My recordings sometimes turn out "choppy"

DubskiDude

New Member
It seems like it only happens during the last third of the recording. Is it because the recording size becomes too much at that point?
 

WoW.Rambler

New Member
It seems like it only happens during the last third of the recording. Is it because the recording size becomes too much at that point?

Which is?
This theory sounds kinda voodoo-ish to me.

The bug won't know how long your video is going to be at the moment of recording. Or do you have a constant length, bit rate and the rest of factors? Filesize should not be an issue here unless you have a very weird caching/almost full SSD, FS other than NTFS, etc. Simply, an unreliable storage.

I did an experiment myself which for now looks quite OK. I've changed in game settings to no-frame-cap, no-v-sync, no-triple-buffering. Then I enabled/override v-sync and "Low latency mode" in nVidia control panel. Of course this approach has all v-sync disadvantages and recordings will probably look not so good when FPS < v-sync value.
 

DubskiDude

New Member
Which is?
This theory sounds kinda voodoo-ish to me.

The bug won't know how long your video is going to be at the moment of recording. Or do you have a constant length, bit rate and the rest of factors? Filesize should not be an issue here unless you have a very weird caching/almost full SSD, FS other than NTFS, etc. Simply, an unreliable storage.

I did an experiment myself which for now looks quite OK. I've changed in game settings to no-frame-cap, no-v-sync, no-triple-buffering. Then I enabled/override v-sync and "Low latency mode" in nVidia control panel. Of course this approach has all v-sync disadvantages and recordings will probably look not so good when FPS < v-sync value.

I mean... I don't know shit about OBS so I'm just throwing out theories until someone with the know how has a solution ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Deullcore

Member
Well i for 1 have been trying for over 1 year now to get ot the bottom of this niggle even upgraded full hardware from INTEL to AMD and still same problem exists
 

fatmatrow

Member
Well i for 1 have been trying for over 1 year now to get ot the bottom of this niggle even upgraded full hardware from INTEL to AMD and still same problem exists
I just replaced my cpu and mobo to a 3700x with a x570 Tuf Gaming Plus, If i drop another 500 on a new gpu and it still persists, IDK what to do at that point. I guess I'll have to just build a second pc with my old parts and do a capture card setup
 

Deullcore

Member
just to mention i only have 60hz monitor and im running constant 60 fps but when i get a drop its like dropping to 30 fps for 10 15 seconds then it foes back to perfect 60 for long enough again and as i said in posts above ive went from a complete Intel system to ah complete Amd system also changed video cards and still persisten problem , yet if i use mirillis asction its perfect start to finish qaulity aint as good tho so its definetly not hardware related it can only be OBS
 

DubskiDude

New Member
I was fiddling with settings and I set the CQ level to 20 and Max B-Frames to 1 and so far the recording is very smooth. I've also been watching my recordings with Windows Media Player because for some reason VLC makes it look choppy too - one section of the video that was choppy looks smooth in WMP, which is odd.

Regardless, I really hope the devs are paying attention to what folks are saying here.
 
I have learned that Windows 10 20H2's power management is forcing the GPU to lower the voltages. I believe that these power management updates were introduced in Windows 8. I use a HP z620 Workstation, 64 GB of ECC memory, 12 Core Xeon and two NVIDIA Quadro GPUs (SLi). No matter how powerful the system is, Windows 10 20H2 will lower the GPU's voltages even if the power policy is set to High Performance or NVIDIA's Prefer Maximum Performance, whether gaming or recording.

After about 10 minutes into recording, the frames will drop, stuttering will happen during recording. I would toggle the Buffering setting and it would stop, but after 5 minutes, the drops and stuttering would happen again.

What I have done to correct this issue was to use MSI Afterburner from Guru3D's site. It can operate at either the user mode or kernel mode to override the OS's control over voltages. I did not change any voltages or use any overclocking. Below is a pic from my Alienware Alpha and are the settings that I use to fix the constant dip in voltages on my HP.

1620187006509.png



Per the "Force Constant Voltage" setting to paraphrase: This setting disables dynamic voltage switching, which is what I believe is occurring in Windows.
 

fatmatrow

Member
I have learned that Windows 10 20H2's power management is forcing the GPU to lower the voltages. I believe that these power management updates were introduced in Windows 8. I use a HP z620 Workstation, 64 GB of ECC memory, 12 Core Xeon and two NVIDIA Quadro GPUs (SLi). No matter how powerful the system is, Windows 10 20H2 will lower the GPU's voltages even if the power policy is set to High Performance or NVIDIA's Prefer Maximum Performance, whether gaming or recording.

