Question / Help Is there a maximum number of frames OBS can encode? Stream + local file = local file corrupt

[8BitCerberus]

I don't know if this is a bug in OBS or a limitation of the h264/NVENC encoder, but I did a 3 hour 40 minute live stream yesterday, and the video on Twitch is fine, but the local file I had also saved is corrupt and apparently only saved the audio data.

I've done several local recordings of a little over 2 hours and later split into parts for putting up on YouTube (at much higher bit rate, as well, 25,000kbps) and those have been no trouble at all.

I know that Blender's VSE module has a limit of 300,000 frames, which is just a tad under 3 hours at 30fps (324,000 = 3 hours) and it got me to thinking that maybe it's that way because of a limitation in some codecs?

Anyway, the video to Twitch was fine, and I was able to export that as a private video to YouTube, and it automatically split into 2 parts at the 2 hour mark. I downloaded both parts from YouTube which is theoretically the same quality that would have been saved if the local file hadn't been corrupted (3500kbps), combined they're both about the same file size as the one local file, so I'm going to use those two to split into 3 videos to actually post to my YouTube channel. But I'm just curious if this is an OBS limitation or encoder limitation? Or did I just get unlucky and had a randomly corrupted file?

[edit] I just read a bit about using FLV container for recording then de/remuxing that back to MP4 for editing. I will have to give that a shot next time. It's an extra step prior to editing but if it helps keep files from corrupting it's totally worth it.

 

[Sapiens]

What media player are you using to play the file? Try VLC or MPC-HC, audio-only playback is typically a playback issue.

 

[8BitCerberus]

Yeah I tried VLC, MPC, and even WMP just as a shot in the dark. Tried converting it with avidemux, it crashed Blender even just generating the thumbnail icon, and Premiere Pro tried loading it but would spit out an error saying the file contained no video or audio streams. Checking properties in Windows and it showed proper video resolution, framerate, bitrate, and audio codec, bitrate and sample rate. It's sounding like I just got unlucky, I can't find any solid info on codec maximum frame limitations.

I was going to add request to the suggestion forum to have an option for OBS to split recordings either by time or by file size, and that's where I came across the FLV info. I think I'd still like the option to split recordings up, but if FLV will help ensure an uncorrupted video, I'll make a go of it. I'd certainly rather OBS eventually have the ability to split voice/mic from in-game/computer audio as a separate WAV next to the video recording, before worrying about splitting recordings