Is 'run as administrator' still recommended, or has it been patched to only require running as admin during install?

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WarMom

New Member
I was watching through some old EposVox videos, and something caught my eye.

It's usually standard practice when helping someone troubleshoot OBS issues, particularly for encoding overload, to check if they're running as admin. But in this October 2019 video at around 4:40 he states:

They do have a future update planned where they will basically be releasing it in such a way that you only have to approve the administrator run during installation and you don't have to keep running OBS as admin, because running OBS as admin can break [some features]
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Did this ever actually happen and I (and many others) just missed the memo, or did it fall through (hey, volunteer project, not sexy to implement, such is life)? Have I been giving 'run as admin' as advice for a while and it's just been irrelevant, or is it still recommended? Was it rolled into setting process priority in advanced settings?
 
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Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
Having admin permissions during install has nothing to do with OBS, but is an OS level security measure, and should be required for any/all installs.. basically

Running OBS as admin, from what I gather, is something to do when you have resource contention (including encoding overload), and you want OBS to have priority.
I think @FerretBomb and I went back 'n forth on this, and I think it was he who provided some technical background on the priority processing (incl GPU side?) that takes place when running as admin.
Due to my IT security background, running as admin is something I avoid like the plague (and have since NT4.0 days). Do I run OBS as admin? No, I don't need to. I bought a new PC, with a 5 life expectancy, and plenty of headroom at the moment for how I use it. ymmv

My personal advise would be to avoid running as admin, unless you are in one of the specific categories that needs to. And if you do need to, then be careful with 3rd party plug-ins, or Browser source, etc that will also run under admin context and pose security threat to your environment

What I don't know is if for some folks simply changing the default Medium process priority would suffice (vs running as admin). I'd certainly start there, but such an inquiry quickly gets into technical details of OBS and OS interaction that is outside my area of expertise
 
D

Deleted member 121471

There are some edge cases I've experienced where running as admin was the only solution, namely being unable to capture certain apps or games altogether. I think it was Amnesia: Dark Descent that gave me the most issues.
 
FerretBomb

FerretBomb

Active Member
They have not yet patched it so that Admin is only needed on-install, no.
Far as I'm aware, they're still working on getting it to that point, but the features plate is ever-full, and some are more in-demand. Nothing's as permanent as a quick-fix workaround.
 
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BeardyBroLeague

New Member
Lawrence_SoCal said:
Having admin permissions during install has nothing to do with OBS, but is an OS level security measure, and should be required for any/all installs.. basically

Running OBS as admin, from what I gather, is something to do when you have resource contention (including encoding overload), and you want OBS to have priority.
I think @FerretBomb and I went back 'n forth on this, and I think it was he who provided some technical background on the priority processing (incl GPU side?) that takes place when running as admin.
Due to my IT security background, running as admin is something I avoid like the plague (and have since NT4.0 days). Do I run OBS as admin? No, I don't need to. I bought a new PC, with a 5 life expectancy, and plenty of headroom at the moment for how I use it. ymmv

My personal advise would be to avoid running as admin, unless you are in one of the specific categories that needs to. And if you do need to, then be careful with 3rd party plug-ins, or Browser source, etc that will also run under admin context and pose security threat to your environment

What I don't know is if for some folks simply changing the default Medium process priority would suffice (vs running as admin). I'd certainly start there, but such an inquiry quickly gets into technical details of OBS and OS interaction that is outside my area of expertise
Click to expand...

I totally understand this - duly noted that running as admin is bad juju. But based on testing, only running as admin seems to solve encoding lag issues.
 