After about 10 minutes into recording, the frames will drop, stuttering will happen during recording. I would toggle the Buffering setting and it would stop, but after 5 minutes, the drops and stuttering would happen again.

What I have done to correct this issue was to use MSI Afterburner from Guru3D's site. It can operate at either the user mode or kernel mode to override the OS's control over voltages. I did not change any voltages or use any overclocking. Below is a pic from my Alienware Alpha and are the settings that I use to fix the constant dip in voltages on my HP.

1620187006509.png



Per the "Force Constant Voltage" setting to paraphrase: This setting disables dynamic voltage switching, which is what I believe is occurring in Windows.
I've monitored my power while gaming and streaming'/recording and without a game running and if it dropped the voltages, wouldn't the clocks drop too?
 
I've monitored my power while gaming and streaming'/recording and without a game running and if it dropped the voltages, wouldn't the clocks drop too?

Yes, as it returns to idle and it is supposed to. But this is a power management issue and it affects the GPU's voltages. It's like driving at 30 MPH and you set the cruise control, so the car dynamically speeds up to maintain 30 MPH, then slows down, then speeds up again.
 

Sinadrin

New Member
Yes, as it returns to idle and it is supposed to. But this is a power management issue and it affects the GPU's voltages. It's like driving at 30 MPH and you set the cruise control, so the car dynamically speeds up to maintain 30 MPH, then slows down, then speeds up again.

Why should it be from the GPU voltage?

I have two PCs one to play and the other to transmit, these are connected with a Live Gamer 4K - GC573 and my Passthrough of the capture card is connected to my game monitor and didn't have any any frame drops. The dropped frames only happens when I capture or record through OBS Studio.

If it was something from the GPU voltage, I would have frame drop on the passthrough to my monitor.

I do not know, it is my opinion.

I used the Avermedia RECentral 4 software and I never had any frame loss, it only happened with the OBS.
 
Why should it be from the GPU voltage?

I have two PCs one to play and the other to transmit, these are connected with a Live Gamer 4K - GC573 and my Passthrough of the capture card is connected to my game monitor and didn't have any any frame drops. The dropped frames only happens when I capture or record through OBS Studio.

If it was something from the GPU voltage, I would have frame drop on the passthrough to my monitor.

I do not know, it is my opinion.

I used the Avermedia RECentral 4 software and I never had any frame loss, it only happened with the OBS.

Windows 10's power management overriding what the driver developer's programmed is what I found as it depends on the hardware's voltage regulators. Again, something I learned about Windows 10.

The GPU produces a picture and, depending on the number of bits, will raise or lower it's power per watt. The more work, the more power needed, unless I constrain that work to save power. Your GPU on the second computer is still working to produce this picture on output, which is what everyone is experiencing in OBS..choppy video after about 10 minutes.

Then it depends on your GPU. For the most part, the RTX fixed the shader cache issue whereas the Pascal GPU's did not, so they don't experience these slow downs. That may not even be the case if the power management is not enforced by the WHQL driver. Hence, you need something to force constant voltage or disable the dynamic voltage that Win 10 adaptively enforces.
 

Sinadrin

New Member
Windows 10's power management overriding what the driver developer's programmed is what I found as it depends on the hardware's voltage regulators. Again, something I learned about Windows 10.

The GPU produces a picture and, depending on the number of bits, will raise or lower it's power per watt. The more work, the more power needed, unless I constrain that work to save power. Your GPU on the second computer is still working to produce this picture on output, which is what everyone is experiencing in OBS..choppy video after about 10 minutes.

Then it depends on your GPU. For the most part, the RTX fixed the shader cache issue whereas the Pascal GPU's did not, so they don't experience these slow downs. That may not even be the case if the power management is not enforced by the WHQL driver. Hence, you need something to force constant voltage or disable the dynamic voltage that Win 10 adaptively enforces.

@Erick Smith
Hello, could you confirm if the stutter disappears when activating the constant voltage?
Thx!
 

