OBS 30.1 and 30.1.1 VERY slow frame rate in video capture

[JimP]

OBS 30.1 and 30.1.1 have a VERY slow frame rate in video capture - about 6-7 fps when run in normal (i.e. restricted) user mode. However if I run in Admin mode it records smoothly at 30 fps. The previous version was fine, the problems have only appeared with the latest versions. I have two screens, running OBS on one screen, and capture the other full screen which is a resolution of 1280x800 (and capture 1280x720).

Whether I run OBS Studio in restricted user or Admin mode, Corel Video Studio X9 nor 2020 can edit the saved file - they crash on rendering. However I can use Prism to convert it to .wmv and edit that OK - a workaround, but far from ideal.

Can we have version 30.0 (or whatever the previous version was) back please.

Windows 10, Intel Core i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz 8 GB RAM x64. CPU usage of OBS Studio was <2% in capture, overall CPU use around 12%. AMD video converter.

I thought I'd posted this before, but cant find it. Maybe its waiting for approval.
Many thanks, Jim.

 

[JimP]

I meant to say "Whether I run OBS Studio in restricted user or Admin mode, NEITHER Corel Video Studio X9 nor 2020 can edit the saved file:" By the way, the capture rate was set to 30 fps in all cases.

 

[Tomasz Góral]

You can download other version from: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/releases

 

[Harold]

Please post a log with your issue! Here's how...

OBS Studio creates a log file each time you run it which contains very useful diagnostic information. Without a log file, it's much harder for any support volunteers to figure out problems and your post may be ignored. To upload a log file, go to the Help menu > Log Files > Upload Last Log...

obsproject.com

 

[JimP]

Latest log file attached. A few minutes of screen capture, Mediainfo says the frame rate is 7.7 fps. Thanks if you or anyone can help. As for not saving to mpt4, it looks as if I need to do some reading to find out why ... I've tried other options, but they dont seem to work for me.

Many thanks for your help, and for the link to the older versions.
Jim.

 

[JimP]

On the other hand, here is a log file where I ran it as an admin, and it captured OK. On a quick inspection, it starts to differ from the other one at line (on this one) 00:20:27.947 (though there may be a little bit before that, that I have missed, apart from Administrator=true/false).

 

[Harold]

Fragmented mp4 has shown to have a lot of compatibility issues (even more than matroska video)
Remuxing either recording using OBS' built in function in the file menu should allow your editor to read the files fine (and would be faster than any process you're doing that actually does re-encoding)

Display capture, more generally, is the worse capture type to use, and relying on windows' built in media players to have good media format support is unrealistic.

Check your existing recordings using VLC. Remux them to load them in an editor, and change the recording format to Matroska Video (MKV) for future recordings. Remuxing those if your editors don't support them.

 

[JimP]

Many thanks @Harold and others who replied ! The problem is now solved (partially at least, with a workaround). If I (1) run in Administrator mode, and (2) save to .mkv and then remux to get the .mp4 file. not only is the frame rate right, but I can later edit the .mp4 file in Corel VIdeo Studio.

Still not explained is why running in Restricted User mode gives errors in 30.1 but not earlier versions.

Also the necessity of saving as .mkv and then remuxing is not fully explained. I guess there's more going on "under the hood" than is obvious. I didnt do this before because it worked well without it. The only reason for doing this given on the OBS page is that if an .mp4 file is not closed properly, then the file will be unusable. I never had this problem,so I didn't see that I needed to do it. But clearly more is happening that I didn't know about. Also, I didn't save to .mkv earlier because I wasnt able to edit it, but I didnt know about remuxing to .mp4 in the program.

As for screen capture, I only use it as a last resort, to save videos that I cant save any other way.

Many thanks for your help,
Jim.

 

[JimP]

@Tomasz Góral - I can only see a link to download the latest release (30.1.1) not earlier ones. All I see on that (and other pages) is a description of earlier releases, but no links to download. Are the older releases actually available, do you know?
Thanks,
Jim

 

[Tomasz Góral]

@Tomasz Góral - I can only see a link to download the latest release (30.1.1) not earlier ones. All I see on that (and other pages) is a description of earlier releases, but no links to download. Are the older releases actually available, do you know?
Thanks,
Jim

Click on text 'Assets' to show files. Every old version is hidden.

 

[koala]

Also the necessity of saving as .mkv and then remuxing is not fully explained.

mp4 and mkv is the video container format. It's not how video data is encoded, but it's the file format how the encoded data is organized within the file. The mkv container has superior features. It's robust to damage and truncation, and it's possible to store data encoded by a large variety of encoders. The mp4 container format is supported by more editors. However, the whole file is lost if recording cannot be gracefully finished. And it supports less encoders.
So choose mkv if your editor and player supports it. No reason to not use mkv, if your tools are able to use it.

OBS is also able to create 2 different variants of the mp4 format. One is called "fragmented mp4". This format is robust against truncation, so files are not lost if they cannot be gracefully finished. However, this special format is not very well supported by tools. It works in general, but it has tiny flaws. Some tools are unable to show the video length, and there seem other issues, so it's guesswork if this is the better format than the original mp4.

Remuxing is creating a new video file with a different container format, and copying the encoded video and audio data into that new format. The data isn't changed, it's only the envelope that is created new. It's a lossless conversion.
This way you can convert mkv to mp4 and vice versa, and you can convert fragmented mp4 into regular mp4.

The quality is exactly the same, because the encoded data is copied verbatim, not extracted and encoded ("recoding") again. After remuxing, the video is exactly the same video as before, just stored in a different format. Due to this copying and not recoding, remuxing is as fast as just copying a file, while recoding is slow.

 

[JimP]

Many thanks to both of you for your help, and for your detailed explanation. I've now found the 30.0 version and will use that instead.
Many thanks, Jim.

 

[JimP]

And it works fine.