Question / Help OBS Preview and Recording Choppy unless game is steady 60FPS!

[BranTheWalker]

I have searched and found many people with the same problem, but most gave up because they didn't know how to fix it. And I tried the suggestion from some people that got it fixed, but none of them worked for me.

Basically I must use Vsync or a FPS limiter like MSI Afterburner and make sure my game is at steady 60fps or steady 30fps, otherwise OBS will make the video choppy as hell. But the weird thing is, even if I don't record or stream, the OBS Preview screen will still be choppy... unless the game is at steady 60 or 30fps obviously. And yes I am using OBS Studio.

The reason I want the Preview window to be smooth is so I can project that into my capture card monitor, and use my second PC for recording and streaming. And I see many Twitch streamers doing this, so I don't know what my problem is.

I have also read about people having this issue because of Windows 10, and that they fixed it by moving back to Windows 7. But I can't really do that since many new games support DX12, but most importantly all windows store games like Gears requires Windows 10. I posted two log files below playing Battlefield 1, using unlimited fps and 60fps limit. I have the videos recorded, so if you guys want to see the choppiness, let me know and I'll upload.

This is the unlimited FPS (mostly 90-110) https://gist.github.com/anonymous/03332395b7813e00ca7358bab9f8e732
This is 60fps limit using MSI Afterburner: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/58f5b65490d4e15b1e1c0804cf4a61f8

As you can see the first one with no fps limit says "Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 334 (4.5%)" I assume those lagged frames is what caused the video to be choppy. The 60fps limit log shows only "Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 16 (0.3%)"

So is there anything I can do to fix OBS showing smooth gameplay even if I don't limit my game FPS to 60? Or if the game fps varies from 50-60FPS? Right now 50-60fps would make OBS choppy.

 

[C-Dude]

It depends on the game/your PC but this happens because your PC is using too much of your CPU and/or GPU and OBS doesn't have enough to do the encoding. Most people need to have VSync on to avoid this.

Sometimes if you use window capture instead of game capture that will help but usually that just makes the performance of everything worse.

 

[BranTheWalker]

It depends on the game/your PC but this happens because your PC is using too much of your CPU and/or GPU and OBS doesn't have enough to do the encoding. Most people need to have VSync on to avoid this.

Sometimes if you use window capture instead of game capture that will help but usually that just makes the performance of everything worse.

I didn't know someone replied, sorry for the late reply!

So am I stuck with having to limit my in game fps to 30 or 60? Is there no way to have some of the CPU/GPU always be given to OBS so I can still play games in 80-100 fps? OBS is using 5% CPU max even during recording.

But I don't get it... OBS preview screen is still choppy even if I am NOT recording. I still need to have my game to be perfect 60 or 30fps. Is it supposed to be like this for the preview screen? Even the slightest drop from 60FPS makes OBS preview choppy. As soon as my in game fps varies from 55-60, the OBS preview is super choppy. Surely it isn|t supposed to be like this?

 

[C-Dude]

well...sort of. If you make sure there is enough cpu/gpu power to encode in OBS then it should be fine. For ex. if you get 100fps in game OBS might be fine if you cap it at 80. But VSync is usually the best way. Sometimes using window capture instead of game capture can solve this however, its not very well optimized and you may get terrible performance or other problems.

Its not that you have to have your games framerate at your recording framerate its more that you have to have enough processing power to encode despite the game being run. If the game is using all your processing power then there isn't enough left for OBS to encode even if you set the process priority higher.

Its far from perfect but, it is a solution. I personally use a different recording software for games that have this problem.

 

[Doc P]

Its far from perfect but, it is a solution. I personally use a different recording software for games that have this problem.

May I ask what program(s) you use? I believe this may also be my issue (I have a thread buried back a couple days that seems to have been abandoned if you care to understand in depth.) Anyways, OBS itself seemed too good to be true, but if other programs don't output such choppy videos I'd be ecstatic to learn which ones!

 

[C-Dude]

Personally I use Mirillis Action. It isn't free but there is a watermarked 30 day trial. The disadvantage is that the files are very large and can't be played back smoothly (when using AVI) or the quality is just not good enough (when recording to mp4). They advertise it as being the "Smoothest real-time gameplay and Windows desktop recording ever" which isn't true but it is really good. (if you are getting problems with audio tracks not coming up with action it can be easily fixed by extracting the audio manually, for some reason certain programs don't like something about the way it configures its tracks, but I have found easy ways around all of it) Up to 2 audio tracks.

But there are several other programs too that I know people like (in order from best to worst):

Dxtory: amazing audio configuration, and can use a variety of codecs. But I couldn't get it to record in higher than 1080p at 30fps or 720p at 60fps. Also i couldn't get some codecs to work. Also it didn't like to capture a couple of games. And the files sizes are terrible (well sort of I'm sure there is some way in the codecs but it was finicky). I'm fairly sure there is also a free trial for that as well. Up to 8 audio tracks.

Shadowplay: insanely smooth, but very little audio configuration, also recordings in VFR which makes it impossible to use in certain editors without it screwing everything up. 1 audio track.

Bandicam: some people have said good things about it, I hate it. I just kept getting tons of dropped frames and terrible quality. Unusable. 2. Audio tracks.

Fraps: good in 2010, not anymore, maybe if you like 1 audio track and only being able to record for 30 seconds (not because of the free trial but because your entire hard drive would be full by then (aka huge file sizes)) 1 Audio track.

Of course there are hundreds more programs that record your screen but these are the only ones that I have messed with that I would at least somewhat recommend. (besides bandicam)

There are a ton more options too but I don't know if you need multiple audio tracks or not. I would assume you would want multiple audio tracks.

For my videos I either use OBS or Action. And almost always OBS I only use Action for games that I dont want to turn on VSync and are having the same issue you do.