OBS is freezing randomly while streaming

[Blaze Leiton]

Welp....add me to the list...

Been having this issue lately with a couple of games, but specially the newly released Hogwarts Legacy
For now only thing I've done is configuring some OBS settings
- Tested with both AMD Hard and NVENC Hard, NVENC seems to work better
- On NVENC, set on P2: Faster
- Base and Output resolution same at 1920x1080
- Process priority Below Normal

These are the settings that have given the me the best result and stream fluidity with this game, however I've yet to test them out with other ones. I'll also try to deactivate Windows 11 stuff mentioned previously to see if that helps. If you have more advice on settings that can help me streamline things though it would help me a lot since I really have poor comprehension about some of the more technical stuff.

 

[ChucktownTiger]

I am also having the same exact issues. Very frustrating.

 

[TheEnigmist]

Welp....add me to the list...

Been having this issue lately with a couple of games, but specially the newly released Hogwarts Legacy
For now only thing I've done is configuring some OBS settings
- Tested with both AMD Hard and NVENC Hard, NVENC seems to work better
- On NVENC, set on P2: Faster
- Base and Output resolution same at 1920x1080
- Process priority Below Normal

These are the settings that have given the me the best result and stream fluidity with this game, however I've yet to test them out with other ones. I'll also try to deactivate Windows 11 stuff mentioned previously to see if that helps. If you have more advice on settings that can help me streamline things though it would help me a lot since I really have poor comprehension about some of the more technical stuff.

Hello,
I'm on the same boat, I will try these tips since all other W11 tips didn't work for me (HAGS and other game settings).
I've problem since october starting with RE8, but managed to complete some streams, but with Dead Space Remake, Hogwarts Legacy is impossible, even with lowest settings OBS starts lagging, the game starts lagging, and then the stream goes down.
I really don't know if is better rollback to W10 or stay with 11... but I read that other ppl with W10 have same problem
My setup:
Ryzen 5 3600
RTX 3070
16 GB RAM

 

[KnutH]

I was struggling a lot with OBS after the Win11 22H2 (september/october).

In January I decided to downgrade to Win10.
It is a bit of work but for me it was worth it. I have not regret it since.

I am using only latest nvidia whql drivers.
No lagging, no crashing, no problems.

Still on OBS v.28.1.2

Knut

 

[natty_ice]

I’m having the same issues as described throughout this thread.

Windows 11
Ryzen 5950x
RTX 3070

Just getting back into streaming. I’ve been letting OBS run while playing games to make sure everything is good. Went to install the nvidia audio SDK last night and that’s when my issues started. Computer would black screen when I started OBS after installing the SDK. Uninstalled the SDK and the black screen issue went away. I’m now getting the frozen preview issue.

I’ll try the described fixes above and report back. I really don’t want to downgrade to windows 10.

 

[evilTweedle]

Yep ,I'm getting the same issues now too.

Windows 11
Overclocked Ryzen 9 5950X 16 Core
24GB GEFORCE RTX 4090
64GB Ram

OBS doesn't crash, it just freezes and terminates the stream. No crash logs. Normal logs are fine. I'm a StreamerBot user and I'm not getting any errors in that's logs either.

One thing that I noticed that's blaring out to me is that OBS is saying I'm using between 0.1% and 0.5% CPU while I'm streaming which is nonsense - it's around about the 45% to 50% mark when I'm streaming, playing music, have a bunch of bots & browser pages running and am playing a game.

Reading these previous posts - and I'm not currently on said pc - is there a similar disabling HAGS method on windows 11? I'll have a look later and re post.

Lastly, if it's around GPU overload - I have a shedload of source mirrors in my set up. One new scene I created has 89 source clones in it (yes, 'I know' it's a lot :) + that's Exeldros source clones, not StreamFx's source mirrors). I'm going to test removing that and reinserting it to see it's impact on the GPU live as I do it. Even though that's a lot - I don't think it' s the root cause as crashes have not occurred during it's use but I did some test streams previously before implementing it without issue.

 

[TheEnigmist]

Little update, I just finished a 2h streaming of Dead Space, without ANY problem. Good live, only rare micro graphic lags when opening some doors.

Since my setup is ryzen 5 3600 + RTX3070 I read that I'm a lot in CPU bottleneck, so this is what I did before this fantastic live:
- I saw that OBS use A LOT of resources for built-in chat browser, I removed that panel and using external chat client that uses really low resources (chatterino2)
- Let geforce experience optimize obs (it changed everything on NVEC)
- Since I have huge cpu bottleneck I moved all thing on GPU, so, removed DLSS to let GPU render at native resolution the game so CPU can handle all other jobs, used TAA instead of DLSS
- Moved nvidia virtual greenscreen out of obs and using nvidia broadcast instead

 

[WindyJMusic]

It's 2 months later, and I too have been having this issue for months, though I never thought to post about it until now. Any solutions yet?

 

[mantazzo]

Nothing for certain it seems. For some, disabling HAGS helped a bit. Nobody knows for sure why is this happening though and what's causing it.
We would need some sort of full debug log to understand what might be causing this, as normal log is not showing anything suspicious at all.


