Question / Help Issue with Frame Rate / Recording

[ScrewUpGaming]

Hello,
So I've been having issues with OBS the last few weeks; where when I'm recording the frame rate drops from 30.00 to like 28.02 (something like that) and the video becomes choppy and glitchy; but then after a few seconds the frame goes back to normal.

I have attached my OBS Log.
I have tried to reinstall the game and change the game settings as well; but the problem seems to be with OBS.

Thanks for your Help.

 

[Narcogen]

Check that game mode is off. Instructions are below in the signature.

To say more I'd need to see a log from an actual recording or streaming session, rather than just an auto-configuration wizard run, but the situation you describe can easily be caused by Game Mode being on.

 

[ScrewUpGaming]

hey, yes game mode is off.

This is the log file for right now when i tried to record some game-play

 

[Narcogen]

There's no recording session in the log. You need to have a completed session for the log entries to write. Start recording, observe your problem, stop recording, then upload the log.

 

[ScrewUpGaming]

okay. sorry new to this..
here you go

 

[Benman2785]

that usually happens when your cpu cant handle the capture and encoding
try to reduce load on cpu - like lower settings in game - kill other processes etc
maybe set OBSs priority to high

i use FrameRateTargetControl and set it between ~70-90 to reduce gpu load and so my cpu has "less stress" feeding my gpu and my encoding now stays at desired framerate instead of dropping below

 

[carlmmii]

Logs show 55 frames lost due to rendering lag. No encoding lag.... but there's no section there for the encoding settings for whatever reason.

Rendering lag is nearly universally caused by GPU overload, where OBS isn't allowed enough resources to perform its own scene building. Especially considering this is a completely fresh scene, so no CPU bottlenecking should be causing delays. Limiting GPU usage is really the only current workaround to this problem.

I do have to ask though... any reason you switched to the 32-bit version of OBS?

 

[ScrewUpGaming]

that usually happens when your cpu cant handle the capture and encoding
try to reduce load on cpu - like lower settings in game - kill other processes etc
maybe set OBSs priority to high

i use FrameRateTargetControl and set it between ~70-90 to reduce gpu load and so my cpu has "less stress" feeding my gpu and my encoding now stays at desired framerate instead of dropping below

How would i go about doing that??

Logs show 55 frames lost due to rendering lag. No encoding lag.... but there's no section there for the encoding settings for whatever reason.

Rendering lag is nearly universally caused by GPU overload, where OBS isn't allowed enough resources to perform its own scene building. Especially considering this is a completely fresh scene, so no CPU bottlenecking should be causing delays. Limiting GPU usage is really the only current workaround to this problem.

I do have to ask though... any reason you switched to the 32-bit version of OBS?

So i changed to 32-bit just to see if it would make a difference.

 

[ScrewUpGaming]

so this is a test I did after lowering the framerate in-game to 30fps

 

[Benman2785]

what settings do you use for encoding?
"veryfast" etc
do you use game capture or display or window capture?
btw you can try NVenc to reduce load on CPU - but i think the problem is your GPU: lower settings in game to reduce load on GPU

 

[ScrewUpGaming]

The output mode is set to simple; so default.
and I use display capture for everything.
I have a GTX 970 graphic card so i'm not sure why I'm have issues.

 

[Narcogen]

People who have a 2080 can and do have issues. OBS needs resources to do its work, and the maximum framerate a game can hold without recording or streaming is higher than the maximum framerate it can hold while recording or streaming.

Rendering lag happens when OBS can't render a frame before encoding because the GPU is busy. Game mode causes this, but a game running without a frame rate cap on it also can cause it-- the game wants to push as many frames as it can, and it doesn't care about what OBS wants or needs to do.

 

[ScrewUpGaming]

People who have a 2080 can and do have issues. OBS needs resources to do its work, and the maximum framerate a game can hold without recording or streaming is higher than the maximum framerate it can hold while recording or streaming.

Rendering lag happens when OBS can't render a frame before encoding because the GPU is busy. Game mode causes this, but a game running without a frame rate cap on it also can cause it-- the game wants to push as many frames as it can, and it doesn't care about what OBS wants or needs to do.

so if i had obs set to 30fps and the game at lets say 40 or 50fps; i would still run into the same issue; but if i have game at 30fps and obs at 60fps i should be fine?

 

[Narcogen]

Yes, although there's not much point at recording at 60fps if the game is locked to 30fps. If you can cap at 60 and record at 60, do it, but if you have to drop the game's framerate to 30 you should probably record at 30.

I'll defer to someone who knows better, but I believe in that case OBS isn't going to be doing any frame interpolation in this case, it's just going to record each frame twice, so you'll have a 30fps file that claims it is 60fps but doesn't look any better.

This issue is most often faced by gamers who are pushing their games to 200 fps and then don't understand why they can't record at 60; the answer is to cap at a low enough number that OBS has room to work; ideally at a clean multiple of 30.

 

[ScrewUpGaming]

okay. Thank you so much for your help Narcogen and everyone else.

#Close

 

[Narcogen]

You're welcome!

 

[Benman2785]

1. only use display capture if you need to
use game-capture instead

2. do you need 1080p?
720p or 862p take less cpu-load

3. what game are you trying to capture?
is it very heavy load? reduce settings!

4. USE ADVANCED SETTINGS!
x264; Rate Control: CBR; Bitrate = fit to 85% of your uploadspeed (twitch max is 6000kbps); Keyframe Interval 2; CPU Usage Preset: Veryfast or superfast; Profile: baseline or main; Tune: zerolatency

5. bitrate in particular: WHAT do you want to do? streaming or locally recordin?

6. why not using NVenc?
then your GPU would do the most work and your CPU has more headroom
pls lower graphic settings a bit

some tips in general:
- limit your framerate to 85-90fps if you want to capture 60fps - less load on cpu will give cpu time to capture "in time"
- limit background task
- give OBS higher prio
- run OBS as admin