(PS5 via Avermedia LGX2) Dropped Frames in Recording that do not show up in Statistics

[jacenat]

Setup (Details in screenshots at the end)
* Core i5 8600K @4.3Ghz
* 32GB RAM @4GHz
* RTX 3060
* 960gb Samsung Evo Nvme M.2
* Primary Monitor: LG 2560x1080 144Hz
* Secondary Monitor: Iiyama 1080x1920 (portrait) 60Hz
* PS5
* Avermedia LGX2
* OBS 27.1.3 64bit (newest stable as time of release)
* OBS started on secondary monitor

Recording settings:
* Canvas 1080p60
* NvEnc (new)
* CQP 15
* Keyframes 2
* Quality
* Lookahead and PsyVis Tuning on
* B-Frames 2

When I record with this (or stream, same issue happens there), sometimes frames get dropped. However, these drops do not show up in the OBS statistics.
I have a concrete example.

PS5 OBS FPS drop - Second 10

www.youtube.com

At second 10 you can see a handful of dropped frames. These are the OBS stats for this recording (text is in German, but it should be obvious):

No dropped frames on render or encoding.
The log for the session I recorded the video in is attached as 2021-10-16 08-40-06.txt
Curiously, when I set the canvas FPS to 59.97, the behavior changes a little. The recording goes on for a while perfectly, but then has a period of about 10 seconds, dropping straight to 29.985. With canvas FPS at 60, these drops happen more frequently, but are just intermittent as in the video.

The thing is: Recodring in Avermedia ReCentral works perfectly!
It does record in 59.97, but otherwise there are no dropped frames at all there.
So I truly though this is render or encoding in OBS acting up. But evidently, it's not.
I am stumped by this.

Why would this happen?
How can I debug and get rid of this?

Here a few screenshots about my system details:

 

[jacenat]

I have done some more testing. Turns out that this issue also appears on PC gameplay captured through game capture, not only through the LGX2. The following things did not influence the presence of stuttering:

* obs preview on or off
* obs started on the VRR or the 1080p60 (secondary) screen
* encoder settings (nvenc, nvenc new, cbr, cqp, bit rate, lookahead, ...)
* streaming or local recording
* changing the max refresh rate of the VRR display from 144Hz to 120Hz
* starting OBS with administrator privileges or not

I am at my wits end here. Is this even fixable? Or do I have to expect OBS to not be able to be debuggable in this case?

 

[OoRacket]

I haven't been able to fix the issue with capturing my PC games, but my capture card problem was similar to yours. Mine became butter smooth after enabling the "Buffering" option under my capture card's properties inside OBS, if you haven't tried that.

 

[jacenat]

I haven't been able to fix the issue with capturing my PC games, but my capture card problem was similar to yours. Mine became butter smooth after enabling the "Buffering" option under my capture card's properties inside OBS, if you haven't tried that.

Buffering was always on for my capture card. I checked and it's still on.
Just to be sure, I deactivated it, and it did not change the behaviour.
So buffering doesn't seem to influence the problem.

 

[jacenat]

check sonst mal ob die auf dem gleichen USB roothub sind

USB Device Tree Viewer

poste mal nen screenshot des programms hier !

Das kann tatsächlich sein. Ich hab eine kleine logitec Webcam laufen. Sind zwar auf unterschiedlichen USB Slots, aber kann sein, dass beide am gleichen USB controller hängen. Ich schau mir das am Abend an.

und schnapp dir mal den windows update assistenten und bring mal dein windows auf den neusten stand ab 14.12.21 bekommste keine updates mehr

Hmmm .. ich dachte ich hab win10 auf 21H1 upgegraded schon. Hab ich vielleicht mit dem Laptop verwechselt. Seh grad dass im Log 2004 steht. Klär ich auch heute Abend.

Danke auf jeden Fall mal!

 

[jacenat]

Okay, continuing in English:
First of all, my Windows is indeed on 21H1. No idea why the OBS log shows 2004.

About the USB Webcam interfering with the LGX2 capture or the OBS render. Neither is the case. I tested it with the webcam plugged in and plugged out. OBS drops frames (even in preview, as discussed before) either way. Avermedia ReCentral does not drop frames in both cases.

Nevertheless, here the UBS Tree:

The Webcam and the LGX2 are on different ports that, according to USB Tree View, do not even share the same lanes. Port 8 (webcam) shares lanes with port 22 (unoccupied) and port 18 (LGX2) shares lanes with port 12 (unoccupied).

Anyone else has ideas what I can check next?

 

[jacenat]

Been trying to debug this for a while now.
The frame drops also show up on capturing from the same machine directly, of course (monitor capture, windows capture and game capture are all similarly affected).

What I tried in the meantime:

* Switch up encoder settings from NVENC new to NVENC and back
* Switching encoder settings
* Trying GPU-light games (Quake 3) to rule out bottlenecks on the card
* Made sure neither GPU nor CPU is thermal throttling
* Completely re-installed OBS and tried completely empty scenes with just game capture

None of which did change the appearing frame drops.
I am at my wits end now since the OBS logs as posted above do not show anything.

