Question / Help OBS preview stutters while not recording

RetrOrigin

New Member
I guess I'm now joining this party too :(
I'm also experiencing stuttering in the preview even without recording and if I do a recording the stuttering from the preview is indeed recorded.
And this is just on very low resource consuming games like Streets of Rage 4.
I Noticed if I alt-tab and return to the game the stuttering goes right away.
I have also noticed the stuttering is more likely to get triggered by an in-Game transition where the screen goes black for 1 or 2 seconds during a loading time.
The problem is of course not limited to this game but I use it for testing due to how non resource intensive it is.
The strange thing is it was all working flawlessly about 2 weeks ago. I Even formatted my main NVME, clean reinstalled Windows 10,installed an old Nvidia driver version from when I was able to record without problems and also a matching OBS version (26.1.1 but also tried 27.0.1) and the problem was still there! I then formatted again and tried Windows 11 for the heck of it and the problem remained exactly the same.
I also tried enabling the integrated Intel graphics at the BIOS, forcing the game to run on that GPU, forcing OBS to run on that GPU (from Windows Display/Graphics settings) and the problem remained.
Since the problem happens even just at the preview, it doesn't seem like an encoder issue, however I still tried all encoders available to me without it affecting the problem at all.
I tried recording with another program (Bandicam) and the recording is much better.
The game can run on DX11, OpenGL and Vulkan and the problem is present no matter what. It happens both fullscreen and windowed regardless of capture method.

I have already done all the troubleshooting I have found, forcing specific refresh rates like 60hz or 120hz,completely unplugging one of the monitors, disabling the preview altogether, tried different refresh rates within OBS (60hz and 59.94hz) V-Sync on/off, G-Sync On/Off, Game Mode On/Off.
Also note that I'm not even a streamer and only use OBS to record footage and because of that I only have one single scene with one single source for the game.

I honestly wouldn't care that much if it was an ongoing issue for me, but the fact it started just about 2 weeks ago for no apparent reason and the fact it persists after 2 clean OS reinstallations is driving me nuts.
 

M3t4lz0n3

New Member
Dear All,

Found a fix for this, instead of choosing the default "Elgato Game Capture HD". Choose the highlighted instead. See if this work's for you. Cheers~!

PS: If you have a 2nd monitor, do not run OBS on that monitor. Run it on the main monitor. Super buttery smooth guaranteed. :D

1639361006020.png
 

greeninaqua

New Member
I have the exact same problem for about a year. I did whatever I could do to troubleshoot this (changing capture card, changing motherboard, clean driver installation, changing pci slot, overclocking monitors etc.), except buying an identical monitor to my main monitor. I don't even sure if it is a dual monitor sync problem or not. It helps a bit if your monitors are in same resolution and hz but like RetrOrigin said stuttering happens even on a single monitor. I think capture card (pci) and gpu and also monitors don't play well together somehow on some pc builds.

I don't know about external capture cards :(
 

Jez_0

New Member
I have the exact same problem for about a year. I did whatever I could do to troubleshoot this (changing capture card, changing motherboard, clean driver installation, changing pci slot, overclocking monitors etc.), except buying an identical monitor to my main monitor. I don't even sure if it is a dual monitor sync problem or not. It helps a bit if your monitors are in same resolution and hz but like RetrOrigin said stuttering happens even on a single monitor. I think capture card (pci) and gpu and also monitors don't play well together somehow on some pc builds.

I don't know about external capture cards :(

I'm having this issue right now and have tried all the suggestions but still can't resolve it. I don't have any issues at all with Avermedia RECentral.
 
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