Bug Report OBS Freezes For a Moment on Scene Transition

[ArcusM]

I got a new Mac and updated to Mojave, so I can't be sure if this is just this Mac or something related to Mojave but I didn't have this problem on my old Mac Pro with these same scenes and settings:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac18,3
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 4.2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 16 GB

When I try to move from one scene to another OBS freezes for a second or two. I pinned it down to a specific browser source. I have two browser sources, one for stream alerts and another for Twitch Chat. Seems the Twitch chat one is the culprit. It's a pretty standard source. It just has a link it in, and size, no special formatting. I did try to delete it and recreate it from scratch, still have the same issue. I looked in the Mac Logs and this is the error I saw for OBS when trying to change scenes:

fault 11:21:25.526875 -0700 obs RETURNING UnknownFS PLACEHOLDER: <private>

I found that changing the source to not Shutdown when not visible fixed the freezing, but that causes the source to randomly resize when I transition back.

 

[ArcusM]

No one else experiencing this?

 

[craigp]

I've experienced the same issue, but much worse. It seems to compound the longer a browser source is not changed from preview to live. I'm running High Sierra, and the issue does not occur in the previous version (21.1.1). I'm attaching logs from 22.0.3 (problematic) and 21.1.1 (good) for comparison. The broadcast was from the 19:00 - 21:00ish (probably can ignore other logs?).

My experience: the UI becomes completely unresponsive (beach ball), but at least the stream keeps on going just fine. Depending on how long since my last transition, I've had it go unresponsive for 5+ minutes before the UI becomes responsive again. During that time, I can access other apps, etc, only the OBS UI goes beach ball. Using the same browser source on the previous version, I've had no issues. I have to run on the previous version until this is resolved.

 

[TylerDurd0n]

Can confirm - those freezes have been a mainstay on macOS Mojave ever since I updated:

• Upon Launch, OBS freezes the whole system for several seconds, before launching without any error
• When switching to or from scenes with browser sources, OBS and the system will freeze for about 20 seconds, before continuing as if nothing happened
• Logs do not show any trace of this, no crash reports either (I switched to a scene with MediaSource, waited for 5 seconds, then switched back to a scene with a browser source):

22:14:26.477: User switched to scene 'Starting Soon'
22:14:30.359: User switched to scene 'Broadcast'
22:14:45.004: User switched to scene 'Starting Soon'

Notice how it took ~4 seconds to flush the line about switching to the "Broadcast" scene. I immediately tried to switch back, but it took 15 seconds before the app became responsive again. Also in many cases the browser source stays blank, e.g. is not shown in the preview window. I need to actively open the source's preferences for it to render again.

In my case, the stream does suffer though - the stats window shows dropped encoder and render frames.

TL;DR: Changing to or from scenes with browser source(s) in it freezes the whole OS, also browser sources may stay invisible.

 

[Burger Boy]

I have also been experiencing this on a Mac Pro 2013 since updating to Mojave. It freezes the whole system whenever I switch to a scene with a browser source and I also drop a bunch of frames in the process.

 

[ArcusM]

Fun times. Actually went as far as re-installing the entire OS. This actually fixed it for a while. Then it just came back again and I didn’t change anything.

 

[TylerDurd0n]

Fun times. Actually went as far as re-installing the entire OS. This actually fixed it for a while. Then it just came back again and I didn’t change anything.

Just out of curiosity - does your Mac have an AMD or nVidia GPU?

 

[ArcusM]

Just out of curiosity - does your Mac have an AMD or nVidia GPU?

Radeon Pro 580 8192 MB

 

[TylerDurd0n]

Radeon Pro 580 8192 MB

Me too, mine's quite a bit older though (Radeon R9 M390 2048 MB). Is that an eGPU?

 

[ArcusM]

Me too, mine's quite a bit older though (Radeon R9 M390 2048 MB). Is that an eGPU?

No, it’s the internal one that came with the iMac.

 

[WoozleEffect]

Any fix for this? Still experiencing this issue in April of 2019.
It seems that as long as browser sources are disabled (made invisible) then the transitions work without freezing. The system still freezes when starting up OBS.

 

[cosfrog]

Checking in to see if any progress on this. I just upgraded to the high end iMac 2019 (previous was an iMac 2012) had no problems before but have this issue on new computer. If no fix how do I go back to 21.1.1 as mentioned above that works

 

[Narcogen]

Just download 21 and use it.

All releases are on GitHub:

https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/releases

 

[ashslayforever]

Hey has there been any fix for this other than downloading the older OBS? Also if you did download the older one have you had any issues?

Added info: I do use StreamElements for my Overlays currently.

 

[TylerDurd0n]

Most freezing issues seemed to have been fixed in one of the latest releases (I say most, because some remain, but they don't seem to be related to browser sources).

One crutch I still rely on is this process though:

• Set up OBS as I like
• Disable Preview in the OBS window
• Open the stats and windowed(!) multi-view
• Minimize the main OBS window

For some reason, switching scenes with the multi-view window is absolutely smooth, but the main OBS window is an incredible resource hog. There is an open issue on mantis about this and with OpenGL going the way of the dodo in macOS this might not be fixed before OBS switched to Metal on macOS.

Note that if you use different transitions you'd need to set up additional scenes with transition overrides for this to work, as you can't specify the transition from the multi-view. Another "fix" would be to use the Websocket plugin and just control OBS from your browser.

 

[ashslayforever]

Most freezing issues seemed to have been fixed in one of the latest releases (I say most, because some remain, but they don't seem to be related to browser sources).

One crutch I still rely on is this process though:

• Set up OBS as I like
• Disable Preview in the OBS window
• Open the stats and windowed(!) multi-view
• Minimize the main OBS window

For some reason, switching scenes with the multi-view window is absolutely smooth, but the main OBS window is an incredible resource hog. There is an open issue on mantis about this and with OpenGL going the way of the dodo in macOS this might not be fixed before OBS switched to Metal on macOS.

Note that if you use different transitions you'd need to set up additional scenes with transition overrides for this to work, as you can't specify the transition from the multi-view. Another "fix" would be to use the Websocket plugin and just control OBS from your browser.

Thanks! I'll give these a try