BK-Morpheus

Active Member
In my journey with this random recording/streaming stutter (without showing any skipped/lagged frames in the encoding or rendering section of the log), I already tested a forced Powerstate on my GPU and it did not help with the random stutter.

Since someone recently posted in some threads here that the current Streamlabs OBS version has fixed that issue for him (or that is not occuring with the newest SLOBS version), I installed and tested it.

So far it really seems, that with SLOBS the occasionally minute of stutter-recording is gone or at least almost not noticable.
Sure, when I raid with 39 other people in WOW Classic, the ingame framerate sometimes dips under 60 and I don't really notice it during gameplay (because of Freesync), but in the recording those moments show some stutter. This is totally normal/to be expected...as soon as the ingame fps is not the same as the recording fps (even if ingame framerate is higher) there will be some stutter in the recording (since Videoplayback software is not using Freesyng/Gsync, you will see those fps fluctuations).

But since years (with totally different hardware components and OS installs) with OBS there are always some moments in the recording or stream where some stutter occurs (that looks like a mismatch of ingame frametime and recorded frametime) and this often lasts for 1-2 minutes (usually the stutter then goes away and kicks back in later).
Even with Vsync (or RTSS fps limiter) and constant 60fps ingame it occurs.

Often this kind of framerate mismatch is fixed as soon as I tab out to windows and back into the game, but even without changing focus the random stutter goes away after a while.
This behavior seems to be much better with the actual version of SLOBS, but I only did 2-3 recordings and I did not watch the whole recording yet (I only watched some passages), so it may be to early to call it "fixed" in SLOBS.
 

Kraezy

Member
TLDR: 2 pc setup
Issue resolved for me by running OBS Studio on Gaming PC, Streamlabs OBS on Streaming PC + disabling MsMpEng.exe from running in background.

So currently I have a 2 PC stream setup through NDI
Gaming PC (specs in sig) running at 120hz using OBS Studio
Streaming PC (i7-4770k + 750ti) running on a 60hz monitor using Streamlabs
I reset both NVCP global profiles to default then turned off Gsync on Gaming Monitor.
Set Gaming monitor to Vsync On
Streaming PC is set to default in NVCP
Ran the Regfile on both pc's to disable Windows Defender and ultimately stop MsMpEng.Exe from constantly running.

-------------------------------​


Believe me this is an issue which I and many others have been working on for a number of years. @BK-Morpheus being one of the main researchers here.

I've gone through several different PC builds, components, monitors (Various refresh rates, exact models, exact refresh rates forced via CRU), variations of OBS class, studio, tested on Xsplit, Shadowplay, Action!
trying all the bios fixes, windows fixes, using capture cards, using NDI
2 PC, Single PC setup
Various revisions of Windows 10

I eventually got to a point where I gave up with it.

Was only till last week in fact, I could see various friends that stream having zero issues with their streams or the "slow down" effect. Obviously lots of a variables at play here but the only denominator that I hadn't tried was Streamlabs OBS. Reasoning being when I first started streaming, Streamlabs OBS didn't seem the obvious choice due to require more CPU resources to run then OBS Classic and back then OBS ran fine on older version of Windows (7)

Anyhow, installed Streamlabs and for the most part the preview was buttery smooth but every now and then I'd get the slowdown for a few secs and then it'd go back to normal but it wasn't happening at the scale OBS Studio was. THIS was what I've been trying to fix for almost 2 years, so you can imagine how frustrated I was. I then reviewed the footage and it hadn't transferred to to the recording, whereas when testing on OBS Studio it HAD transferred to the end footage (recording or stream).

Ran a test stream, again , slow down effect came into play in the preview screen but NOT in the stream.
At last, I mean I couldn't care less if the preview screen was slowing down' due to a desync somewhere, as long as it didn't translate into the end product.

I stumbled across an optimisation video for Windows 10, which stated that Windows Defender has an impact on performance when gaming due to a process that would actively scan files in use. The video showed how to DISABLE Windows Defender completely via reg. file.

Why would you want to disable windows defender?
If you check your processes whilst running almost anything on windows 10. Windows defender runs MsMpENG.exe when ever you open/access any file on your system, especially any file or resource that runs through your firewall to the outside world, it'll scan the files to ensure they're safe. You'll notice it activating the scan ALOT when playing online MP games.

