OBS Setup (NEED HELP)

[tamadrummer2888]

Hi,

I am a drum instructor and I do a lot of filming videos and zoom calls using OBS. I'm trying to figure out a problem I'm having and I am hoping I can get some insight. So I run multiple Go Pros into my laptop using capture cards (Cam Link 4k and Cam Nova) via micro hdmi out and the reliability of them working is kind of finicky. Sometimes they just don't display anything and I have to turn the camera off and back on and reconnect it and restart OBS multiple times and I can't figure out why they work perfectly fine sometimes and sometimes they don't. Could it possibly be a hardware or cpu issue on my laptop? I am running my main camera directly into usb port 1 and the other two go into a powered usb hub. When I can get them to work it works great, but when they're not working I don't understand why.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Problem is - a number of possibilities
- USB Root Hub overload certainly one possibility (see https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/camera-limit-3-work-fine-4th-has-problems.78827/post-547106) and related conversations
- your powered USB Hub could be the problem depending on chipset and associated driver quality, as well as the port on the laptop that hub is plugged into
- then there is possible CPU overload? thermal throttling on the laptop? and more

Depending on laptop you may be pushing performance limits (or not close, no way to know with what you posted.) If that is the case, then understanding Operating System and OBS Studio optimization becomes important, including what features in OBS Studio push the CPU vs dedicated GPU (assuming you have one for video encode offload)
Have you done the automated OBS Studio log analysis when you have had the problem?

3 x4K video streams is a far amount of bandwidth for system to handle... so care required along entire data path). If you don't need 4K video, dropping to 1080p30 (or whatever practical value applies to your circumstance) would save a massive amount of processing/bandwidth... but you wouldn't want to go below what you locally record at. If not locally Recoding, then use streaming resolution as a starting point.