Question / Help Quality of stream is fine, but OBS is slow to respond to commands

T

The Thorn

New Member
Hi everyone,

I'm extremely new to OBS and streaming. I have no idea what I'm doing, really.

I have been trying to stream to Youtube using OBS 24.0.3 on Windows 7 with 8Gb of RAM.

The stream is fine from a user's perspective - I've done plenty of tests with friends and have done a live stream which seemed to work for most people.

However, OBS becomes extremely sluggish while I'm streaming. It works fine until I start streaming - then getting it to respond to commands is a trial.

Here's the latest log: https://obsproject.com/logs/yGlr5ByqyncDN1g7

What should I be doing differently? (short of buying a new computer, which I can't do right now)

Thanks for your assistance on the matter. :)
 
You machine is too weak to do live encoding for real streaming. It's a miracle how OBS starts on that machine.
 
koala said:
You machine is too weak to do live encoding for real streaming. It's a miracle how OBS starts on that machine.
Click to expand...
I figured someone would say that. Oh well.

So there's nothing I can do to help the situation? Change some settings? Use an older/less demanding version of OBS?
 
It's not OBS as program in general. It's the encoding (compressing) of the video that kills your machine. This is a very CPU intensive process. Machines much more powerful than yours still struggle with that.
You might try to reduce the video data to compress by reducing the fps (get down to 15 fps in Settings->Video) and reduce the output resolution to 640x360 or lower. You might also reduce the canvas resolution to that to save GPU resources.

I see from your log you only use some pre-made videos as source. Not real live production like capturing a game or a webcam. If you only mix already recorded content, you might do this with a video editor as well and upload this video to youtube. Not streaming. With this, your PC is able to take all the time it needs to do all processing. In contrast, with streaming the PC has to do all encoding in real time.
 
koala said:
It's not OBS as program in general. It's the encoding (compressing) of the video that kills your machine. This is a very CPU intensive process. Machines much more powerful than yours still struggle with that.
You might try to reduce the video data to compress by reducing the fps (get down to 15 fps in Settings->Video) and reduce the output resolution to 640x360 or lower. You might also reduce the canvas resolution to that to save GPU resources.

I see from your log you only use some pre-made videos as source. Not real live production like capturing a game or a webcam. If you only mix already recorded content, you might do this with a video editor as well and upload this video to youtube. Not streaming. With this, your PC is able to take all the time it needs to do all processing. In contrast, with streaming the PC has to do all encoding in real time.
Click to expand...
The things is, the streaming isn't the issue, the problem really is just on my end; people watching the stream have very little indication that anything's wrong - even at 720p. But the sluggishness limits my ability to move between scenes while I'm streaming my programme.

That said, I may have found a solution: I started clicking "Close file when inactive" on all the files. It's suddenly WAY smoother. Even while streaming.

Does that make any sense?
 
Yes of course. OBS keeps all sources open and active. For active movie sources, they will consume much resources, even if not visible. With that setting you are unloading the movie files and free that resources. Usually OBS keeps them loaded, so starting them is immediate and has no delay.
 
You might be able to disable your stream preview, and that might relive some cpu usage. I've tried it, and I would say that it is useful for older machines and those without secondary monitors. Since you have an old computer, I would suggest this step.
 
koala said:
Yes of course. OBS keeps all sources open and active. For active movie sources, they will consume much resources, even if not visible. With that setting you are unloading the movie files and free that resources. Usually OBS keeps them loaded, so starting them is immediate and has no delay.
Click to expand...
Oh, wow... this may be a game-changer for me. I'm not streaming anything especially demanding - just one clip at a time.

So far I'm not seeing much of a delay from clicking that option on each file. But it's helped the response time considerably. I wish I'd known this from the start.

Thanks for your help so far. I'll continue testing for the next while and see how it goes.
 
SpectreKid said:
You might be able to disable your stream preview, and that might relive some cpu usage. I've tried it, and I would say that it is useful for older machines and those without secondary monitors. Since you have an old computer, I would suggest this step.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the tip. I will look into this, see what the results are. :)
 
Game capture is a type of source you can add in the Source pane. Add a new source and Game Capture will be an option in the pulldown menu.
 
Narcogen said:
Game capture is a type of source you can add in the Source pane. Add a new source and Game Capture will be an option in the pulldown menu.
Click to expand...
Right. Sorry. I had seen it before but forgot about it since it wasn't on my radar.

I just tried it and it works fine for me. There's no sounds, obviously, but image worked fine for me. I chose the "Capture specific window" and that worked beautifully.
 
Game, desktop and window captures all are video only. Audio has to be captured separately by specifying an audio device to capture, either in Settings > Audio or by adding an audio output capture to a scene like any other capture.

Sources added directly to scenes appear only in the scenes they appear in; sources specified in Settings > Audio appear in all scenes.
 
Alright, thanks. Now, have you tried OBS running as High Priority? It is found in your Settings>Advanced. It might help. Also, running as administrator on the newest version might help with performance.
 
SpectreKid said:
Alright, thanks. Now, have you tried OBS running as High Priority? It is found in your Settings>Advanced. It might help. Also, running as administrator on the newest version might help with performance.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I've been running on High Priority since day one. As for the newest version, it doesn't support Windows 7. So not much luck there.

I've been doing tons of testing since Monday and I found that "Close file when inactive" meant that there was a lag between the audio and video during streaming. So I unselected that option on the files that have dialogues, to see if they would sync up and they did. But, by keeping all the other files closed when inactive I minimize OBS' sluggishness on my system. I might be able to make it work this way.

Talk about MacGuyvering it, though...
 
The Thorn said:
Yeah, I've been running on High Priority since day one. As for the newest version, it doesn't support Windows 7. So not much luck there.

I've been doing tons of testing since Monday and I found that "Close file when inactive" meant that there was a lag between the audio and video during streaming. So I unselected that option on the files that have dialogues, to see if they would sync up and they did. But, by keeping all the other files closed when inactive I minimize OBS' sluggishness on my system. I might be able to make it work this way.

Talk about MacGuyvering it, though...
Click to expand...
Windows 7 is outdated. You should update. (It's free without a license I think, and free upgrades.)

Run as administrator, and then give another log. 24.0.3 adds a feature in admin mode that reduces render lag by optimizing GPU allocation, so that might help a bit.

Removing your media sources or creating a new scene with less media sources will reduce strain on computer, but that's a tradeoff that you are going to have to choose to do or not.

Also, when you're uploading a log, include a test recording. It gives us more details about your recording too.

Hope this helps a bit!
 
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