OBS dropping frames/causing slow internet

[BoxieG]

Hi everyone!

I really hope y'all can help me with this. I only stream on Twitch once a week, so I only use OBS once a week. Last Thursday (21st of July) everything was working perfect (0 dropped frames, normal internetspeed), but yesterday (Thursday 27th of July) I tried to boot up, and noticed straight out of the gate that I had over 80% dropped frames. Also noticed my internetspeed was slow as turds.

I didn't change anything on the computer or in OBS at all - only thing I did do last night to try and solve the issue was update OBS. I think I was running 28.0.1 and am currently updated to 29.1.3 but when I decided to fix it now, it still has the same issue.

Here's the log: https://obsproject.com/logs/a1kpMTkBvdEozpsR

This is the internetspeed before running OBS:

This is the internetspeed during streaming (in bandwith test mode currently, but the same results apply when actually trying to stream:

Usually when I stream I have the following programs open:
- Logic X (I stream music)
- Either Chrome or Firefox with two tabs: Twitch on my dashboard to monitor the stream and chat, and streamlabs*
- OBS obviously

*I usually have to test the notification before actually going live in order to get the notis (subs, bits, raids, etc) realtime - if I don't notice don't come through or very late.

For the purpose of the screenshots and to create the log I only had Chrome and OBS running, not Logic X, but as you can see, that doesn't make a difference.

Resetting (and factory resetting) the modem didn't help. Again: without OBS streaming, my internet is fine as is, even with OBS just started up (but not streaming).

Does anyone have any suggestions for me please? Much appreciated! (oh, and please explain it to me like I'm five years old because I'm not super tech savvy haha)

 

[BoxieG]

I tried to find how to edit my previous message, but couldn't find it, so here's a reply just instead.

Small update from my part:

- I tried creating a new profile in OBS, just run it through the easy setup wizard, and tried booting it up while checking for dropped frames/drops in internet speed.
- I noticed this time, with the new profile, everything worked fine.

So I figured there must be something in the settings that's different between the two profiles. We now call these profiles "Old slow profile" and "New normal profile".

- The main difference I found was that the "Old slow profile" had 6000 Kbps bitrate in the Encoder settings. The "New normal profile" had this set to something in it's 800s.
- I went back to the "Old slow profile" and changed that bitrate to 1000 Kbps, and everything was running smoothly, without dropped framerates/slow internet.

So, in a way, that issue is somewhat solved, but not really...

Suddenly I realized the internetspeed (as shown in the screenshots) is much lover than what I'm paying my internet provider for. I contacted them, and it SHOULD be 200 Mbps, but clearly it isn't. They're going to fix this, or so they say.

So now I'm thinking there are some options left:

- Either something happened on their end recently, drastically slowing my internet from 200 Mbps to the measured 17 Mbps. I'm imagining that prior to this drop OBS would be running smoothly at the 6000 Kbps (because dropping from 200 Mbps to, let's say, 180 Mbps wouldn't really make a noticeable difference, opposed to going from 17 Mbps to not even 1 Mbps).
- Either something else is going on that I'm not fully getting just yet.

Hopefully they'll fix the issue soon, so that I can test the environment here, and perhaps even close this question.

(they said they saw the internet and modem working on full capacity, but I'm using a direct wired connection, and tried different cables on two different laptops, but this didn't change anything. It's also strange that last week everything was working fine, I didn't change anything, and all of the sudden there are issues)

(I didn't necessarily notice anything wrong with the internet - 20 Mbps might seem slow compared to 200 Mbps, but if I wouldn't have tried to stream I never noticed, since our internet is 'normal' in the house - we can stream Netflix etc without a problem)

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

(they said they saw the internet and modem working on full capacity, but I'm using a direct wired connection, and tried different cables on two different laptops, but this didn't change anything. It's also strange that last week everything was working fine, I didn't change anything, and all of the sudden there are issues)

(I didn't necessarily notice anything wrong with the internet - 20 Mbps might seem slow compared to 200 Mbps, but if I wouldn't have tried to stream I never noticed, since our internet is 'normal' in the house - we can stream Netflix etc without a problem)

!. Watching Netflix (and 99%+ of rest of Internet traffic is download (to you) and most applications have buffering to deal with jitter/latency issues... so unless you are doing real-time monitoring, or particular observant (and know what specifically to look for), you often won't notice Internet bandwidth fluctuations, or even significant slow-downs

Download traffic has very little to do with UPLOAD (streaming / from you NOT to you) bandwidth {I won't get into ACK packets, etc}

So, lesson -
- if you stream without doing real-time WAN link monitoring, you are doing the equivalent of driving with blindfolds on
- There are LOTS of things that can consume bandwidth in your household (most normal, some malicious). Just because such traffic didn't interfere before doesn't mean it won't next time {or if an investor, you'll recognize the caveat 'past performance is no guarantee of future returns'}.

So, there is a FAQ on this specific issue (see my .sig for link)... bottom line ... LOTS of things to check long before you get to OBS being the issue (and unless under-powered system with unrealistic expectations/excess settings/plugins, it rarely is OBS)

 

[BoxieG]

I just had "the guy" from the internet provider over, they switched somethings on their end, and the speeds are back to normal again.

I tested OBS running and the speeds are back to normal again, with no dropped frames.

Consider this issue solved :-)