OBS Videos Look Laggy Despite No Dropped Frames

[sYnapZiX]

This is a problem in OBS since forever and nobody does anything about it...

I have a system that could do multiple simultaneous recordings/streams yet OBS fails to capture simple 60fps videos. It does not matter what HZ your display is, it does not matter if you have perfect frame timings (verified via RTSS), it does not matter if you have 70% gpu overhead free and 94% cpu overhead free, and it does absolutely not matter what settings you use, OBS will ALWAYS produced duplicated frames.

It happens in all cases but to specify one, trying to record Ori and the Will of the Wisps: Having the game running via Steam or just simply cracked (since everybody is mentioning Steam as the big culprit, which spoiler alert, it isn't) does not make any difference at all, this isn't even technically possible since Steam doesn't inherently cause lag spikes, a game may do so while loading or compiling shaders but Steam, nope, period, anything else someone is telling on this forum is just plain and simple wrong.

Limiting the game/monitor to 60fps/hz (vsync or via external tools do not matter at all) has my GPU (a RTX 3080) 25-35% taxed (depending on the scene ingame of course), the CPU (a Ryzen 9 7950X3D) is hit with 4% load in this game, which leaves 65-75% overhead on the GPU side and about 96% on the CPU side. RAM with 64GB of DDR5-6400 and SSDs (6 seperate 1TB Samsung EVOs, 1 for the OS, 3 for Games, 1 for Downloads and 1 for Recordings) are no concern either. OBS recording/streaming does next to nothing to influence these values since (if setup correctly) it encodes on a seperate video encoding processor on the GPU, the video encoding processor of my GPU is taxed 30% while recording/streaming which leaves me with another 70% overhead to encode video yet still OBS is dropping frames.

The ONLY way to capture smooth 60fps video with OBS is with a secondary rig that is equipped with a capture card. Everybody telling something else is either blind and unable to see that his recordings are stuttering or just lies, period.

And no i'm not posting 100 logs since i've verified myself already (i'm capable of reading, thanks) that nothing shows up wrong in them.

 

[Suslik V]

It does not matter what HZ your display is, it does not matter if you have perfect frame timings...

Frequencies does matter. Each frame is next or previous. If there is jitter or floating, then, in the edge case, you are either still in previous or already in the next frame. Frame length is huge in comparison to the frequency difference, thus there is room where all works OK.

 

[benmlnt]

The ONLY way to capture smooth 60fps video with OBS is with a secondary rig that is equipped with a capture card. Everybody telling something else is either blind and unable to see that his recordings are stuttering or just lies, period.

You are almost SPOT ON. I've noticed that I've NEVER had duped frames on my console recordings with my Elgato.
The weird part is that I tried to record the Elgato with both OBS and Elgato's own software, and when recording with OBS I had stutters, whereas recording through the other software was fine.
And this is also possible with a single PC and a single monitor. You just have to duplicate your display instead of extending it (with Windows+P).

So basically, to solve this problem: throw money at it and never record with OBS or Shadowplay. And that's such a shame because setting up a capture card is much more annoying.

 

[benmlnt]

Will also add that the only relevant video that I ever saw on this topic is this one:

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

It does seem that this issue is caused by some kind of sync issue between your PC's framerate and OBS's recording framerate. I did a lot of messing around and I have been able to sync almost perfectly my monitor's framerate with OBS, with a tear line that almost never moved. BUT after a few recordings, I was unable to solve the problem. I couldn't see it myself but I suspect that the tearing line moved a lot more when I was ingame, so it probably still touched the edges of the screen and created tearing. Either that or this wasn't a real fix, but there seems to be a lot of truth in what the guy is saying.

I truly hope OBS devs will wake up one day and fix this. It's clearly possible since recording through an Elgato software does not cause any duped frames, ever.

 

[NpexX]

I actually tried capping the FPS with RivaTuner at several different values, including exactly 62 FPS, multiple times. Unfortunately, none of the FPS limits made any difference in my case.