Question / Help OBS issues with framerate and game capture

[mike777]

Hello,

I´d like to stream the first game of the Splinter Cell series. It has a weird framrate, for example in the menu you got 200 fps and in the actual game the framerate changes all the time, at some places you got 190-160 or sometimes "just" 90-120. It doesn´t really matter if there is alot trouble or not, it seems just to depend on the area you are standing. If I enter a certain room the framerate always jumps to the same value, so it´s really weird.

If I try to stream this game OBS decreases my ingame frames, for example if I should have about 180 fps at a certain place I just got about 130 and the game starts feeling laggy even though 130 fps is alot, but you usually have just so much more.

I tried to stream another game with the same settings (Super Street Fighter IV) which has alot better graphics but runs on a stable framerate of 60 fps and I didn´t even notice I´m streaming, it just worked perfectly. Why does OBS decrease my framerate in Splinter Cell, but not in other games which require alot better hardware?

The second issue I got is that game capturing doesn´t work for me, no matter if I use the 64 or 32bit version, my game just doesn´t show up.

If I stream Splinter Cell in windowed mode (with window capturing) and got something else like xfire, or in this case OBS, running, the game crashes if I start a mission, or if I finish a mission and the game wants to load the next mission. I really need to stream with the game capture option, so I don´t need to be in windowed mode.

I guess the problem is that the game changes the resolution, because the opening video sequences for the missions in this game have a different resolution than the game and the game crashes every time exactly at the point the video sequence should start. If I don´t play in windowed mode it doesn´t crash.

I attached the logs for both of my issues, I streamed the fpsissues video with window capture and started the stream when I already was in one of the missions, so it couldn´t crash.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Lain]

It's almost assuredly because of the video card. Game capture is entirely graphics processor dependent, so it's most likely the cause. the 2xx series has been well known to perform poorly with capturing in general. It also depends on what the game is doing internally, which may be quite different than the other games. There's a lot of possibilities, but in this case I see that graphics card and I can't help but feel it's very much a likely cause regardless just due to my prior experiences with that 2xx series.

As for crash, I'm not sure -- which splinter cell is it? I think chaos theory might have some issues, though I don't know about the others.

 

[mike777]

It´s the first game of the series and every time you start a mission it changes the resolution and plays an opening video sequence, this also causes for example fraps to cut the video at that point.

So there is nothing I can change in my settings to increase my framerate or to get the game capturing work? :(

I can avoid these crashes by just pausing the game, when I finished a mission and then load an autosave of the next mission, so the video sequence won´t show up and there won´t be a crash, so that´s not a too big issue, but the thing with the framerate is really annoying, it just feels laggy.

Do you see a chance that the steam version of the game could maybe work better than the original CD version from 2003?

 

[dodgepong]

The reason you can't use game capture on Splinter Cell is because it is a DirectX 8 game, which game capture does not support (only DirectX 9 and higher).

As for the FPS drops, is it really that big of a deal? If your monitor is 60Hz, you shouldn't see a difference in FPS. If it's really a problem, I would find a way to limit the FPS of the game in its INI somewhere so that you won't have to deal with a fluctuating FPS.

 

[mike777]

Ok thanks, I tried to use game capture for SSF4 and it worked, so it´s definitely because the DirectX8 game isn´t supported.

I also searched in the ini for any values I can change to improve my framerate and the only valuename I can associate with the framerate is called "MinDesiredFramerate". The value is 10.000000 but changing it seems not to have any effect.

It´s really strange, although I still got alot ingame FPS I really feel the lagg alot. And really weird things happen, for example: I just walk off platform A with maximum walking speed. Without streaming I would just land on platform B, when I stream I won´t reach platform B, because the walking speed decreases for some odd reason when I reach the end of the platform, it´s so strange. I´m trying to speedrun this game, that´s why I care so much about this stuff.

 

[Boildown]

You have Constant Frame Rate (CFR) off, which is probably just hiding problems. Turn it back on so you can properly evaluate how well (or not) OBS is working.

Your video card is going to be a problem with OBS, as I used to use a GTX 200 series myself. You should change your preset to SuperFast to help get around this.

A better solution would be to upgrade your graphics card: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7981/best-video-cards-april-2014 . Pretty much anything on this list will be better than what you're currently using, especially for OBS.

OBS puts a huge drain on your CPU and GPU when its encoding; it is no surprise to me that you experience framerate drops when playing older games that are comparatively very weak on CPU/GPU usage.

 

[mike777]

Thanks alot for this tip, by changing the preset to SuperFast I was able to improve my gaming experience alot, it feels now alot smoother and this strange thing with the decreasing walkingspeed, which I discribed, also improved. The quality of my stream is still acceptable, as long as people can read and see everything in my stream without getting a headache it´s fine, I don´t claim to have any HD stream.

Do you think I can even set this to UltraFast and further improve my framerate by that? I don´t see any significant difference in my stream quality if I compare my past broadcasts on VeryFast with the one I did right now on SuperFast.

I also turned CFR on, but the framerate is still fluctuating just as it was before.

Did I understand this correctly, the problem is a mixture of my graphiccard and the fact, that old games can´t use the full potential of CPUs and GPUs nowadays? If I would upgrade my graphiccard my streaming experience would generally improve with other games, but would my framerate in particular this old game improve too?

 

[Krazy]

Ultrafast is *significantly* worse quality the Superfast. It does almost zero compression and will look pretty bad unless you throw retarded amounts of bitrate at it.

 

[mike777]

I tried now to change the preset to "UltraFast" and the quality wasn´t that much worse, but really on the edge of being unacceptable. Then I changed my bitrate from 1200 to 1700 kb/s (I measured an upload speed of 1,9) and the quality is now about as good as it was with "SuperFast" on 1200 kb/s bitrate, but my framerate improved really alot, it feels so much better now.

I mean, if the quality is okay for me (I can read/see everything without getting a headache) there is nothing wrong with using "UltraFast", is it?

 

[Krazy]

If the quality is acceptable to you, then that's all that matters.

 

[mike777]

I was streaming successfully for about 1 week now, besides the discribed stuff I had no issues, but since a few days I got a new problem:

I´m dropping almost all of my frames, but I didn´t change anything in my settings. The log files say repeatedly something about an unstable connection and the bar on the bottom right side of OBS is always red and jumps from 0 kb/s to about 380 or 560 and then back to 0 all the time. I always used 1600 kb/s in the settings without any problem, but now even 1000 is way too much. I don´t understand why my connection should suddenly be that bad, before I started streaming I measured an upload speed of 1,9.

I tried it the last 3 days every day, it´s always the same. Overnight I can´t stream anymore and when I hit "Stop Streaming" OBS always crashes and I can´t close it without ctrl alt del.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Boildown]

Unstable connection indicates a problem with your internet connection, or something in your home network (more likely if you're using wireless). I believe there's a sticky post on this you'll probably want to reference. And as always, you should post updated log files whenever you have a problem.