Question / Help OBS lags when recording GTA V

[Ryan Damon]

Hello!

Basically, I have been running into an issue where whenever I try to record GTA V with OBS Studio it lags very bad. When I am playing the game, I experience fine frame rates (30+ FPS) but when I look at the footage later, it just looks choppy and overall just bad.

Ive attempted a few things and none have worked: (Changing the resolution of OBS recording, changing specific GTA V video settings, ran OBS in realtime / High performance in task manager)

I should also mention, other games work fine. Ive had this issue a few times

Any ideas?

Summary - Good FPS on gaming screen, recorded footage looks bad.

 

[Beardedbob]

Hi,

Given your pc spec you should be fine and getting much higher FPS in game and recording. The only issue I can see is
"Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 6533 (51.0%)" which is high and would explain the choppy playback.

I see you are using 3000 bitrate and h.264 this should be light so something isn't right. Can you try using Nvenc as you have an 980ti and see if you still get the same issue? You should be able to run 30k to 40k Bitrate without issue @ 1920x1080 30fps.

 

[OG See OH Zee]

Windows 10 and OBS Studio doesn't mix that well. This has been confirmed since Windows 10 launch where the framerate goes all over the place on OBS and cause a massive amount of lagged frames when you push your GPU. However, this is not present in older operating systems because I tried to reproduce it on The Witcher 3 on Windows 8.1 and only got under 1% of lagged frames, even while pushing my GPU to the max.

Try setting Vsync in Half on GTA V while playing the game in 60Hz refresh rate and see what happens.

 

[Osiris]

I have no problems with OBS Studio on Windows 10

 

[OG See OH Zee]

I have no problems with OBS Studio on Windows 10

Well I've been having it since day one of Windows 10 and it made it impossible to record anything in 60fps (even 360p60; yes I know that's a dumb thing to set up but FPS still goes all over the place) regardless of my encoding settings on many GPU-bounded games. I used to do 60fps on the previous OS which was 8.1 and I even posted a thread with a log comparison of stressing the GPU on Windows 8.1 and 10 about a week ago. I don't know what is causing it on Windows 10. Probably I run a plug and play monitor which is an HDTV from VGA, while my primary display is HDMI to DVI, if that has anything to do with it. Or it could be something else that I'm not aware of..

 

[jds4578]

on the subject of GTA 5, it is a CPU heavy game. you might have to set cpu priorties in windows, i would also recommend a utility called "battle encoder shirase", it compresses game resources, knocks the cpu usage down alot while playing it, either by percentages, or the option of milliseconds, or you can use both. I managed to get cpu usage down to around 50 % - 60% for gta 5.

I don't know why, but OBS studio likes to freeze the preview scene after playing the game for a certain time. dunno if its got something to do with the recent win 10 AU update. tho on the subject of lag, maybe disabling "limit capture framrate" fixes the lagging, i have noticed, but obs still freezes the preview scene after a certain amount of time.

 

[Ryan Damon]

Hi,

Given your pc spec you should be fine and getting much higher FPS in game and recording. The only issue I can see is
"Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 6533 (51.0%)" which is high and would explain the choppy playback.

I see you are using 3000 bitrate and h.264 this should be light so something isn't right. Can you try using Nvenc as you have an 980ti and see if you still get the same issue? You should be able to run 30k to 40k Bitrate without issue @ 1920x1080 30fps.

I tried using Nvenc to no avail. Still very choppy

(Example - https://youtu.be/d_PBa_QQ8TQ)

Windows 10 and OBS Studio doesn't mix that well. This has been confirmed since Windows 10 launch where the framerate goes all over the place on OBS and cause a massive amount of lagged frames when you push your GPU. However, this is not present in older operating systems because I tried to reproduce it on The Witcher 3 on Windows 8.1 and only got under 1% of lagged frames, even while pushing my GPU to the max.

Try setting Vsync in Half on GTA V while playing the game in 60Hz refresh rate and see what happens.

This actually worked! Setting the VSync to half fixed the issue. Not 100% sure why this would work, but if you have an explanation that would be great. Just want to understand what is causing the issue and what not.


Thanks everyone who worked to help me solve this issue :) I really appreciate it!

 

[DylanJ]

Hi,

Given your pc spec you should be fine and getting much higher FPS in game and recording. The only issue I can see is
"Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 6533 (51.0%)" which is high and would explain the choppy playback.

I see you are using 3000 bitrate and h.264 this should be light so something isn't right. Can you try using Nvenc as you have an 980ti and see if you still get the same issue? You should be able to run 30k to 40k Bitrate without issue @ 1920x1080 30fps.

Hello!

Basically, I have been running into an issue where whenever I try to record GTA V with OBS Studio it lags very bad. When I am playing the game, I experience fine frame rates (30+ FPS) but when I look at the footage later, it just looks choppy and overall just bad.

Ive attempted a few things and none have worked: (Changing the resolution of OBS recording, changing specific GTA V video settings, ran OBS in realtime / High performance in task manager)

I should also mention, other games work fine. Ive had this issue a few times

Any ideas?

Summary - Good FPS on gaming screen, recorded footage looks bad.

Hey if you still didn't fix it maybe try Settings>Advanced>Process Priority>High this problem happened to me I just did that and it seemed to fix the problem really well! Have a nice day!

 

[Smurf2005]

Ok so I was here to fix these issues and found some ways which is I am getting 15fps to 60fps upgrade in recording.
First of all uninstall your OBS but don't tick user settings while uninstalling.
Download This OBS Version (BEST GREAT PHENOMINAL VERSION)- https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/releases/tag/24.0.3
In OBS Settings in Advanced Set Process priority to High.
You are Good to Go Now Enjoy 60fps recordings.