I will resort to record locally via Shadowplay for PC and Recentral for HDMI capture, and just live with the fact that streaming drops frames.
I do think there is somethoing wrong with OBS, probably when running 2 displays with different resolutions and/or dpi scaling and/or refresh rates and/or different vrf capabilities. But without deep debuggin (which I do not have the time for), I can't conclusively confirm that.


:/

 

[Velvetvhs]

Hey there! I have the EXACT same problem as you! I just recently got myself a Avermedia LGX2 and like you say it's butter smooth if I record in RECentral 4 but there's always a slight "lag buffer" that happens every now and then. And as I use this to stream PC games on Twitch with 60 FPS framerate it's so frustrating to see this appearing. Have you talked to AVer Media about this issue? I keep hearing about people with the same issue and I'm thinking I should return mine...

 

[cyclemat]

look your USb ports

USB Device Tree Viewer

not so many devices on the root hub where the avermedia is connected ! and check the temps of the device

 

[jacenat]

Hey there! I have the EXACT same problem as you! I just recently got myself a Avermedia LGX2 and like you say it's butter smooth if I record in RECentral 4 but there's always a slight "lag buffer" that happens every now and then. And as I use this to stream PC games on Twitch with 60 FPS framerate it's so frustrating to see this appearing. Have you talked to AVer Media about this issue? I keep hearing about people with the same issue and I'm thinking I should return mine...

I did not figure this out, unfortunately, but have been living with it ever since. In the meantime I completely re-installed OBS and ReCentral but with no real change to the issue.

I haven't talked to AverMedia about this. My LGX is quite old by now and out of warranty, so I straight up did not bother. It really might be a defective unit. What irks me is that it works fine in ReCentral, so I expect AverMedia to say I am doing something wrong on the OBS side (which would lead to this, fruitless thread).

 

[jacenat]

look your USb ports

USB Device Tree Viewer

not so many devices on the root hub where the avermedia is connected ! and check the temps of the device

I mean ... it's like you did not read the thread at all.
You can very clearly see that the LGX2 is on a separate USB port directly on the root hub.
Unless you can point out what the exact problem is with this, I assume you don't know what's wrong and are fishing in the dark.

"and check the temps of the device"
Yeah ... and how do I do that? It's not like AverMedia exposes telemetry of the device.
Besides, why would it work in ReCentral with the same (or very similar) encoding settings? Why would resolution (dropping to 720p60) not change the issue if it's power/heat related?
Again, I am assuming you are fishing in the dark.

I appreciate you are trying to help, but these posts really do the opposite without some more context on how the achieve or contextualize the things you point out.

 

[Velvetvhs]

I did not figure this out, unfortunately, but have been living with it ever since. In the meantime I completely re-installed OBS and ReCentral but with no real change to the issue.

I haven't talked to AverMedia about this. My LGX is quite old by now and out of warranty, so I straight up did not bother. It really might be a defective unit. What irks me is that it works fine in ReCentral, so I expect AverMedia to say I am doing something wrong on the OBS side (which would lead to this, fruitless thread).

Yes, I was having the same train of thought. I ended up getting back to customer support and filed a return for my unit... Seems like there's a lot more people out there with this issue and I cannot bother i have an old razer ripsaw I wanted to upgrade from but nothing seems to be that much better...

 

[cyclemat]

take a look its only one root hub on the PC when the chipset didnt has enough power i can be the problem try an good PCIE USB card !

and other try is set your main display to 120 hz !

 

[Velvetvhs]

View attachment 80948

take a look its only one root hub on the PC when the chipset didnt has enough power i can be the problem try an good PCIE USB card !

and other try is set your main display to 120 hz !

I'm not really sure what you're talking about, but how would setting the main display to 120 hz do any difference when the card can't handle more than 60 fps anyway? 120 Hz would only make it worse. Like the TS said, you're really not kinda helping at all.

 

[cyclemat]

I'm not really sure what you're talking about, but how would setting the main display to 120 hz do any difference when the card can't handle more than 60 fps anyway? 120 Hz would only make it worse. Like the TS said, you're really not kinda helping at all.

sorry was probably not in the matter you have
a PS5 but look at the graphics on all ports and the hubs are based on a chipset I would just try to unplug everything that is not necessary to see if it gets better if so then you just get a suitable USB 3.1 plug-in card.

 

[Velvetvhs]

sorry was probably not in the matter you have
a PS5 but look at the graphics on all ports and the hubs are based on a chipset I would just try to unplug everything that is not necessary to see if it gets better if so then you just get a suitable USB 3.1 plug-in card.

READ the whole thread before replying. Just replying for replyings sake isn't helping anyone and you're just flooding a thread where people need actual help. Keep that in mind.