Looking for new recommendations for OBS settings on two MacBooks (M2 MBA & i5 MBP)

[Robertjm]

Hi all,

My church has been streaming our Sunday services using a 2020 i5 Quad Core MacBook Pro with 16gb RAM for a few years now. There were hiccups at the start. But, up until recently things were going OK. But, now the CPU usage is going through the roof, and I cannot figure out what's going on.

Currently running macOS Ventura 13.6.4 and OBS 30.0.2. Installed the NDI 5.x plug-in for getting slides from another machine on the network. Networking is using Cat-6 ethernet cabling. Our ISP speed tests at approximately 800/800 using Speedtest.org. We use a Canon g70 camera connected via a Camlink 4k capture device (hooked up by Thunderbolt 3).

The CPU usage had been in the 20%-35% range. But, last weekend it actually climbed to 70%+, and I got a ton of "Encoder overloaded" error messages. I completely removed OBS and the NDI plug-in and started from scratch. But, no luck.

What are people using for settings these days?

I had it set to x264 for the encoder because that laptop doesn't include a built-in GPU. Running using 60fps and bandwidth setting is CBR at 6000 Kbps. CPU Usage preset is currently using Veryfast, though I have tried superfast in the past. My recording settings are set to "Use Stream Encoder" for video an CoreAudio AAC for audio.

Originally, this computer crashed any time I tried the "Apple VT H264 Software Encoder" so always used x264. But, I gave it another try with the Apple encoder, and it didn't crash today; ad the CPU usage stayed in below 40% as a general rule. However, when I ended the streaming it seemed to take forever to end the recording, and the CPU usage skyrocketed until it eventually ended a minute, or two, later.

Unfortunately, the image quality of the file archived at Vimeo was ghostlike at times; and not at all satisfying.

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As an experiment, I tried streaming with my M2 MacBook Air. CPU usage never got above 11% when using the "Apple VT H264 Hardware Encoder" setting. But, the bitrate during the stream was bouncing all over the place; sometimes as low as 750kbps.

Surely, there are people using the newer Apple Silicon laptops for streaming?

At this point, I'm even entertaining leaving OBS if this issue can't be resolved, though it hurts thinking about that.

 

[bhanuankam]

Hi, for me church we are using https://obs.camera/ in our iphone

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

There are other threads on Apple changing something at Operating System level which has impacted OBS Studio's available encoders, and how it uses them. So, you are not alone in seeing significant change in CPU utilization with latest OS/patches and latest OBS Studio

Not being a Mac / OBS Studio user, I'll leave it to others to comment on which combination of OS Version, settings, and OBS Studio keeps the encode offload from main CPU working. I recently posted an article to a Adobe (Premier Pro, iirc) forum talking about steps to disable the Intel CPU iGPU and only use the discrete AMD GPU in a Mac Tower system

This is Apple's fault. see other threads on how Apple has borked older Intel based Mac's and access to discrete GPU's for encode offload. Now, whether OBS Studio can work-around Apple's 'change(s)' is not something I have any insight into

Personally, I find using a 2nd machine for slides to overly complicate matters, add an multiple extra failure points, etc. I use a dual-monitor setup with one person running OBS Studio, Service Bulletin Slideshow, PTZ camera control (on monitor 2) and acting as Digital Usher on livestream preview browser window. This takes a bit of training, but is entirely doable for anyone (not tech expertise required) not easily flustered and capable of keeping multiple steps in their head... You would certainly reduce workload on your OBS Studio computer if it was running the slide show instead of NDI capture from another computer... but I recognize our slide show may be much simpler to operate that others setup... though if just advancing, I'd still be inclined to run slide show on same computer, and use a separate control device (ex wireless pointer control, Streamdeck type external macro button device, or similar to enable 2nd person to advance slides on OBS Studio computer, while leaving keyboard and mouse to OBS Studio operator)

Now, the following is well outside my area of expertise, so recognize I could be very wrong...

a 2020 i5 Quad Core MacBook Pro with 16gb RAM for a few years now. ....
I had it set to x264 for the encoder because that laptop doesn't include a built-in GPU.

I'm fairly certain that technically that isn't true. There may not be a 'discrete' GPU, but it does have the Intel iGPU, right? The Intel Iris Plus Graphics?
The issue/question is Apple accidentally or intentionally screwed up being able to use that effectively by 3rd-party apps.
Will going back to an earlier OS version fix the encoder offload problem you are having?