Question / Help OBS streaming less than 60 fps

Soumrak

Soumrak

New Member
When I start a stream OBS will stream it at 60fps, but will drop to 30 and below after about 10-20 minutes. If I restart my stream two or three times it will correct itself and stay at 60fps, but that's annoying for everyone involved. How can I keep OBS from doing this?

OBS is set up to stream at 720p 60fps

PC specs:
i7-6900k
GTX 1080ti
32gb DDR4
 
and now a new issue has arised where it evidently started and stopped my stream about 8 times and annoyed a lot of people in a discord server. plus its also trying to stream at a higher bitrate than i allow it (currently allowing a max 5500 bitrate, but frequently jumps to 6200-6500)
 
i got something like that... higher bitrate than i asked...lots of "breaks"...and High CPU usage...
and i have a i5 8600k @ 4.5Ghz
 
I see not log file with a streaming-attempt.
From my experience with OBS, some Bitrate fluctuation even in CBR mode is normal. The higher the bitrate, the higher the fluctuation. You can set a smaller, custom buffer size to reduce the amount of fluctuation.
 
Sorry I'll get a log file next time it does this. I just did a clean reinstall. A test stream seems to show it's fine now (fingers crossed) so we'll see.

But I don't even get high CPU usuage at all.
When it works properly, OBS is using about 10-15% CPU for me. And when it doesn't work properly it's using the same 10-15% with some spikes into 25% and up
 
Run GPU-Z and see if you're overloading your GPU when it's happening. OBS needs some GPU cycles to handle scaling/compositing/color conversion et al, and there's a lot of people who don't take that into consideration and just run the nuts off by not using vsync or any kind of frame limiter. Easily the most common cause of low-CPU-usage-low-framerate I've seen.
 
My GPU is usually at about 60% load when streaming, and there's usually not a difference when not streaming I've noticed.

The most I've seen is when it's at 80-90% in the PUBG menu screen, but in game it goes back to 60-70%
 
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Ferret is right. Most common problem is, that people play without fps limit (which is fine, if you don't use OBS) and therefore many people let the game eat up over 90% GPU load. That's when OBS can not render fast enough.

Edit:
Ok, you already use an fps limit (or the CPU is the games bottleneck), so your GPU never exceeds 90% load.
Then we need to wait for the log file.
 
My CPU is never above 50% load ever I've noticed as well so if the CPU is being a bottleneck, it's not showing it
 
But I'm also giving number based off memory that I noticed when I take a glance at those graphs. So when I get back from work today I'll do a stream, get a log file, and get a better number of CPU and GPU loads.

Both my CPU and GPU are watercooled as well and never exceed 55°c so thermal throttling is not an issue.
 
I'm talking about the CPU becoming a bottleneck for your game and therefore letting the GPU not being fully utilized (could be wrong, but could be possible).
This kind of CPU bottleneck will not be visible by high CPU load in general.

Games that can only utilize 3 Threads will not be seen with 100% CPU load in windows on a 4core/8 thread CPU.
It won't even show one of the 8 threads at more than 70% load.
Windows is trying to balance that load over all threads, that's why you might see three cores at 50%, five cores at 20% and still this might be a CPU bottleneck in your game.
The only easy way to spot a CPU bottleneck: unleash any GPU limits in your game (no fps limit, no vsync etc.) and witness the GPU load. If it reaches 99%, your CPU is no bottleneck. If it doesn't reach that high, your CPU is the bottleneck.
 
Ah ok, my CPU probably is a bottleneck then. But like I said if I restart the stream two or three times, I no longer have any issues. The game runs just as smoothly as if I wasn't streaming, and the stream looks great for as long as I stream (could be 4+ more hours). It's only when I start a stream for the day that it does this, only shows itself after about 10 minutes

But again, I did re-install yesterday after I finished streaming for the day, and a test stream did show nothing out of the ordinary. I'll have to wait and see with today's stream.
 
Sounds like a network / ISP problem to me. Post a log file from a 5 minute or longer attempt where the problem occurs, or its all just guesswork, though.
 
The disconnect and reconnect over and over maybe a network problem, but I don't think so. My internet has been stable and nothing on twitch indicates any issues, didnt show me going online/offline repeatedly. It was a discord bot thing, and even then for only one server now that I think about it (a friends server, annoyed a lot of people and I had no idea until I was done streaming).

But the frame rate issue is originating in OBS since it's showing me that it's only streaming at 20-30fps. And the preview it shows was pretty choppy
 
Everything seems to be good now. Did a 20 minute test stream with no issues. Will post back here if problem arises again.
 
Are you recording in addition while streaming? Does it only occure during a game, like PUBG?
This issue can happen for some games like PUBG or Heroes of the Storm, as those games doesn't seem to be very kind with sharing CPU ressources of the assigned cores with other applications.

Heroes of the Storm in my case for example will reduce the framerate to around 40 to 50, while playing other games works perfectly on 60 FPS

How is the configuration of your streaming buffer? Setting this value too high will also result in framedrops. Setting the buffer to the same amount as the choosen bitrate is in general the best option.

The peak to around 6.200 Bit is fine, as OBS tries commit as much graphic informations as possible into the output, which might result in smaller peaks just to keep a good quality of the content.
 
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