Morpheus]

Which game, which fps cap is set for the game, why do you use CBR for local recordings and where is the log file?

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/please-post-a-log-with-your-issue-heres-how.23074/

 

[Sdogga Man]

Overwatch - display-based FPS cap, my monitor by all accounts seems to be 75~ Hz, and I followed three random "OBS setup" videos online for the basic setup. Yes, half of them have no idea what they're talking about, and just go, "whatever this is, leave it as it is". It wasn't something I looked into at the time, I hadn't noticed any issues before now. Now, however, I know what they mean - and I'd guess you'd recommend VBR for local recordings?

 

[Stream Advisor]

I recommend CRF

You can set the values between 0 and 51, where lower values would result in better quality, at the expense of higher file sizes.

 

[Sdogga Man]

Ooh, okay. I thought that was CQP that had the x264-esque 0-51 values.

Do you think the recordings dropping frames is due to this, though? Wouldn't VBR help in fixing this - assuming it then uses the bitrate as an average, and is allowed to climb over that for the intensive scenery?

Edit: I don't have CRF in my list - is that unique to .FLV files? I normally stick with .MP4, though as long as it plays well with Premiere I have no other reasons not to switch.

 

[carlmmii]

Abandon .mp4 for initial recording, and use .mkv or .flv instead (.mp4 runs the risk of completely losing the recording if anything happens where it can't write the end block).

If you absolutely need .mp4, you can remux afterward.

For "VBR", all that stands for is "Variable Bitrate". Normally this means there's a target bitrate, and the encoder guesses a decent enough bitrate based on this target and the complexity of the material to be encoded. This works well for audio, but video is best served by using constant quality (CQP/CRF). Also, VBR isn't really meant to be used in real-time -- it's a 2-pass process, where the complexity info is gathered on the 1st pass, and the actual encoding is done on the 2nd pass when it knows how much bitrate to use for each section.

For you actual problem of running into hiccups during recording, we still need to see your logs to see what is actually causing the lagged frames (whether it's rendering lag or encoding lag). I have my suspicion that it's the 1080p60 x264 encoding, but until I see what OBS sees, it's just that -- a suspicion.

 

[Stream Advisor]

Ooh, okay. I thought that was CQP that had the x264-esque 0-51 values.

Do you think the recordings dropping frames is due to this, though? Wouldn't VBR help in fixing this - assuming it then uses the bitrate as an average, and is allowed to climb over that for the intensive scenery?

Edit: I don't have CRF in my list - is that unique to .FLV files? I normally stick with .MP4, though as long as it plays well with Premiere I have no other reasons not to switch.

It should be there.

The files in VBR that are created aren't as well optimized for quality as in CBR or CRF.

" Do you think the recordings dropping frames is due to this, though? "
No im not sure if thats the case.

 

[Sdogga Man]

I did some testing and played with some settings, still faulting.

Yeah, I worked out VBR/CBR, but I don't really know how they affect video recordings in this instance.

Hopefully this log file does the trick-ery for you - as for CRF, definitely not in there. I know where the settings are, but CRF specifically isn't one. CBR, VBR, CQP and lossless are my options. Is this a setting not in the default OBS?

This is a long shot, but it's not likely that my recording destination is doing it, right? I would assume not, since the recordings are top quality in off-moments. If the drive wasn't writing fast enough, it wouldn't write fast enough, period. It's a WD Green though which made me wonder.

Additionally, is the bitrate going to exponentially affect requirements with diminishing returns? I had it at 40000, but get the problem at 20000. I've seen people just run 2500 and as high as 50000, so... Yeah.

Thanks for the help, guys!

https://hastebin.com/detibokexo

Edit: Interesting that OBS can't find VLC. Does it look for a plugin version? Just curious.

 

[Stream Advisor]

I did some testing and played with some settings, still faulting.

Yeah, I worked out VBR/CBR, but I don't really know how they affect video recordings in this instance.

Hopefully this log file does the trick-ery for you - as for CRF, definitely not in there. I know where the settings are, but CRF specifically isn't one. CBR, VBR, CQP and lossless are my options. Is this a setting not in the default OBS?

This is a long shot, but it's not likely that my recording destination is doing it, right? I would assume not, since the recordings are top quality in off-moments. If the drive wasn't writing fast enough, it wouldn't write fast enough, period. It's a WD Green though which made me wonder.

Additionally, is the bitrate going to exponentially affect requirements with diminishing returns? I had it at 40000, but get the problem at 20000. I've seen people just run 2500 and as high as 50000, so... Yeah.

Thanks for the help, guys!

https://hastebin.com/detibokexo

Edit: Interesting that OBS can't find VLC. Does it look for a plugin version? Just curious.

" CBR, VBR, CQP and lossless are my options. Is this a setting not in the default OBS? "

Answer : It should be in the default OBS i don't know why you cant choose CRF unless you didnt chose x264 then it wont pop up.

