Periodic Preview / Output Stutters/Jitters | Changing Settings Makes No Difference

S

Snoozyy

New Member
For a couple of months, I've been having an issue in OBS where, for a certain amount of time, the preview would begin to stutter, and that would also follow along in YouTube. (Sometimes the preview stutters while the output doesn't.) I've changed absolutely nothing from when this began to now, and even then, changing any type of setting in the output section does not bring any change. The stutter eventually goes away, as if it "catches up" to itself and doesn't appear until some random amount of time later. I know this isn't related to any game that I am playing, either, as OBS sometimes is already jittering/stuttering in the preview once I open it up.

TLDR: preview/output stutters
  1. Changing any output setting does not make any difference
  2. fixes itself after 30 seconds to a minute until it happens again (random given time)
  3. 1920x1080 @60FPS
  4. All monitors purposefully @60HZ when LIVE (happens on all refresh rates)
  5. No specific trigger factor (that I've found)
  6. Can occur with nothing open on PC
  7. 0 render, encoder, or network lag (from stats page)
  8. Happens on DISPLAY CAPTURE (DXGI & WIN10) & GAME CAPTURE (WIN CAP not tested, presumably the same thing)

Also, something to note, but I highly doubt it's the root cause; I use a BEACN Mixer, which samples at an unchangeable 96000 Hz w/ OBS running at 48000 Hz. Just thought it was important to drop this in there, in case it comes up at some point.

LOG (if this even shows anything important): "started streaming" with jitter, ended when it smoothened out

Analyzer | OBS

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers or record your own videos with high quality H264 / AAC encoding.
obsproject.com obsproject.com

Been dealing with this for a few months now, so any support would greatly be appreciated!
 
Try creating a New Scene Collection, add just (1) Source.
Change your Preset to P5 & Multipass to qres.
Run a test & see if there's any improvement.

If you don't use your iGPU, disable it until you get the stuttering to stop.
 
rockbottom said:
Try creating a New Scene Collection, add just (1) Source.
Change your Preset to P5 & Multipass to qres.
Run a test & see if there's any improvement.

If you don't use your iGPU, disable it until you get the stuttering to stop.
Click to expand...
Tested all three; results are the same.

I should have also clarified that it's more of the preview/output dropping to something around 30FPS. Obviously, 60 --> 30 gives the same stutter effect, but either way, it's still not smooth. Smooth --> drop --> Smooth

Also worthy to note that if the drop to 30 begins, if I go into the video settings and immediately change it to something, then back to 60, it instantly solves the problem. Obviously not ideal as this can't be edited during livestreams, but just something to note.
 
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Something is up & causing lag but don't think OBS is the issue. Not sure what you're capturing but try something different.

Can you provide the log with the changes? A complete log would be needed, there's info at the end that may be helpful.
 
rockbottom said:
Something is up & causing lag but don't think OBS is the issue. Not sure what you're capturing but try something different.

Can you provide the log with the changes? A complete log would be needed, there's info at the end that may be helpful.
Click to expand...
I was capturing my desktop, with a Steam window open, just moving that around as it stuttered and lagged in the preview. As mentioned, I "stopped streaming" when it smoothed itself out. Of course, I wasn't actually live anywhere. No matter what I capture, it's everything on the display capture itself, so nothing that I capture/move around really matters. And again the same thing will happen on game capture so, I don't know what to believe the cause is.

Log: https://obsproject.com/logs/f7lhOtRUyQG6tBWI
 
Your OBS log is clean. Game Mode can be enabled & HAGS disabled but I doubt either will help. I think it's Steam. I uploaded a small 1 minute video for testing purposes. Give it a shot, there should be no skips or duplicate frames shown in the Preview.

I also like to record it. Then I'll test the recording frame by frame to confirm there's no dups or skips.

https://www.filemail.com/d/opaibtfwlevxslz
 
This is where things get complicated in my situation. When I record it, the recording is perfect, perfect frames, no jitters/stutters IN THE OUTPUT, even though while I was recording, my OBS preview was like it was set to 30FPS. I do believe that this is one of the cases where it stutters in the preview and not the output, although there are times when it will stutter in both. No matter what program I have open, the entire capture just "drops to 30 fps".

I've found a lot of other different threads that seem to talk about the issue perfectly, and this issue has seemingly gone on for upwards of 7 years now. From what I can understand, it just seems to be some sort of syncing issue between something, and that results in the random stutters. I discovered most of that information after I posted this thread, it just sucks having things like this happen, especially when you want a smooth stream.

One interesting thing I've seen is when the preview drops to that "30" fps (or whatever it is), it does it for all the scenes. If I switch to my starting soon screen, for example, it remains in "30" and, just like the other scene, will randomly fix itself. It seems to just be an issue that drags everything in OBS along with it. This issue started a couple of months ago randomly, and so pinpointing a solution has been hard.
 
It's not complicated & it's not OBS causing your pain. It's lag, bad sources, settings, rig issues, drivers are the far more likely cause.

Where's the log with the test video?
 
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