Question / Help New low bitrates are leading to disconnect and crash

[Chingas]

I'll try not to repeat information that is in the Log and Crash Report.

Essentially it goes like this. I stream for between an hour to two every night.
Up until about a month or two ago there were only a few issues here and there.
The main issue now is that the Bitrate will be relatively low (under 1000) with swings into the 12,000 zone when zoom in and out of the browser window I am using as a source.
After a little while the bitrates will drop, the green box turns to red, I'll get 2-6 frames missed due to rendering lag, bitrate will go to 0 and I will either recover quickly or get disconnected. I do not always crash OBS upon disconnecting but a majority of the time OBS will crash.

We can see how this becomes an issue.

Strangely enough I can go days without Bitrate dropping all the way to zero and be able to save the stream but it's happening more frequently now.

The second Log File is a perfect example of just letting it run and about 5-6 minutes in, the bitrate will go to 0 and then bounce back and forth.

Most of the issues I saw that were similar in the forum were all due to Catalina and I am not running Catalina and already have the latest stable version of OBS. In fact, I feel like the issues happened either right before or right after the latest update which I will admit, I did not download and install immediately. I likely waited a month like I do with almost all updates to any software when things are good.

Log File 3 was again another quick 4 minute run just now while I was writing this. Turning the Beta (variable bitrate) off.
In this Log, the stream did Disconnect but was able to reconnect without crashing OBS and continuing the stream. I would imagine the viewers likely saw a frozen or buffering shot.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much for your time and effort.


I have tried:
Calling my ISP and troubleshooting my Network
Changing from Hardware to Software Encoders (Apple)
Changing the (beta) variable bitrate
Changing custom server to YouTUBE server
Reset Modem, Router and computer multiple times
Speed Tests from Spectrum and Speedtest sites
Testing Blizz and Zoom for dropouts during stream sessions - (all was good)
Adding a delay to help ease the stress
Deleting all scenes to help free some resources
Limiting bitrate to 2000
Changing keyframe Interval to 2
Changing profile to None from Baseline
Automatic Reconnect to 5s


Log File:
https://obsproject.com/logs/GmuuDBOs8G5CQm2L

Log File 2:
https://obsproject.com/logs/o1fU_ESSg3710VpR

Log File 3:
https://obsproject.com/logs/2VA0o9Q_JoCdo7fH


Process: obs [1433]
Path: /Applications/OBS.app/Contents/MacOS/obs
Identifier: com.obsproject.obs-studio
Version: 24.0.6 (24.0.6)
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: ??? [1]
Responsible: obs [1433]
User ID: 501

Date/Time: 2020-01-07 23:23:52.532 -0500
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.13.6 (17G10021)
Report Version: 12
Bridge OS Version: 3.0 (14Y901)
Anonymous UUID: 71DF5CAB-3ED1-5DD1-051C-97F7601E91D4


Time Awake Since Boot: 3100 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread: 12 rtmp-stream: send_thread

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000008
Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal: Segmentation fault: 11
Termination Reason: Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0xb
Terminating Process: exc handler [0]

VM Regions Near 0x8:
-->
Kernel Alloc Once 0000000000e85000-0000000000e87000 [ 8K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV



Thread 11:
0 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff62f69bdc start_wqthread + 0
1 ??? 0x0000000540585043 0 + 22554366019

Thread 12 Crashed:: rtmp-stream: send_thread
0 com.apple.VideoToolbox 0x00007fff474bdd45 VTCompressionSessionSetProperty + 241
1 mac-vth264.so 0x00000000084b36b8 session_set_bitrate + 88
2 mac-vth264.so 0x00000000084b30c9 vt_h264_update + 73
3 libobs.0.dylib 0x00000001036b3782 obs_encoder_update + 50
4 obs-outputs.so 0x0000000010c12889 send_thread + 2329
5 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff62f6a661 _pthread_body + 340
6 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff62f6a50d _pthread_start + 377
7 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff62f69bf9 thread_start + 13



Thread 12 crashed with X86 Thread State (64-bit):
rax: 0x0000000000000000 rbx: 0x0000000000000000 rcx: 0x0000000000094f09 rdx: 0x0000000000094f08
rdi: 0x0000000000000000 rsi: 0x0000000000000008 rbp: 0x000070000ce32d00 rsp: 0x000070000ce32ca0
r8: 0x00007fff94f229d0 r9: 0x0000000000000000 r10: 0x000007fecb5002ce r11: 0x000000000000001e
r12: 0x00007fff967ea438 r13: 0x00007fff967ea438 r14: 0x000000002625a027 r15: 0x00007fecbc6212f0
rip: 0x00007fff474bdd45 rfl: 0x0000000000010246 cr2: 0x0000000000000008

