Bug Report Odd CPU Spikes & Total System Drag on Catalina (OBS 24 & 25)

[vexir]

On both OBS 24 and 25, I'm having CPU problems once in a blue moon (got it 2x on back to back days now). When they happen, it devastates my stream. During the bug, there's an intense CPU spike from OBS that drags my whole system down. (confirmed in Activity Monitor)

Crazy drop in bitrate, other programs become totally unusable, delayed keyboard input, slow video source playback (like overlays), etc. Sometimes it shows a warning about encoding delay, but not always.

The most important thing I want to note is that I stream often with the same settings, day in, day out.

• x264 encoder at ultrafast, 1080p, 30 fps, 4500 kpbs on a 2016 MBP, quad core i7, 16 GB RAM.
• Not recording.
• Primary sources:
  • A full screen alerts browser source
  • a display capture
  • a webcam capture
  • a small .webp webcam frame loop
  • a browser source for chat
  • a few static images
  • a dynamic text field

Most of the time this is perfectly smooth, performance wise. Only occasionally does OBS start completely going haywire on the CPU usage. The only fix I've found is to modify my bitrate to any other value and change it back, and that sometimes fixes it for about 30 min before I have to do it again. That fix only works about 50% of the time.

Log files across two days of streaming - May 4th had a few start/stops as I tried to restart OBS, restart my computer, drop resolution etc. May 5th had no restarts and is a single log, but you can probably see me twiddle the bitrate for the bandaid fix I mentioned above.

 

[Tangential]

I see similar spikes and freezes since I upgraded to Catalina whether I am using OBS or not. I see them occasionally in Finder or Safari too. I’m using a 15” 2015 MBP

 

[vexir]

I'm not seeing this with any other program. It only happens during OBS streams, and I can confirm that it's OBS through Activity monitor.

 

[vexir]

I had the same issue on stream today - this is 4 streams in a row now. At times, I could fix it - removing a .webp video loop from my interface seemed to clear it up after a while. Then 5 minutes later it hit me again, and this time I removed a browser source for chat (From streamlabs). That fixed it again as well.

I know that OBS has issues with .webp playback due to a CEF bug, but previously it was just a playback problem. Now potentially this is a new clue in the CPU usage spikes as well?

Here's the latest log - you can probably see the performance improve after I turn off the .webp and then again after the chat browser source: https://obsproject.com/logs/qJpgANjFht1fUpqN

It's very clear this is not a performance issue - it's a bug. My system doesn't just decide to exhibit poor performance all of a sudden.