OBS Rarely Does It's Job and When It Does It's Garbage

J

Jackadoodles

New Member
Hello. OBS has been failing me non-stop for reasons unknown.

The record buffer button almost never works - it just won't save the last five minutes unless I reset the buffer, which means the content I wanted to record is wiped anyhow. Maybe because it gets full - but then why doesn't it just erase everything past the last five minutes and continue to buffer?

If it does work, it's of awful quality. OBS records 300+ FPS CS:GO gameplay at maybe 20 (it's set to do it at 60), and often with a botched frame (black bar on right side of screen, probably because I play 4:3 aspect ratio in the game).

The audio is also very poor when compared to the original audio, and often omits it altogether.

OBS has almost never done it's job. I've missed out on a lot of really cool clips because of it. I don't understand why it can't do the simplest of things like recording 5 minutes of gameplay without major issues. The only reason I don't use ShadowPlay is because that will often fail me too, for example just randomly shutting itself off for no reason.

RTX 3090
i9-10900KF
128GB RAM


Help would be appreciated, guys.
 
L

Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
You are running that PoS plug-in streamelements... color me 'not surprised'
You've read about the recent Microsoft patches that have messed up graphics (whether applies to you or not ???)

And whatever your settings are, are clearly too much for your system

15:20:56.109: Output 'Replay Buffer': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 10785 (0.3%)
15:20:56.109: ==== Replay Buffer Stop ============================================
15:20:56.123: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 89875/3581835 (2.5%)

04:33:56.245: Output 'Replay Buffer': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 18617 (0.7%)
04:33:56.245: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 212179/2854780 (7.4%)

I'm not a gamer, so I'll let others comment further
 
qhobbes

qhobbes

Active Member
1. Change the refresh rate on your monitor to 120 Hz and cap your games at 120 FPS. This is to establish a baseline.
2. Enable "Game Mode" be for maximum gaming performance. Game Mode can be enabled via the Windows 10 "Settings" app, under Gaming > Game Mode.
3. Run OBS as Admin. Right click on shortcut, properties, advanced, check box, ok, apply, ok.
4. Browser hardware acceleration is currently disabled. Enabling acceleration is highly recommended due to the improvements to performance and significantly lower CPU usage for browser sources. This can be enabled in Settings -> Advanced.
5. Display and Game Capture Sources interfere with each other. Never put them in the same scene (CS:GO)

Post new log after making those changes if still having issues.
.
 
J

Jackadoodles

New Member
Lawrence_SoCal said:
You are running that PoS plug-in streamelements... color me 'not surprised'
You've read about the recent Microsoft patches that have messed up graphics (whether applies to you or not ???)
Click to expand...

I take it you recommend I cease running that plug-in, then? I very well might - curious though, what does it do that makes it so unfavorable? And no, I haven't read about any recent patches. That's my bad. If you don't mind, could you let me in on the basics?

qhobbes said:
1. Change the refresh rate on your monitor to 120 Hz and cap your games at 120 FPS. This is to establish a baseline.
2. Enable "Game Mode" be for maximum gaming performance. Game Mode can be enabled via the Windows 10 "Settings" app, under Gaming > Game Mode.
3. Run OBS as Admin. Right click on shortcut, properties, advanced, check box, ok, apply, ok.
4. Browser hardware acceleration is currently disabled. Enabling acceleration is highly recommended due to the improvements to performance and significantly lower CPU usage for browser sources. This can be enabled in Settings -> Advanced.
5. Display and Game Capture Sources interfere with each other. Never put them in the same scene (CS:GO)

Post new log after making those changes if still having issues.
.
Click to expand...

I'm giving your recommendations a go. For the record, I only attempted to run the CS:GO scene once as a desperate attempt to have it work properly, but for obvious reasons it didn't. I have since just stuck with a scene that has only Display Capture.

I've gone ahead and done everything else you suggested though, bar one thing - that being the Hz cap. Is there any way at all to get around this? I'd like to be able to use the fullest extent of my monitor's capability, which is at 165 Hz. I understand if running at 120 Hz is more optimized/streamlined but I'm willing to make sacrifices such as increased storage or CPU usage if it means being able to play at 165 instead of 120.

Thanks a ton for your replies guys, I appreciate it.
 
qhobbes

qhobbes

Active Member
You generally want source FPS, refresh rate and output FPS to be multiples of each other, ex. 120 game FPS, 120 Hz, 60 OBS FPS. Again, this just to establish a baseline where you don't have Encoder Overload or Rendering Lag, so it doesn't look like garbage. Getting 60 frames out of 120 is easy, you just take every other frame. Getting 60 frames out of 165 requires getting 4 out of every 11 frames. Once you have established a baseline for how you want your recording to look, then change other settings 1 at a time to see how it affects the recording.

Also have you tried using the -allow_third_party_software parameter and using Game Capture? https://daily.upcomer.com/how-to-stream-csgo-with-obs-after-the-trusted-mode-update/
 
Last edited:
J

Jackadoodles

New Member
qhobbes said:
You generally want source FPS, refresh rate and output FPS to be multiples of each other, ex. 120 game FPS, 120 Hz, 60 OBS FPS. Again, this just to establish a baseline where you don't have Encoder Overload or Rendering Lag, so it doesn't look like garbage. Getting 60 frames out of 120 is easy, you just take every other frame. Getting 60 frames out of 165 requires getting 4 out of every 11 frames. Once you have established a baseline for how you want your recording to look, then change other settings 1 at a time to see how it affects the recording.

Also have you tried using the -allow_third_party_software parameter and using Game Capture? https://daily.upcomer.com/how-to-stream-csgo-with-obs-after-the-trusted-mode-update/
Click to expand...
Interesting, I haven't heard about the parameter with game capture. I'll look into it!

I guess I'll have to take the hit with the Hz then, or just experiment with it. I imagine it's probably a little too far out there to instead move OBS up to 165 FPS, huh. I'll have to play around with it.

One last thing - the replay buffer doesn't always seem to work. If it's been running a long while, it doesn't save videos unless I stop and restart it. Is this unusual, or a common occurrence if it's left on too long?

Thanks for the help again.
 
qhobbes

qhobbes

Active Member
I'm honestly curious if a 165 game FPS, 165 HZ, 165 OBS FPS would work. Give it a whirl and let us know.
I haven't had any issues with saving a replay. Mine is only 10 seconds if that makes a difference.
 
J

Jackadoodles

New Member
It only appears to work with 60/1 FPS. I don't know how it's even possible for OBS to struggle this much given the specs of the hardware it's running on. Mind-boggling. At a loss.
 
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