OBS Recording "Jittery" with stationary backgrounds

[Mikeygamer]

I've spent the past hour searching for similar issues - I did find an OLD thread here - https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/terraria-recording-is-flickering-every-2-seconds.56214/ with the EXACT same issue, but never found a solution.

I have tried Window Capture, Game Capture and Display Capture. It persists through all of them. I mainly record "high energy" games like 'Trouble in Terrorist Town', and this issue isn't as noticeable. However in a slower-paced game where not much is happening (or while looking at an end-game scoreboard) it is VERY noticeable.

Here is a short YouTube video showing what I mean (may have to look at the corners) -

And here is the logfile - https://obsproject.com/logs/H2ZCukEEFApzTP31

Please, if anyone has ideas, I'd like to fix this.

 

[Mikeygamer]

Nobody? I've seen others have this issue but can't find a solution.

 

[Mikeygamer]

Who needs a bump? I need a bump!

I'm desperate. Don't make me beg.

 

[Mikeygamer]

I'm close to begging. I even spent $450 to try to fix the issue - replaced my 3600x with the new hotness 5800x3D. Nope, still get artifacts. With the new processor I could try going for straight CPU encoding but would rather not. Is it just my Radeon 5700 not being 'as good as' nVidia's encoding?

 

[R1CH]

This looks like poor bitrate allocation during keyframes, you can see it consistently happens at each keyframe interval. It's definitely the encoder, the good news is that the 5800X3D will be a great software encoder. There's an updated version of the AMD encoder coming soon(ish) which might also help.

Your settings are also likely contributing to this, I've never used the AMD encoder but IDR: 120 Frames is almost certainly the cause. You shouldn't need any forced keyframe interval for recording, only streaming. Ideally you want 0 IDR frames and only I/P/B frames.

 

[Mikeygamer]

This looks like poor bitrate allocation during keyframes, you can see it consistently happens at each keyframe interval. It's definitely the encoder, the good news is that the 5800X3D will be a great software encoder. There's an updated version of the AMD encoder coming soon(ish) which might also help.

Your settings are also likely contributing to this, I've never used the AMD encoder but IDR: 120 Frames is almost certainly the cause. You shouldn't need any forced keyframe interval for recording, only streaming. Ideally you want 0 IDR frames and only I/P/B frames.

I appreciate the reply! I play at 2560x1440 resolution and record (and edit/publish) at the same res - I use h264AVC Encoder (AMD Framework) with a Target Bitrate of 45000 and Peak Bitrate of 50000 - only game that I've had problems with is GTA V Online where I occasionally get dropped frames and 'Encoder Overloaded' messages. Back then I used a lower bitrate, seems to perform better but makes for massive recordings (an hour in GTA is about 20 GB raw MKV).

I did try changing the Keyframe Interval (defaults to 2.000) after the CPU upgrade but it changed back - how do I change IDR and I/P/B frames?

 

[R1CH]

Ideally you won't want to use a target bitrate, the encoder should be free to use whatever it wants based on a quality target. Similarly, when recording you want the encoder to decide when to use a keyframe and to not manually specify it.

I've never used the AMD encoder but one of the big issues it has is the number of knobs it exposes. Try using "Simple" output mode and set the recording quality to "High quality, medium file size" and that should get you some sensible settings.

 

[Mikeygamer]

Ideally you won't want to use a target bitrate, the encoder should be free to use whatever it wants based on a quality target. Similarly, when recording you want the encoder to decide when to use a keyframe and to not manually specify it.

I've never used the AMD encoder but one of the big issues it has is the number of knobs it exposes. Try using "Simple" output mode and set the recording quality to "High quality, medium file size" and that should get you some sensible settings.

Unfortunately the 'Simple' output mode seems to limit me to 1 audio track (unless I missed it) - I record multiple audio tracks (game, Discord, Mic) so I can edit. I'll keep an eye out for that new encoder - maybe I'll try CPU encoding to see how it does, most of the games I record aren't very CPU intensive. Thanks again for the help!

 

[R1CH]

To replicate similar settings in advanced mode you can try the following:
Profile: High
Rate Control: CQP
CQP Level: 17
VBV Buffer: Enabled
VBV Buffer Size: 100000