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Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
BeardyBroLeague said:
I totally understand this - duly noted that running as admin is bad juju. But based on testing, only running as admin seems to solve encoding lag issues.
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I don't have any encoding lag issues. but every situation can be different.
And running OBS as admin is a common work-around for an under-powered system [for a given set of OBS and OS settings, so PEBKAC not OBS's fault] to tell the OS to prioritize OBS. There are other approaches, and depends on exact issue (where is bottleneck, exactly) if some of the other OS level tweaks for process prioritization will work for a given setup.
So the implication in the above post that OBS requires running as Admin to address encoding lag issues is not true. period. Running OBS as admin is a work-around vs other options [whether best option or not .. depends]
 
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Empirekicking

Member
While running as admin, can you have connection loss? I get 600 bitrates and then while streaming it goes to 0 bitrates and lost connection.
 
Blackink

Blackink

Member
From my experiences with my set up, I set OBS to run as admin because if I didn't, I would have to first make sure OBS was selected before I started recording my screen(s) while using my stock trading software.
I trade stocks and the software my broker uses doesn't let me use OBS (or it just won't) to start the recording unless OBS has been "clicked on" first (if that's the correct phrasing I need here) as in - not minimized.
Once I did the steps to make OBS run as administrator:
Right click on the OBS icon on my desktop> Properties> in the Shortcut tab select Advanced...> check the box next to Run as Administrator> select OK> select Apply. Now you're done.

Once I followed those steps, I can launch OBS, minimize OBS and launch my trading software and do whatever I want as far as entering tickers in my charts, and when I'm ready to record a monitor (I have 4) in OBS, I just select the hotkey in OBS that is associated with the monitor I want to record and BOOM (as John Madden would say!!) the recording starts and I can go back to entering ticker symbols in my trading software, I can click on any hotkey that I have set up in OBS to change monitors, pause the recording, stop the recording, etc....the whole time I'm doing this the OBS software is minimized. Any hotkeys I have set up in my trading software are not the same hotkeys as I have set up in OBS.

I love what this OBS software can do for me and I'm not even a streamer nor do I play any online games. It works great, and records my monitor(s) even better.
And....if it's not a problem saying so in this forum, I use ShotCut Video Editor to edit any recordings I made from OBS if needed.
You put the two of these together and it's like putting peanut butter and jelly together on your bread!!! It doesn't get much better than this!! lololol....
 
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Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
Mark Weiss said:
I cannot get OBS to even START if I elevate it to Admin priority. It runs with normal privileges just fine.
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Running as Admin typically means using the Admin account, which is a separate profile.
So settings, files, etc are OS User Profile dependent, [nothing to do with OBS, true of most apps]. So, yea, depending on your specific setup, trying to start the app with a user profile not configured appropriately for OBS could cause issues. A normal full OBS Studio install, without plugins, should start and run just fine using Admin profile or regular user profile. But portable install, plug-ins, various settings... one could easily make OBS not work with other profiles
 
Blackink

Blackink

Member
I don't run any plug-ins, apps, or anything other than OBS Studio for my needs and Run as Admin works fine that way....
 
Mark Weiss

Mark Weiss

Member
Lawrence_SoCal said:
Running as Admin typically means using the Admin account, which is a separate profile.
So settings, files, etc are OS User Profile dependent, [nothing to do with OBS, true of most apps]. So, yea, depending on your specific setup, trying to start the app with a user profile not configured appropriately for OBS could cause issues. A normal full OBS Studio install, without plugins, should start and run just fine using Admin profile or regular user profile. But portable install, plug-ins, various settings... one could easily make OBS not work with other profiles
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Hmm, so not like other applications which work the same whether I run them normally or as admin.
 
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Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
Mark Weiss said:
Hmm, so not like other applications which work the same whether I run them normally or as admin.
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Uh, no ... exactly like ALL Windows app. RunAs is an OS feature. OBS saves its settings in User Profile Space. Your responsibility is to understand what that means.
What I suspect is that your 'other' apps either don't have settings, or store settings once for PC rather than allowing separate configs for different users, or you forgot that you re-created settings for different profiles. Many apps store their settings at time of installation (using Admin credentials) and are set for the entire OS. An app, being run as regular (non-admin) user, should NOT (in general) be able to adjust global settings, unless app changed permissions on wherever settings are stored (creating a possibly security issue). it just depends.
 
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