OBS didn't save my entire recording

[Youk]

Hey there! I just recorded a session of a game me and 2 others played. IIRC I recorded for around 1 hour and 53 minutes. But OBS only saved 1 hour and 36 minutes of it. So around 15 minutes of the video is missing which is quite disappointing because it was the funniest part of the entire video. Could anyone look into it?

(I hope I got the correct log file btw, this looked like the correct one haha)

 

[prgmitchell]

You'd want to also upload 2025-08-06 20-04-53.mkv

 

[Youk]

Oh I'm sorry, the file is 10,7 GB of size, I can't upload it... If perhaps there's another way to send it?

 

[prgmitchell]

I figured that, typically you'd want to upload to something like google drive. I only mention it because the log shows the recording went on for 1h53m.

 

[Youk]

Does uploading to YouTube work for you too? I'll just unlist it and send the link here.

 

[Youk]

NVM, I got it to work on Drive. Gimme a bit.

 

[Youk]

Here ya go!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1msNd4Z9Mkm0T6VvQzeezOnXHZe_rnu7G/view?usp=drive_link

The vid is still processing, will likely take some time. Anyway thanks for the help so far. Really appreciate it!

 

[prgmitchell]

You need to change the permissions so anyone with the link can view it.

 

[Youk]

Apologies, forgot to turn that on haha. Did that just now.

 

[prgmitchell]

Definitely weird, not seeing why although I do see what

21:57:42.586: Output 'simple_file_output': Total frames output: 346670
21:57:42.586: Output 'simple_file_output': Total drawn frames: 401402 (406141 attempted)

 

[Youk]

That was something that catched my eyes too. I did get a calculator and found out that 346670 frames was equal to 1 hour 36 minutes and 17 seconds but I wonder what happened with those other frames after it

 

[qhobbes]

Your log shows 1.2% of rendering lag and encoder overload. Both of these are caused by GPU overload.
1. The Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling ("HAGS") feature in Windows is currently known to cause performance and capture issues with OBS, games and overlay tools. It's an experimental feature and we recommend disabling it via these instructions.
2. Run OBS as Admin.
3. Display and Game Capture Sources interfere with each other. NEVER put them in the same scene (Scene).
4. Multiple Game Capture sources (7) are usually not needed, and can sometimes interfere with each other. You can use the same Game Capture for all your games. If you change games often, try out the hotkey mode, which lets you press a key to select your active game. If you play games in fullscreen, use 'Capture any fullscreen application' mode.
5. Running a game without vertical sync or a frame rate limiter will frequently cause performance issues with OBS because your GPU will be maxed out. OBS requires a little GPU to render your scene. Enable V/G-sync or set a reasonable frame rate limit (144, 120, 60) that your GPU can handle without hitting 100% usage. If that's not enough you may also need to turn down some of the video quality options in the game.

If still having issues, see the GPU Overload Guide. If still having issues, use the log analyzer. If still having issues, post link to log analyzer page.

 

[prgmitchell]

Your log shows 1.2% of rendering lag and encoder overload. Both of these are caused by GPU overload.
1. The Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling ("HAGS") feature in Windows is currently known to cause performance and capture issues with OBS, games and overlay tools. It's an experimental feature and we recommend disabling it via these instructions.
2. Run OBS as Admin.
3. Display and Game Capture Sources interfere with each other. NEVER put them in the same scene (Scene).
4. Multiple Game Capture sources (7) are usually not needed, and can sometimes interfere with each other. You can use the same Game Capture for all your games. If you change games often, try out the hotkey mode, which lets you press a key to select your active game. If you play games in fullscreen, use 'Capture any fullscreen application' mode.
5. Running a game without vertical sync or a frame rate limiter will frequently cause performance issues with OBS because your GPU will be maxed out. OBS requires a little GPU to render your scene. Enable V/G-sync or set a reasonable frame rate limit (144, 120, 60) that your GPU can handle without hitting 100% usage. If that's not enough you may also need to turn down some of the video quality options in the game.

If still having issues, see the GPU Overload Guide. If still having issues, use the log analyzer. If still having issues, post link to log analyzer page.

sure, it seemed like they were capable of reading the analyzer for themselves but the 1.2% does not explain nearly 60k missing frames from the final video.

still waiting on a response from some others to see if anyone has a clue what may cause this.

 

[Suslik V]

21:57:42.586: Output 'simple_file_output': Total frames output: 346670
21:57:42.586: Output 'simple_file_output': Total drawn frames: 401402 (406141 attempted)
21:57:42.586: Output 'simple_file_output': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 4739 (1.2%)
21:57:42.587: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 4172/347700 (1.2%)

Total number of frames that reached output is "346670" and "0" was dropped. Sometimes, due to connection issues already encoded "B" and "P" frames may be dropped, but this is not the case. This is final, encoded frames.
Thus, "346670" frames at 60 fps is 5777.8333(3) sec or 01:36:17.833 of footage saved to the disk (it terms of OBS was "send to output" as encoded frames) without issues.

Not all drawn (rendered by OBS) frames reaches output, this may be caused by slow rendering or busy encoder (for example, encoder buffer is full - there is no place for new frames).

If render is so slow that you can't even render the frame during given interval (1/fps) then the frame is stalled. This is shown in: "401402 (406141 attempted)" where 406141 - 401402 = 4739 frames that rendered slower than the 0.01666(6) sec (1/60) interval. During this session OBS was configured to produce 60 fps footage.

Recording session duration:

20:04:53.573: [ffmpeg muxer: 'simple_file_output'] Writing file 'C:/Users...
...
21:57:42.586: [ffmpeg muxer: 'simple_file_output'] Output of file 'C:/Users.... stopped

This is 01:52:49.013 in total that is close to "406141attempted" frames or 6769.01666(6) sec or 01:52:49.016 in this session.

The number of frames that reached the encoder is only "347700" and "4172" of them were not encoded on time.

Also, these frame counters in OBS excludes start conditions: the moment between you hit the button and recording actually started (encoder should be initialized, output context should return OK etc). Usually, it skips only a few milliseconds (few frames) from the count, so these numbers may be ignored.

Aslo, https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/issues/11907

Conclusion.
GPU overload. It caused 346670 / 406141 * 100 = 85% or 15% of the "missing" footage, just because some frames were skipped.

Or may be it was swamp gas from a weather balloon... :)