Question / Help How can my encoding overload?

[El Baramallo]

Hey guys!

I don't know what's going on with OBS for me. It suddenly started dropping frames and giving warnings of "encoder overload".
My computer is a pretty powerful gaming PC. That said, I don't use OBS for streaming. Not even for playing games!
I use OBS to record videos directly to the computer's HDD so I don't need memory cards. I have a camera and microphone attached to the computer, and I use THAT to record my videos.
A couple weeks ago, they started to lag.
Mind you, I didn't change any hardware, so I figured this was some malware. Scanned the computer, didn't find anything. So I downgraded the output. Didn't fix the issue. Switched to a faster encoder. Didn't fix the issue.
I'm at wits' end.
I've downgraded the quality of my videos to a level that is bothering me, and as you can see in the attached log, sometimes I drop over 25% of the frames!

Can someone please analyze this log and explain to me why am I dropping frames?

 

[hoover910]

I am having a similar issue. I recorded around 5 games of Madden 20 on 1080p 60fps with no issue, but then all of a sudden a few days ago things went downhill. Now, I can't record without the encoding overload message taking place. NVIDIA shadowplay records on the highest setting with no problem, but OBS will not record on either NVENC or x264 encoding without the encoding overload error.

 

[Herodotus]

I've come for similar help and haven't found any. I see videos that I recorded some time ago at 1080p 60fps that were smooth, and I can't even get 720p 30fps to be smooth anymore. Same system as before. Game mode off.

 

[Herodotus]

I just ran a bunch of diagnostics and finally tried messing with the game settings instead. Turns out that borderless windowed mode instead of full screen was blowing my recordings somehow.

 

[El Baramallo]

I just ran a bunch of diagnostics and finally tried messing with the game settings instead. Turns out that borderless windowed mode instead of full screen was blowing my recordings somehow.

Yeah, that makes sense, borderless windows hogs way more resources than full screen.
But on my case, I'm not running anything else!

 

[Deleted member 121471]

When recording, due to the fact the main limiting factor (bitrate) is no longer a concern, it's strongly recommended to use NVENC instead, with the following settings:

Rate Control: CQP (set value somewhere between 14-23, lower values = higher quality and filesize requirements)
Preset: Quality
Disable "Psycho Visual Tuning" and "Lookahead"

After testing again, if there are no issues, you can try turning on the last 2 settings mentioned and confirm if they cause any issues.

Other than this, without knowing your exact setup, I can't offer more help. Your log shows 2 different video capture devices, one is your cam but dunno what the other is, a game capture source and a monitor capture source so some clarification about why you have all these in the same scene would help.

 

[El Baramallo]

Other than this, without knowing your exact setup, I can't offer more help. Your log shows 2 different video capture devices, one is your cam but dunno what the other is, a game capture source and a monitor capture source so some clarification about why you have all these in the same scene would help.

Oh my god, I think this worked! 20 minute recording, no lost frames!
I thought my setup showed up in the log file, it is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700k @4.2Ghz
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 4x16 GB 2666MHz
GPU: Asus Geforce GTX 1080 8GB ROG Strix

The reason I have 2 different video capture devices is because I sometimes use this to record board games. I have a Panasonic G7 connected to the pc through a Elgato Camlink and a Panasonic G85 connected through a HD60s. Monitor capture source beats me as well, I probably configured it in to record gameplay ages ago and never removed the source.
On Saturday I'll do a proper recording with light and microphone and everything to fully stress test this config, but looks like I should be golden!

 

[El Baramallo]

Hmmmmm, still losing frames. Not too much, the recordings are mostly usable, but I still don't understand WHY this is happening!
(New log attached)

 

[Deleted member 121471]

Download a program called "usbview" and make sure your capture cards are not in the same USB hub, as USB bandwidth is limited and split to every USB port connected to each hub. Using different hubs means all each capture card will have full bandwidth available.

Having multiple capture sources in the same scene collection can cause issues and incur a performance hit. Ideally, you'd have each scene only containing the exact number of capture sources needed. Merely disabling sources doesn't prevent this from happening.

As a test, try creating a clean source collection and ONLY adding game capture then test. If you don't have any issues, you'll know the problem has to do with how you're setting up your scenes.