Logical CPU: 1
Error Code: 0x00000004
Trap Number: 14



External Modification Summary:
Calls made by other processes targeting this process:
task_for_pid: 1
thread_create: 0
thread_set_state: 0
Calls made by this process:
task_for_pid: 0
thread_create: 0
thread_set_state: 0
Calls made by all processes on this machine:
task_for_pid: 3295
thread_create: 0
thread_set_state: 0

VM Region Summary:
ReadOnly portion of Libraries: Total=647.7M resident=0K(0%) swapped_out_or_unallocated=647.7M(100%)
Writable regions: Total=449.7M written=0K(0%) resident=0K(0%) swapped_out=0K(0%) unallocated=449.7M(100%)

VIRTUAL REGION
REGION TYPE SIZE COUNT (non-coalesced)
=========== ======= =======
Accelerate framework 256K 3
Activity Tracing 256K 2
CG backing stores 23.4M 9
CG image 412K 12
CoreAnimation 176K 10
CoreGraphics 8K 2
CoreImage 32K 5
CoreServices 100K 2
CoreUI image data 2644K 19
CoreUI image file 188K 4
Foundation 4K 2
Kernel Alloc Once 8K 2
MALLOC 376.1M 77
MALLOC guard page 48K 12
Memory Tag 242 12K 2
OpenGL GLSL 256K 4
PROTECTED_MEMORY 4K 2
STACK GUARD 56.1M 17
Stack 15.6M 18
VM_ALLOCATE 18.7M 36
VM_ALLOCATE (reserved) 104K 3 reserved VM address space (unallocated)
__DATA 56.6M 402
__FONT_DATA 4K 2
__GLSLBUILTINS 2588K 2
__LINKEDIT 210.3M 85
__TEXT 437.4M 388
__UNICODE 560K 2
mapped file 410.2M 73
shared memory 756K 16
=========== ======= =======
TOTAL 1.6G 1184
TOTAL, minus reserved VM space 1.6G 1184

Model: MacBookPro14,3, BootROM 203.0.0.0.0, 4 processors, Intel Core i7, 2.9 GHz, 16 GB, SMC 2.45f0
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 630, Intel HD Graphics 630, Built-In
Graphics: Radeon Pro 560, Radeon Pro 560, PCIe
Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 8 GB, LPDDR3, 2133 MHz, 0x802C, 0x4D5435324C31473332443450472D30393320
Memory Module: BANK 1/DIMM0, 8 GB, LPDDR3, 2133 MHz, 0x802C, 0x4D5435324C31473332443450472D30393320
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x173), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (7.77.37.33.1a1)
Bluetooth: Version 6.0.7f16, 3 services, 27 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: AX88179 USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet, Ethernet, en7

 

[Narcogen]

24.0.6 was a build specifically made to address problems in Catalina. If you have problems with this build that you didnt have with 24.0.5 or even 24.0.3 I would at least consider using one old version as a test. You may want to check the changelog for 24.0.5 and see if it fixed any other issues that you may have been experiencing; if not, downgrade to either .5 or .3, at least to test.

https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/releases

There are lots of good reasons to NOT upgrade a Mac beyond 10.13, especially if OBS is mission critical for you.

Your logfiles:

23:23:34.542: [rtmp stream: 'adv_stream'] bitrate decreased to: 500

This line indicates you're having severe network issues, as the automatic bitrate mode has dropped your bitrate to 500. This is the only clear issue I see in the logfiles.

I'm not clear on the connection between the connection throttling and the crash, which definitely seems to be VideoToolbox related. Has it ever occurred when using CPU x264 encoding?

 

[Narcogen]

Followup question:

Does it crash if you turn dynamic bitrate off?

I'm wondering if something odd is happening, like that setting telling the encoder the available bitrate is zero, and the encoder crashing because it can't possibly do that.

 

[Chingas]

Hello and thank you so much for reading.
Yes it does. I believe Log 2 is a crash with Dynamic on and Log 3 is with it off.

Crashes either way.

Just finished 2 hours of diagnostics with the ISP tech.
Internet and everything on this end is as good as it gets, which is great.

 

[Chingas]

I forget to answer your question about x264.
It has been awhile since I've used x264 as an encoder option because I had a host of other issues while using it.
I do not believe I have used it since the last update.

I quickly moved to hardware encoder, then to software and then back to hardware and it seemed to get the most consistent results.

 

[Chingas]

I downgraded to .2 because I couldn't find a .3 for Mac - No change
I then tried .5 and again, no change