Question / Help OBS Low FPS/CPU Usage

[TheEzeJC]

Hey OBS,
For the past 4 months I have been unable to livestream my gameplay. I used to be able to stream and game with no FPS drops in game and OBS. I attempted lowering the bitrate to 1,800 x264 and Apple hardware encoder but still no luck. I am not running anything besides the game and OBS.
Furthermore, when OBS is open by itself I still receive less than 30 fps and high to low cpu usage. Did OBS change how the program works? My friend who has 1.7 ghz windows with 8 gb ram gets 30 fps and little to no lag in game and OBS.
Below I have attached a log and my Mac specs.
Hopefully I can get this fixed,
JC

 

[Narcogen]

No complete stream attempt in the log, so there's nothing to look at.

You do have multiple entries of this in there, leading me to believe either your install of OBS is damaged/incomplete or else you have a lot of scene assets the program can't locate.

14:47:04.439: SharedFile doesn't exist​

Suggest backing up ~/Library/Application Support/obs-studio and start over fresh to see if issues continue. You can also export your profiles and scenes to back them up.

 

[Narcogen]

Also unless the game you're playing is CPU-bound, suggest *not* using the Apple hardware encoder. Your GPU is not that strong and the game needs it more.

 

[TheEzeJC]

No complete stream attempt in the log, so there's nothing to look at.

You do have multiple entries of this in there, leading me to believe either your install of OBS is damaged/incomplete or else you have a lot of scene assets the program can't locate.

14:47:04.439: SharedFile doesn't exist​

Suggest backing up ~/Library/Application Support/obs-studio and start over fresh to see if issues continue. You can also export your profiles and scenes to back them up.

I managed to get 30 fps to run with everything fresh, but wjen I changed the output resolution and/or downscale to 720p I lose fps. Do I just leave it as the same size as input?

 

[Narcogen]

Just an update here-- someone more knowledgeable suggests that using the Apple Hardware Encoder will *not* cause a performance bottleneck on the GPU. So if your Mac offers the option, try it, and see how it compares to CPU encoding.

Scaling output should not impact performance that much, but if you want to avoid scaling at all, build your canvas for the output mode you're going to use.

Again, a log with a complete streaming session (or at least a short attempt) would provide more detailed information about what the cause of any dropped frames is.

 

[TheEzeJC]

Just an update here-- someone more knowledgeable suggests that using the Apple Hardware Encoder will *not* cause a performance bottleneck on the GPU. So if your Mac offers the option, try it, and see how it compares to CPU encoding.

Scaling output should not impact performance that much, but if you want to avoid scaling at all, build your canvas for the output mode you're going to use.

Again, a log with a complete streaming session (or at least a short attempt) would provide more detailed information about what the cause of any dropped frames is.

Thanks for continuing to help,
So far I have not ran into any problems. I believe a temporary solution for me will be to use the current settings I have. My fps in OBS does dip a little, but not much to make a difference. Below I have tested streaming and I can't see an error besides a missing file which I do not know anything about.