(My only theory so far would be that Windows 11 might be triggering the "Efficiency Mode" (or some other resource limiter of sorts, unsure) on OBS when system needs some extra resources for stability which somehow breaks some vital process... Though it's certainly odd that it mainly happens on Windows 11, while Windows 10 seems unaffected by this bug.)

 

[evilTweedle]

Yep ,I'm getting the same issues now too.

Windows 11
Overclocked Ryzen 9 5950X 16 Core
24GB GEFORCE RTX 4090
64GB Ram

OBS doesn't crash, it just freezes and terminates the stream. No crash logs. Normal logs are fine. I'm a StreamerBot user and I'm not getting any errors in that's logs either.

One thing that I noticed that's blaring out to me is that OBS is saying I'm using between 0.1% and 0.5% CPU while I'm streaming which is nonsense - it's around about the 45% to 50% mark when I'm streaming, playing music, have a bunch of bots & browser pages running and am playing a game.

Reading these previous posts - and I'm not currently on said pc - is there a similar disabling HAGS method on windows 11? I'll have a look later and re post.

Lastly, if it's around GPU overload - I have a shedload of source mirrors in my set up. One new scene I created has 89 source clones in it (yes, 'I know' it's a lot :) + that's Exeldros source clones, not StreamFx's source mirrors). I'm going to test removing that and reinserting it to see it's impact on the GPU live as I do it. Even though that's a lot - I don't think it' s the root cause as crashes have not occurred during it's use but I did some test streams previously before implementing it without issue.

Yep so a few streams of 2 hours + each and I think that turning off HAGS in Windows 11 has worked. No further issues noted. It's available in the same area of settings as it was in Windows 10 (almost the same, look for it and you'll find it)

 

[Grumtastic]

Agreed. I have had no issues whatsoever since disabling HAGS. :)

 

[ehbehceh]

I've been having this issue for a good while now. I sent my PC back to repair to see if it was hardware issues I couldn't detect. GPU got replaced. OBS still crashes my graphics drivers (up to date) and freezes out the client.

Win 10 (just updated so maybe next stream will work)
Geforce 3070 ti RTX
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-core
32GB RAM

Worked since 2020, but maybe a windows update did something, or maybe OBS itself doesn't play with Windows atm. Either way, incredibly frustrating. Analyser shows nothing, as it's not a crash, it's a freeze.

 

[Psyconick]

I had a 9900K + RTX 3090 , with a ASROCK Board + DDR 4.
I recently purchase a new PC 13900K with a 4090 with a gigabyte board Z790 + DD5 RAM
and the problem was still there , my OBS was always freezing randomly, I have done so many thing ( OBS withtout 1 single ADDON) , disabling HAGS thing to do, at least for my use.

I did stream 3 days in a row without 1 single issue. The downside, it's a performance drop.. since I'm running everything in 4K 120Hz + streaming, I do see the cost. But you know if I stream ( No HAGS ) if I play HAGS On ! simple as that.

 

[bobbycvi]

Having the same issue while streaming Icarus.

Win11 latest updates
Ryzen 5800X
GeForece 3800 RTX
32GB DDR4

 

[Meowku]

Hi, just going to add that I recently started streaming myself coding, not gaming.

I was running Unity & Intellij Rider. So there was a DirectX session running.

However, this wasn't exactly taxing on the system, running a 3080.

This hung OBS 29.0.2 while entering a debugging session from Rider. Requiring the task manager to kill the OBS process, and Twitch reporting there was no data being received.

It also crashed during a separate stream later, multiple times, when not debugging, just editing files, and also running an extra Intellij IDEA IDE at the same time.

I'm not sure if I should try the second machine, a 980Ti, to do the streaming and see if that works better, but that's doing the motion capture?

 

[supercarstreetracing]

HAGS didn't fix my issue. The preview window locks up and the stream stops for no reason. The program doesn't crash. It just stops working and the stream goes down. Then you can't exit the program you have to end task.

 

[markman641]

I'm trying to think about what major changes I've done to my system that could be causing this... I realized I switched from Avast antivirus to Kaspersky around the time the issue arose. Is anyone else here that's having the issue also using Kaspersky?

 

[Marco123]

Hello. Maybe time has passed, but I'm refreshing this topic, because I have more or less the same problem as the previous lecturers (but). In my case, since I switched to the Kaspersky Plus version, problems started. There was no such thing, until I used the old version of Kaspersky Premium, during streaming "anything" did not freeze at all. Now, when Kaspersky switched to this new Plus, things have started to go wrong, maybe someone should report this to the technical department so that they can do something about it. Because it is really frustrating.

I will only add that the Win11 system itself does not create any problem with the settings, even the hardware PC is stable. Only the internal program, like this Kaspersky!

By the way, if adding a protocol to Kaspersky Plus to not block connections can help solve the problem during streaming (i.e. freezing the preview image in OBS Studio).

Best regards.