" This is a long shot, but it's not likely that my recording destination is doing it, right? "

Answer : No your hard drive cannot effect fps drop

" Is the bitrate going to exponentially affect requirements with diminishing returns? "

Answer : English please XD i cannot understand what you just asked.
I live in The Netherlands and my english is okay but not expert mode.

 

[Sdogga Man]

Haha, no problems man, I know it wasn't worded the best. What i mean is, the higher the bitrate, the harder the hardware is pushed for no real benefit - vs., the lower, the uglier the output looks with the hardware not being used at all... Meaning, your bitrate should be a nice middle-ground, as high as your hardware can comfortably handle.

 

[BK-Morpheus]

The log shows no recording.
If he has CQP but no CRF, it seems that he is using NVENC instead of x264, but they both are basically the same (quality based encoding settings with variable bitrate).
CQP/CRF will give you the advantage that you simply set the qualiy that you want and the encoder is only using as much bitrate as necessary to achieve that quality.
I reccommend to try CRF/CQP values between 15 and 19 or add custom parameters to set a max bitrate and a custom buffer.

 

[Stream Advisor]

Haha, no problems man, I know it wasn't worded the best. What i mean is, the higher the bitrate, the harder the hardware is pushed for no real benefit - vs., the lower, the uglier the output looks with the hardware not being used at all... Meaning, your bitrate should be a nice middle-ground, as high as your hardware can comfortably handle.

A higher bitrate is always desirable it doesn’t place your own hardware under any additional stress, and it simply sends you the content that you want faster.

 

[BK-Morpheus]

A higher bitrate is always desirable it doesn’t place your own hardware under any additional stress, and it simply sends you the content that you want faster.

Higher bitrate will produce additional encoder load, but it is usually not much difference.
If you want to test it yourself, just do a test recording with x264 encoder and 2500kbit/s CBR and repeat the test with 50000kbit/s CBR while keeping an eye on the CPU load.

Between 2000kbit/s and 6000kbit/s it not really noticable, but with very huge bitrate differences, the encoder load will also change a bit.

 

[Sdogga Man]

Thanks to you all for your replies!

Yes, I should have mentioned earlier that i use NVENC as thr encoder, ratyer like than plain x264.

As for watching my CPU load, I did a few test recordings and didn't see big spikes in CPU load as far as OBS was concerned. However, I did see the frame drops happening - frequently, from 60 to 59~58, and at times right down to the teens. My bitrate normally sits at 40000 - would this be too high, low, or just unnecessary?

I'll read up a bit on CQP and give it a try too.

Thanks!

 

[Sdogga Man]

Update: Played about with bitrate and with the rate control, even with lossless. I can't get much more than a 'benefit' here! Playing about in bot matches and doing short recordings, each time editing some settings and restarting OBS. CQP still lags out when in intensive scenes, as does VBR and lossless. I can't work this out!

I have a good PC - I should be able to run games at max and not have many issues. And, to be fair, I do - the games themselves never lag. Just the videos.

Edit: upload last log is just giving me empty URLs... Uh oh?

Let me know if you have any other tips, and thanks for all the help so far!

 

[BK-Morpheus]

The most important setting (when it comes to stutter in videos) is the fps limit in your game, to prevent a GPU bottleneck which then can result in OBS rendering lag.
Which fps limit is set and how high does the GPU load go when gaming+streaming?

 

[Sdogga Man]

Hmm. I have a 75~ Hz panel and Overwatch caps at a constant 69-70 flicker, always has. It's set to cap based on display. As for the load, I've never checked the numbers - I know from the temps and fans that she works, but not that hard. I will do some tests and get back to you shortly!

 

[Sdogga Man]

Update: I played about with settings all day, using lossless and .mkv files, so on so forth. The stutters in intensive scenes are still there, and now when replaying the videos, VLC's struggling to keep up, constantly buffering and pixelating in the way it does when it misses getting new image data. I'm replaying from the same drive it's always played from. To add to this, a friend from the same team has started recording as well, and he's not only got the same lag, but the same file-playback thing!

What the heccers?!

Thanks all!

 

[BK-Morpheus]

Can happen with losless + high resolution and framerate. Often the Videoplayer software can not keep up with this bitrate and framerate.

 

[Sdogga Man]

Okay, fair enough. Doesn't explain why my mate's videos are doing the same, but then again his system is a little older than mine. I can't remember if those recordings were done at lossless, but I'll pass it off for now. I'm not having a very good day with this, or with the scrims themselves!

Anyway - I did some playing about and switched to the CPU encoder. It still drops frames, but it's not usable because it causes in-game frame drops. Back on CQP, I had my GPU on the slightly underclocked preset, because, I don't need it higher, so I switched it to the game mode OC and gave that a shot. I tried out shitty 2500 bitrate, but there still seems to be even tiny drops in FPS in the recordings.

What do you reckon from here? It can't be that the 1070 Ti just isn't good enough, nor the 8400, although being neither OC nor hyperthreaded, I'd expect it to be fairly mediocre at running very high quality games and recording them in high quality.

Interested both to learn more and to fix this. I don't remember it ever being a problem before, and now I have a second person with the same thing happening. Cheers!