How can I keep my *recording* quality while also not having to deal with lag?

hjq

New Member
So i’m a bit new in these stuff but i got obs a few days ago and ever since i did it's been a total rollercoaster. It took me a while to figure it out but after i changed some of my settings in order to get better quality, my recordings now appear to have lag and the CPU usage goes up to over 50-70%. On top of that there is this problem where it literally blends the screen in if that makes sense? I'm guessing it's apart of the lag itself but still. Which settings should I lower in order to get a cleaner outcome but still keep the quality good?
Here is the last log file when it all happened - https://obsproject.com/logs/1u39pcxbfiKZzrZb
 

koala

Active Member
Lags? You probably get a slideshow that stops at some point.
You have a very weak computer. It just manages to get OBS running. It's definitely not able to process a resolution you tried to record. Try a canvas and output resolution of 640x360 or lower. Half the resolution is a quarter the resource demand, and since your log reports 90% lost frames due to not able to encode in time, its half the way. And reduce fps to 15. Half the fps means half the resource demand. With both reductions you should be able to create a video that will lose only a few frames, but you can call it a video and not a slideshow.
 

hjq

New Member
Lags? You probably get a slideshow that stops at some point.
You have a very weak computer. It just manages to get OBS running. It's definitely not able to process a resolution you tried to record. Try a canvas and output resolution of 640x360 or lower. Half the resolution is a quarter the resource demand, and since your log reports 90% lost frames due to not able to encode in time, its half the way. And reduce fps to 15. Half the fps means half the resource demand. With both reductions you should be able to create a video that will lose only a few frames, but you can call it a video and not a slideshow.
thank you for the response! the computer is indeed weak and old but up until now i havent had problem running anything from programs to games on it. im planning on getting a new one soon, again thanks for the advice! it was however definitely not a slideshow it wasnt that bad! but it was not what i would want as an outcome.
 

koala

Active Member
Live video encoding is a very resource intensive task. It's probably more resource intensive than anything else you might have used on that computer.
If it comes to "slideshow or not", this is your session log:
Code:
10:37:28.984: Output 'adv_file_output': Total frames output: 4693
10:37:28.984: Output 'adv_file_output': Total drawn frames: 4967 (5524 attempted)
10:37:28.984: Output 'adv_file_output': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 557 (10.1%)
10:37:28.985: ==== Recording Stop ================================================
10:37:29.379: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 4412/4866 (90.7%)

90% lost frames due to encoding lag means from 100 frames, 90 are lost. You get 1 out of 10 frames. On a 30 fps video, these results in 3 frames per second. You created a video with actual 3 fps.
By halving the resolution, thus quarter the CPU demand, you get perhaps 4 times this fps, i. e. 12 fps. So it makes sense to reduce the fps in OBS to 15 to not overload the encoder too much in the first place.
 
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