Older Mac & Zoom piano lessons

[juseniah]

Outside of getting a new computer, I’m wondering if there’s anything I can do to improve the performance of my 2012 MacBook Pro when I use OBS to teach piano lessons through Zoom.

I show an overhead camera of my piano as well as my built-in camera, and I sometimes use MIDIculous that displays a virtual piano.

I experience a fair amount of lag that seems to be from the CPU. The lag goes away if I use vanilla Zoom with no OBS.

Would it be advisable to use an older build of OBS?

 

[juseniah]

Anyone?

 

[twindux]

not sure of your setup but a few very general things that always help with framerates/lag/CPU usage:

• Do not use Studio Mode...that is, the two-window setup where you preview the next scene and the current scene both onscreen in OBS
• Use the hardware encoder, if you have one, for stream encoding in your output settings. This would be on a 15" MBP. 13" MPBs do not have discrete GPUs
• What canvas size and/or framerate are you using? If 1080p60, try 720p30.
• Make sure you are not rescaling your canvas to a different output size.

Zoom is also a notorious CPU hog....

 

[gched86]

[QUOTE = "juseniah, publicación: 518078, miembro: 270096"]
Aparte de adquirir una computadora nueva, me pregunto si hay algo que pueda hacer para mejorar el rendimiento de mi MacBook Pro 2012 cuando uso OBS para enseñar lecciones de piano a través de Zoom.

Muestro una cámara aérea de mi piano, así como mi cámara incorporada, y a veces utilizo MIDIculous que muestra un piano virtual.

Experimento una gran cantidad de retraso que parece ser de la CPU. El retraso desaparece si uso Vanilla Zoom sin OBS.

¿Sería aconsejable utilizar una versión anterior de OBS?
[/CITA]

Hola, lo único que ví y quizás pueda servirte es en la sección de ENLACES DE RECURSOS al final de todo
en la página de Descripción General de OBS Studio

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obsproject.com

 

[juseniah]

@twindux, I appreciate the suggestions! I turned off studio mode and dug into my settings. I got the biggest reduction of latency when I reduced the output resolution. It's very low now, but eliminating latency issues is my priority. As far as I can tell, the video quality is still acceptable. Also, I found a lighter application to use as my virtual keyboard. Thanks so much for helping me figure this out!

 

[BitterMelonCamp]

@twindux, I appreciate the suggestions! I turned off studio mode and dug into my settings. I got the biggest reduction of latency when I reduced the output resolution. It's very low now, but eliminating latency issues is my priority. As far as I can tell, the video quality is still acceptable. Also, I found a lighter application to use as my virtual keyboard. Thanks so much for helping me figure this out!

Hi @juseniah (and anyone else who wants to weigh in). I'm trying to do the same thing as you and am wondering if you can tell me more about your computer specs. I'm using a 13" Early 2015 MacBook 2.7 GHz i5 and 16GB of RAM. When I get Zoom and the OBS virtual camera going, my computer gets really loud. Also, if I try to run anything other than OBS and Zoom, the video gets really choppy and laggy. I have my output resolution at 720p and turned off HD mode in Zoom. My scene in OBS consists of two cameras inputs, one from a Logitech C920 and one from my built-in webcam. The Logitech seems to always need manually focusing, which I do through its Camera Settings software. But whenever I open Camera Settings while having Zoom and OBS open, everything grinds to a halt. I'm wondering if my hardware is simply not up to the task. Thanks in advance for any input you might have!

 

[InfluxxMedia]

I'm in the same boat as you, I teach guitar over zoom thru OBS, and the audio lag and CPU usage is diabolical. I mean, we're asking our computers to do a lot so its understandable; capturing, mixing, streaming multiple video sources at once, sharing desktop video, capturing audio. Its quite amazing it can do all this.

When I went through a bunch of tests I found frame rate made a difference to my aging Mac Pro. I could get 20-24 fps cleanly but anything over that got real choppy. See if reducing your frame rate helps lower the burden. Also, regarding audio lag, you just wont get rid of it OBS does not do audio well, at least in older versions. Current version may be better but like you I'm stuck on an older version due to hardware restraints. Zoom just exaserbates the problem as it too is crap at audio.

 

[marcosbacon]

Really nice to see some people going through the same stuff I went for so long.
I've been teaching piano and music production using OBS, Zoom, MIDIculous and Ableton Live (with Keyscape) and after finding the right settings on my MBP(2016, 13', 16gb RAM, i7) it went smoothly for 2 years. Check some of my work on instagram.
Last week I started having issues: the video lagging, even the audio crackled a bit, and something between Zoom and OBS was weird. This is my main job, so I almost freaked out. A friend told me to take my computer for cleaning.
Just got it back, feels likes a different computer. The dust and cat fur was doing a lot of damage to the performance, apparently, specially after 5 years. So be sure to keep your equipment clean, change the thermal paste from time to time.

I tried a similar setup on my Windows laptop and it was a total disaster. Even though it is a fair all around PC (i7, 8gb ram), the fact that it is old and the rest of the chipset is not high-end makes it impossible to run OBS smoothly through Zoom. So I would recommend investing in good gear, preferably not notebooks, with dedicated gpu.

If anyone needs help on the configuration, let me know!