Question / Help Is my Macbook Pro garbage? Audio Issues

[Lotek503]

Hey! I made an account just so I could try to get some feedback on whether or not my computer is just not made for streaming. First off, I think I know a little bit about computers but I'll probably come to find out I know next to nothing.

I stream through Mixer from my Macbook Pro using an Elgato HD60S and OBS. The stream itself runs okay, but there's a few issues. I've noticed if I try to pull up my stream in a browser window, OBS will give me a "encoding overloaded" message along the bottom. If I close out, it goes away. I assume I'm running OBS the same way as every other mac user with display capture, then audio coming in via IShowU. My Macbook does get hot and sounds like it's working hard, but the stream is somewhat decent by my low standards at this stage.

Another issue I face is the audio being off just sometimes. Not all the time, just sometimes. I've done the audio delay and that's all cool, the recordings are on point. However, when I stream through Mixer, I'll have people tell me the audio is coming like 3 seconds after speak it on camera. Then I'll open mixer on my phone and watch for a while, and it'll be off, then it'll sync back up for a while, then get off again. (any suggestions on this?)

I've read other forums and people have suggested maybe it's the encoder? (which means the computer itself, right?) I try really hard to understand the computer talk, but sometimes it's just hard to follow. I'm a graphic designer and I feel like my computer does pretty good for what I need it to do; which is run Illustrator and Photoshop at the same time. However, processing video is apparently a different task.

Log File: https://obsproject.com/logs/GXr6QE0wObHebxGZ
Here's a link to the stream that the file log is referencing: https://mixer.com/Lotek503?vod=23-JPp6Xs0yR4Vburi0qDQ

Is my computer just not built for streaming? Would it be worthwhile to invest in something stronger if I want to continue my "streaming career?" Am I destroying my computer by running it at high temps for long streaming sessions? (high temps: 160F/71C)
Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Narcogen]

MacOS at this point, unfortunately, is barely usable for streaming unless you have a desktop and a strong GPU.

Even in such a configuration, it is unable to use the hardware encoders in AMD and Nvidia cards because those vendors have not made available the necessary functionality in their drivers. As a result, the same hardware in Windows generally makes a better streaming rig than in MacOS. Although even with Windows, that hardware would be limited-- the Nvidia card in that machine does not support NVENC.

Even so, at least on Windows you'd be able to use your Elgato as a source-- you're taxing your machine more than it needs to by running the Elgato software and then capturing the desktop instead of capturing the device directly. That's not possible on MacOS because Elgato does not ship a driver with that device. They promote it as "compatible with MacOS" and "compatible with OBS" without saying it is NOT compatible with OBS when running on MacOS. If you're absolutely committed to using OBS on MacOS for streaming, your best bet would be to replace the Elgato with Mac compatible hardware from Magewell, BlackMagic, or AJA, and ditch the desktop capture.

Basically any desktop with a GTX Nvidia card from the past 5 years is better than most laptops, and any laptop with an NVENC capable card running Windows is better than almost any Mac. Even if you build a hackintosh desktop with strong components, you will not get NVENC support because it doesn't exist on MacOS.

The future of streaming with OBS on MacOS is even worse because of Apple's deprecation of OpenGL, which used to be an option to use in Windows and has all been removed in favor of DirectX, for their own technology, Metal. This affects not just the MacOS equivalent

71C is high but not THAT high. Your bigger issue is probably that MacOS is reluctant to run its fans to keep itself cool, but is eager to throttle itself to reduce temperature-- so when your laptop gets hot it also gets slow instead of loud (or, as is often the case these days, both).

Get MacsFanControl and then do whatever you can to mitigate the noise if it affects your stream. (Although the best option for doing this is the ReaFIR VST plugin which... only works on Windows.

As for the encoding lag... modern Intel CPUs support an encoding chip called QuickSync. This should be available to you as an encoder option, although on MacOS it will be called "Apple VT 264 Hardware Encoder" or something similar. (I have Xeon chips that don't have it, so it's not an option for me and I can never remember what it is called).

It's not particularly high quality, but it will reduce load on your CPU because it's dedicated encoder hardware.

Aside from that, if what causes encoding overload is trying to watch the stream on the same device... don't. Check it on an external device.