OBS Randomly stops recording a single track

[itar]

I was recording mulitple episodes of my Grounded series with someone in one session. The first episode recorded fine everything was there with audio on mulitple tracks. Track 1 is me, track 2 is the Grounded audio and Track 3 is our Discord call to capture her voice. I did have my PC crash but the recording after the crash is fine with all 3 audio tracks. I stopped recording and hit start recording to start recording the second episode after a few seconds but for some reason OBS didn't record the Discord audio track for the next 2 episodes (separate recording files for each episode). There was no errors that I was given and from what I saw the meters were working while we were recording but the audio wasn't saved for just Discord.

This kind of thing keeps happening to me. OBS will randomly decide to stop recording a track such as my voice or the game audio. Or it'll scramble the settings so that the game audio is suddenly recorded on all 3 tracks. At this point I'll take help with this specific instance but this is a common issue with me.

I'm attaching the log files from that days recording in the hopes it'll help. I didn't see anything but I'm no expert at OBS. clearly.

 

[Suslik V]

I did have my PC crash...

Better to shut down PC completely and power it up again.

If the next error happens frequently (not only after the PC crash):

15:11:47.384: QAbstractItemView::commitData called with an editor that does not belong to this view

then it is not good. And, in my opinion, should be reported to: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/issues

Other issues (audio buffering, capture interference):

Analyzer | OBS

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers or record your own videos with high quality H264 / AAC encoding.

obsproject.com

Question. Why your PC crashed?
Side question. What the sense was to keep OBS running for so long without recording? (keep in mind that OBS always capturing even while in background and this process may fail if PC is too busy with other tasks).

 

[itar]

What the sense was to keep OBS running for so long without recording?

It wasn't running without recording other than a minute or two here or there between episodes while we took a break. Between stopping recording for the 1st episode (that everything worked on) and starting the 2nd episode it was a few seconds. between the 2nd and 3rd it was more like 5 minutes but had already messed up at that point. We recorded for over 6 hours that session with the last 4 being unusable because of not recording the audio from Discord.

Question. Why your PC crashed?

I really have no idea. It doesn't happen very often. Sometimes software will crash but that's probably the software. I can't remember the last time the entire PC crashed if ever. Interetingly enough the 10-15 minutes of recording after the crash were fine so I don't think the crash was the direct cause of this problem.

This is just the latest in a fairly regular stream of problems like this over the last few months. Sometimes it's Discord, sometimes it's the game, sometimes it scrambles what track things are saved on. It just seems to be constant problems with OBS changing settings on me for no apparent reason.

 

[Suslik V]

    -- First day --
15:11:25.311: Current Date/Time: 2025-03-09, 15:11:25

15:16:14.240: ==== Recording Start
15:16:23.523: ==== Recording Stop

15:16:30.649: ==== Recording Start
15:20:42.554: ==== Recording Stop

15:20:46.305: ==== Recording Start
17:34:57.579: ==== Recording Stop

17:35:01.129: ==== Recording Start
19:29:10.732: ==== Recording Stop

...
    -- here system watches was messed up, wasn't it? --
21:44:43.486: Source Desktop Audio audio is lagging (over by 31465.39 ms) at max audio buffering. Restarting source audio.
    -- Second day --
07:01:58.303: Source Desktop Audio audio is lagging (over by 28531053.86 ms) at max audio buffering. Restarting source audio.
...
18:11:35.474: Source Desktop Audio audio is lagging (over by 221001.05 ms) at max audio buffering. Restarting source audio.
...

19:01:55.632: ==== Recording Start
20:46:57.686: ==== Recording Stop

...
    -- here system watches was messed up again, wasn't it? --
22:45:42.472: Source Desktop Audio audio is lagging (over by 41983.37 ms) at max audio buffering. Restarting source audio.
    -- Third day --
09:43:10.632: Source Desktop Audio audio is lagging (over by 49146.32 ms) at max audio buffering. Restarting source audio.
...

15:24:09.475: ==== Shutting down

What I see in this OBS session is strange timings for the events and audio lag (max buffering).
During single OBS session were written next files:

• 2025-03-09 15-16-14.mkv (stopped 15:16:23.523)
• 2025-03-09 15-16-30.mkv (stopped 15:20:42.554)
• 2025-03-09 15-20-46.mkv (stopped 17:34:57.578)
• 2025-03-09 17-35-01.mkv (stopped 19:29:10.731)
• 2025-03-10 19-01-55.mkv next day (stopped 20:46:57.686)

Distance between 4th and 5th recording is about 23 hours.

Log file indicates performance problems after the 4th recording.
Are you sure that this is log-file from the faulty session you are talking about?

 

[itar]

The good files were:
2025-03-09 13-06-08.mkv (before crash)
2025-03-09 15-16-30.mkv (after crash)

And the files with the missing audio are:
2025-03-09 15-20-46.mkv
2025-03-09 17-35-01.mkv

There are only 2 log files from 2025-03-09 and these are them. The log file before then is 2025-03-05 and the log file after is 2025-03-13. So unless OBS uses a totally different timestamp for the logs than the output files those should be the 2 log files from that day. If there's a different format I should be looking for in the log files then please tell me so I can get the correct files.

I did record the next day for Space Engineers but those audio tracks were fine. I usually close OBS after I'm done but I suppose it's possible I just went to bed and forgot to do it on the 9th.

21:44:43.486: Source Desktop Audio audio is lagging (over by 31465.39 ms) at max audio buffering. Restarting source audio.

This seems outside of any recording time so I wouldn't think it would mess up the output files. Even if it happened while recording I would expect it to cause sound problems while it lagged but not the entire file.

07:01:58.303: Source Desktop Audio audio is lagging (over by 28531053.86 ms) at max audio buffering. Restarting source audio.

I don't ever get up at 7am on a weekend so not sure what this one was about.

15:16:14.240: ==== Recording Start
15:16:23.523: ==== Recording Stop

After the crash a test recording was done because it wasn't showing the video output preview in OBS but it recorded fine.

15:16:30.649: ==== Recording Start
15:20:42.554: ==== Recording Stop

Recording the outro for the first episode of the day. Audio was fine in this file.

15:20:46.305: ==== Recording Start
17:34:57.579: ==== Recording Stop

Recording the 2nd episode of the day. No audio output from Discord was saved to the file.

17:35:01.129: ==== Recording Start
19:29:10.732: ==== Recording Stop

3rd episode of the day recording. No audio output from Discord was saved.

19:01:55.632: ==== Recording Start
20:46:57.686: ==== Recording Stop

Me screwing around and building outside an episode. I usually record this time because sometimes something funny happens and I can edit it into the next episode. There was no Discord audio because I was solo at the time so it wouldn't have any audio anyway. The game and my voice audio were fine in this file.

 

[Suslik V]

The mentioned "2025-03-09 15-20-46.mkv" file has no indication of some error in OBS during this session. Capture interference from diferrent capture sources and PC crash is not good, by itself, but that is all. Unlikely you will find more help on this forum. There is Discord community that actively using OBS - you may try to ask there too (links in the top right corner of the forum).

To clarify.
What means: "OBS will randomly decide to stop recording a track..." - the track is not present in the file or track is present but silent?

 

[itar]

The track was created but there is no sound on it.

At this point I'm going to start looking at other options for recording I think. With all the problems I've had I just don't trust that it'll work. If there was an error I could chase down to fix that would be one thing but it just isn't working and there's no indication why.

Thanks for the effort everone made to help. I appreciate it.