Some say whitelisting games in your Windows Defender firewall does the same thing, it doesn't.
Some say Disabling Windows defender in the Windows 10 security settings, disables MsMpEng.exe, it doesn't.
Some say adding the program/folder to the Exploit Protection settings Windows 10 does this, it doesn't. (but did help with a lot of ingame stuttering in some games)
The scan will still activate and run even after doing the above 3.


This is the only fix that has stopped MsMpEng.exe from running. Which I implemented on both PC's.

It may be a myriad of a few things that helped but after doing this I no longer receive any slow down effect, or not that I've seen are noticeable in the preview window, in either preview window (OBS Studio on gaming PC) or Streamlabs OBS (on streaming PC).

The main point being at least, this is no longer transferring to the end product, either recording or stream.
 
Last edited:

fatmatrow

Member
TLDR: 2 pc setup
Issue resolved for me by running OBS Studio on Gaming PC, Streamlabs OBS on Streaming PC + disabling MsMpEng.exe from running in background.

So currently I have a 2 PC stream setup through NDI
Gaming PC (specs in sig) running at 120hz using OBS Studio
Streaming PC (i7-4770k + 750ti) running on a 60hz monitor using Streamlabs
I reset both NVCP global profiles to default then turned off Gsync on Gaming Monitor.
Set Gaming monitor to Vsync On
Streaming PC is set to default in NVCP
Ran the Regfile on both pc's to disable Windows Defender and ultimately stop MsMpEng.Exe from constantly running.

-------------------------------​


Believe me this is an issue which I and many others have been working on for a number of years. @BK-Morpheus being one of the main researchers here.

I've gone through several different PC builds, components, monitors (Various refresh rates, exact models, exact refresh rates forced via CRU), variations of OBS class, studio, tested on Xsplit, Shadowplay, Action!
trying all the bios fixes, windows fixes, using capture cards, using NDI
2 PC, Single PC setup
Various revisions of Windows 10

I eventually got to a point where I gave up with it.

Was only till last week in fact, I could see various friends that stream having zero issues with their streams or the "slow down" effect. Obviously lots of a variables at play here but the only denominator that I hadn't tried was Streamlabs OBS. Reasoning being when I first started streaming, Streamlabs OBS didn't seem the obvious choice due to require more CPU resources to run then OBS Classic and back then OBS ran fine on older version of Windows (7)

Anyhow, installed Streamlabs and for the most part the preview was buttery smooth but every now and then I'd get the slowdown for a few secs and then it'd go back to normal but it wasn't happening at the scale OBS Studio was. THIS was what I've been trying to fix for almost 2 years, so you can imagine how frustrated I was. I then reviewed the footage and it hadn't transferred to to the recording, whereas when testing on OBS Studio it HAD transferred to the end footage (recording or stream).

Ran a test stream, again , slow down effect came into play in the preview screen but NOT in the stream.
At last, I mean I couldn't care less if the preview screen was slowing down' due to a desync somewhere, as long as it didn't translate into the end product.

I stumbled across an optimisation video for Windows 10, which stated that Windows Defender has an impact on performance when gaming due to a process that would actively scan files in use. The video showed how to DISABLE Windows Defender completely via reg. file.

Why would you want to disable windows defender?
If you check your processes whilst running almost anything on windows 10. Windows defender runs MsMpENG.exe when ever you open/access any file on your system, especially any file or resource that runs through your firewall to the outside world, it'll scan the files to ensure they're safe. You'll notice it activating the scan ALOT when playing online MP games.

Some say whitelisting games in your Windows Defender firewall does the same thing, it doesn't.
Some say Disabling Windows defender in the Windows 10 security settings, disables MsMpEng.exe, it doesn't.
Some say adding the program/folder to the Exploit Protection settings Windows 10 does this, it doesn't. (but did help with a lot of ingame stuttering in some games)
The scan will still activate and run even after doing the above 3.


This is the only fix that has stopped MsMpEng.exe from running. Which I implemented on both PC's.

It may be a myriad of a few things that helped but after doing this I no longer receive any slow down effect, or not that I've seen are noticeable in the preview window, in either preview window (OBS Studio on gaming PC) or Streamlabs OBS (on streaming PC).

The main point being at least, this is no longer transferring to the end product, either recording or stream.
This doesn't fix it for me, I've run scripts that disable all telemetry in windows 10, removes defender etc. Still had the stutter
 
Top