Question / Help OBS CPU Spikes

[DJS]

Hello,

I've been using OBS for about a month now and for the most part, everything has been fine however for a couple of games (Dirty Bomb and PlanetSide 2) I will all of a sudden drop to 10-20 frames for a few seconds making the game completely unplayable.

I was monitoring my CPU usage during the stream and it would appear OBS is causing the problem.

The part in red is where the game becomes unplayable. Other than that I get a pretty consistent framerate.

My specs are as follows,

CPU: AMD FX8350 4Ghz
GPU: 2x Radeon R9 280X
RAM: G.Skill 16GB

And find attached the log file below.

Thanks.

 

[DJS]

Bump from page 4

 

[dping]

Hello,

I've been using OBS for about a month now and for the most part, everything has been fine however for a couple of games (Dirty Bomb and PlanetSide 2) I will all of a sudden drop to 10-20 frames for a few seconds making the game completely unplayable.

I was monitoring my CPU usage during the stream and it would appear OBS is causing the problem.

The part in red is where the game becomes unplayable. Other than that I get a pretty consistent framerate.

My specs are as follows,

CPU: AMD FX8350 4Ghz
GPU: 2x Radeon R9 280X
RAM: G.Skill 16GB

And find attached the log file below.

Thanks.

Those spikes can often mean that the encoder is getting a lot of movement or a major change in scenery
Enable Aero - this will help a lot when using either game or window capture as OBS takes advantage of Aero's acceleration.
Set scene buffering to 700ms - this is mainly for audio video sync but is kind of the new standard which buffers the scenes so everything will be smoother.

18:29:47: Using graphics capture
18:29:47: Using graphics capture
18:29:47: Using Window Capture

I would remove any non-active captures in your scene that aren't being used. If this is another game, make another scene for it.

18:51:07: Total frames encoded: 38403, total frames duplicated: 743 (1.93%)
18:51:07: Total frames rendered: 37956, number of late frames: 391 (1.03%)

you want to keep late and duplciate frames at a minimum. I would recommend streaming over a wired connection as this can introduce extra latency, out of order packets and generally a bad Idea to stream over wireless

 

[DJS]

Those spikes can often mean that the encoder is getting a lot of movement or a major change in scenery
Enable Aero - this will help a lot when using either game or window capture as OBS takes advantage of Aero's acceleration.
Set scene buffering to 700ms - this is mainly for audio video sync but is kind of the new standard which buffers the scenes so everything will be smoother.

I have since enabled Aero because originally i got the idea that it was in everyone's best interest to disable it to maximise performance... But haven't tested it yet. I'll try changing the scene buffering too.

18:29:47: Using graphics capture
18:29:47: Using graphics capture
18:29:47: Using Window Capture

I would remove any non-active captures in your scene that aren't being used. If this is another game, make another scene for it.

I didn't realise that leaving inactive scenes enabled would affect performance, I guess that makes sense :D. One of them might be TwitchAlerts but other than that, I don't have any overlays or that.

18:51:07: Total frames encoded: 38403, total frames duplicated: 743 (1.93%)
18:51:07: Total frames rendered: 37956, number of late frames: 391 (1.03%)

you want to keep late and duplicate frames at a minimum. I would recommend streaming over a wired connection as this can introduce extra latency, out of order packets and generally a bad Idea to stream over wireless

Alas, as much as I'd like to use a wired connection, it's not possible in my current setup but the wireless connection is relatively trouble free.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[dping]

I have since enabled Aero because originally i got the idea that it was in everyone's best interest to disable it to maximise performance... But haven't tested it yet. I'll try changing the scene buffering too.

I didn't realise that leaving inactive scenes enabled would affect performance, I guess that makes sense :D. One of them might be TwitchAlerts but other than that, I don't have any overlays or that.


Alas, as much as I'd like to use a wired connection, it's not possible in my current setup but the wireless connection is relatively trouble free.

Thanks for your reply.

If you want to rule out the wireless connection, do a local recording for 5 minutes (no streaming) and post that log. then do another log with only streaming.

And ofcourse, do both with Aero and the increased scene buffering.

 

[DJS]

Everything seemed to be running fine. I just decided to stream.