Question / Help Problem with Framerates and Apple VT H264 Hardware Encoder on Mac OS X High Sierra 10.13.6

[Karr Galaxy Studios]

Hi Everyone,

Spent the last 6-7 hours tackling a difficult OBS issue on a Mac Retina 13-inch Mid 2014 laptop after OS was recently updated to Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.6 and When the latest version of OBS got updated to version 22.0.1..

Every time "Apple VT H264 Hardware Encoder" was used the OBS install would crash after starting with a pretty ugly kernel/memory dump error report.

this started happening after the user upgraded the OBS version to the most current version.

CCleaner app was run and cleaned up a lot of garbage on the machine as well which seemed to fix things a bit.

I tried going back to previous versions, wiping the old OBS installation, running the cleaner and starting over as well as renaming the entire ./Library/Application Support/obs-studio folder. First time fixed the starting problem of the app.

I was able to get it working again but soon found out it was because of the hardware acceleration is not working properly.

I then tried working around the hardware encoding by using H264 settings. Everything i tried.. doesn't matter what framerates, color settings etc seemed to only get the performance to below the proper frame rates at around 20-23 fps while idle (ie not streaming). CPU usage was around 10% idle and 30% while streaming but the stream clearly was not keeping up with the intended frame rates. I tried various buffering rates.

Bitrate was set to 5000 bitrate CBR. No networking issues were a problem and Youtube reported good stream performances. Could even go higher if necessary.

Users reported audio was out of sync with the video which tells me that the framerate is still not working correctly.

Trying to stream to 720p @ 5000kbps CBR with NV12 color space and the usual proper encoder settings for H264 (main, none, etc..)

My user is using a C922C Logitech webcam on USB 3.0 ports. Even managed to install Logitechs latest driver for Mac on its website which hasn't helped the issue.

Is there a bug in the latest OBS version for running on Mac OS X High Sierra?

Is there anyway to enable or fix Hardware Acceleration? Anyways to diagnose the Apple VT H264 Hardware Encoder?

Is there a way of using Intel Encoding on the mac rather then Apples VT hardware encoder.

Please share your experiences and suggestions. Yes this seems to be a more recent issue.

At this point i can't figure out what may be causing the frame rate issues as performance doesn't seem to be a problem on the machine.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Karr Galaxy Studios]

Hardware Encoder now crashes on startup occasionally (randomly) but not giving the log file details now (can't provide one yet). Framerate performance is still poor yet CPU usage is low. i don't get it.

 

[Karr Galaxy Studios]

Latest update: Streaming now seems to freeze after 5 secs of streaming during a stream test however the image from the camera now works. We ended up installing the Logitech specific driver for the Webcam (latest version) for Mac the other day which seemed to unlock more options for controlling the camera through OBS.

Next thing to look at for me is going to be power saving features of the laptop. Apple menu > System Preferences and click Energy Saver and deselecting automatic graphics switching and other power saving features has been suggested.

OBS appears not to be crashing as often however.

Does anyone have any recommendations on Buffering settings for OBS for the camera itself.. (not the bitrate of the stream) there is an option to buffer.

I'll keep everyone posted.

 

[Narcogen]

Hard to answer anything without a logfile.
That said, I use OBS regularly on Sierra (not High Sierra) but I don't have a CPU that supports the hardware encoder, so I wouldn't be able to troubleshoot that portion myself.

 

[Karr Galaxy Studios]

Update: Clicked Filters in OBS and it crashed today. Log file attached:

 

[Narcogen]

That probably needs its own bug report.