Question / Help OBS 25.0.8 on 2 different Macs unusable with Catalina 10.15.4

[MarkDeeks]

Am I the only OBS user who has for the last 48 hours had a nightmare with everything since the latest Mac and OBS updates?? It’s suddenly verging on unusable.

Video is glitchy to the point of going into slow mo on an iPhone as an input when trying to stream, a window capture is juddery visuals wise.

And the common theme is CPU showing in OBS as 25-32% but showing in Activity Monitor as 120-140% (although Activity Monitor will show overall CPU usage as only around 40%!)

Mac.
Good spec CPUs
2 different Macs. Same problem.
One has 40mb memory so it’s not that.
I’m literally only using:
1 or other iOS device for different angles
1 or 2 image captures
1 window capture.
That’s it.
I’ve tried changing the encoder to the Apple one.
I’ve tried lowering frame rate to 30 instead of 60.
I’ve tried reducing the canvas to 1280 instead of 1920.
The audio is only 160.
I’m no expert on this tech stuff but I’ve just got Ecamm live doing the steaming aspect of what I do in 10 minutes no problem.
But that can’t bring in the several inputs I need to create the content for my membership site like window capture and drag the cameras to the parts of the screen I need like I can with OBS.
I’m absolutely tearing my hair out.
Could anyone possibly help please?
Thank you

 

[Tangential]

How are you connecting to iPhone? What's in the window you are capturing? (I'm not a big believer in window capture on mac for OBS as a rule.) Are you also recording? If so are you using the stream encoder?

 

[MarkDeeks]

Thanks for the reply.

Both iPhone devices are physically connected by a USB connection.

Window capture is seemingly the only way I can show one window from an app I use for my tutorial videos unless you can suggest an alternative?

I am either recording OR streaming. In the last 48 hours I've had trouble with both on 2Macs. When I'm streaming it is literally JUST my iPhone as an iOS capture and nothing else.

I don't know what the stream encoder is unfortunately but I'm not doing anything different to what I've always done, other than the attempts listed in my post to try and improve the situation.

Everything seems to point towards the CPU issues I mention for it to be similar problems on 2 Macs, with both recording and streaming, both of which started since the latest update?

This is a long way from my specialist area so I'll do whatever I can to give the info needed to solve it. I'm just a stressed business owner with a lot of waiting customers. Thank you!

 

[MarkDeeks]

I've got the Apple hardware encoder selected for Recording and the Apple software encoder selected for streaming (although I tried the hardware one for that as well).

 

[Tangential]

I did some tests on my mid 2015 MBP to compare the discrepancies between OBS reported CPU and OS reported CPU. This is Catalina 10.15.4 and OBS 25.0.8.

The first test was streaming and recording to FB using a media source playing a video and using my MBP camera as a video source. My settings are for Facebook and I use the Hardware encoder for both streaming and recording.

I do a see some discrepancy between the amount of CPU that OBS reports vs what Catalina says. Top indicates 42% CPU vs 5.4% in OBS

Then I swapped out the media source with a window capture of Quicktime playing the same video and the CPU discrepancy was much more significant. Here top indicates 162% while OBS says 36%

Finally I replaced the window capture with display capture and the discrepancy was more that the media source but a lot less than the window capture.Here top says 98% while OBS says 12.9%. I do not understand the discrepancies but I don't do window captures in MacOS if I can avoid it.

 

[beyonder]

windows capture is just bad. Use display capture then tell it you can to focus on a a application. You have to crop some stuff of but in the end it is much smoother.

Look at the attached image. I used "Display Capture" then selected the opened firefox window

 

[Tangential]

As I said, I don't do window captures on macOS; I also crop display but the performance issue around window capture puzzles me.

I have no problem capturing a Quicktime window in Zoom and sharing it. When I do my CPU doesn't go crazy and the performance is acceptable. Why is it so darn bad in OBS?

 

[MarkDeeks]

Thank you both so much for getting involved and trying to help. I can certainly try the display capture versus window, but that doesn’t solve how I was totally unable to even get a steady picture from my iPhone and nothing else yesterday as the CPU went up and the picture went into slow motion! I tried 2 usb cables and my iPad as well. No other input device. SOMETHING is up with the update.

 

[beyonder]

Thank you both so much for getting involved and trying to help. I can certainly try the display capture versus window, but that doesn’t solve how I was totally unable to even get a steady picture from my iPhone and nothing else yesterday as the CPU went up and the picture went into slow motion! I tried 2 usb cables and my iPad as well. No other input device. SOMETHING is up with the update.

yes the higher cpu usage has been reported as a bug already https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/issues/2841

 

[Tangential]

yes the higher cpu usage has been reported as a bug already https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/issues/2841

Interesting thread. Seems like the performance issue doesn't impact everyone.

 

[YeNA]

I have same issue using latest Catalina & OBS on iMac 5k (i9-9900KF & discrete GPU)