Random fps drops

[Tomasz Góral]

Why don't the developers respond to the issue of preview stutter? I just don't get it. Like being in a twilight zone. I just wish my brain could understand programming so I didn't have to keep whining like a baby in this forum.

Simple, they don't have any issue.
Because we all have unique components and configuration, is not possible to test all.
Some issue is software problem e.g. drivers, system drivers (Windows), graphics drivers (Nvidia, AMD), hardware drivers (MoBo), other issues is game problems, some game use dynamic fps other static.
I use OBS to streaming from cameras, most often team sports, i got own video server (i will rent to someone, 25 euro per day for 1000 streams), use Quad HDMI card, usb grabbers.
Some times i got problems with video and audio drivers, system drivers, graphics driver, never with OBS.

 

[torma]

Yesterday, when i was playing dota this fps issue occured, after reinstalling the obs , not anymore. It can happens but reinstallation is a key .

 

[torma]

The problem is in installation files which are not known your anti-virus or internet security software, they think that the files are not common.

 

[Witty4ever]

Simple, they don't have any issue.
Because we all have unique components and configuration, is not possible to test all.
Some issue is software problem e.g. drivers, system drivers (Windows), graphics drivers (Nvidia, AMD), hardware drivers (MoBo), other issues is game problems, some game use dynamic fps other static.
I use OBS to streaming from cameras, most often team sports, i got own video server (i will rent to someone, 25 euro per day for 1000 streams), use Quad HDMI card, usb grabbers.
Some times i got problems with video and audio drivers, system drivers, graphics driver, never with OBS.

After many weeks of frustration, I appear to have solved it. I will post a new thread this evening.

 

[luiz freitas]

https://obsproject.com/logs/oYnSVKug3yCnqCQ6
Alguém pode me ajudar? depois de alguns minutos de gravação, no jogo (qualquer rgame) está normal mas no preview do obs começa a lag e isso sai na gravação, com streamlabs também acontece

[ffmpeg muxer: 'simple_file_output'] Saída do arquivo 'C:/Users/User/Videos/2023-01-18 15-24-56.mp4' parado 15:41:04.598: Saída 'simple_file_output': parando 15:41 :04.598: Saída 'simple_file_output': Saída total de quadros: 58043 15:41:04.598: Saída 'simple_file_output': Total de quadros desenhados: 58056 15:41:04.598: ==== Parada de gravação ========= ======================================= 15:41:04.634: aviso: 2 frames restantes na fila ao fechar


32gb ddr4
3080 ti
ryzen 9 5900x
no programa de ação isso não acontece

 

[Marsh]

TLDR: It's windows forcing sync and causing stutters. Get a capture card or second PC for recording

After many, many months I think I have solved my stuttering issues with OBS and Factorio & Win 11. It was a deep rabbit hole that relates to vsync. Same thing as OP, everything is fine, then suddenly it's like the game forgot how to be smooth, then it goes away, starts after about 30 minutes.

It comes down to Factorio (the game I had problems with) being a windowed game (not exclusive full screen,) and windows FORCING desktop vsync, which creates timing errors when OBS tries to record a frame, and it has to skip it. OBS being a windowed program, also gets vsync forced upon it by windows. Some games you can turn off vysnc, which solves the stuttering, but then the content can look like garbage with tearing. You might be able to fix this with exclusive full screen and no secondary screen(s), but most people who record or stream have secondary screens to monitor what is being recorded.

Having some form of sync is integral to video, and the seeming lack of a "buffer" in this chain creates the occasional stutter. There doesn't appear to be a buffer when recording "internally," doing screen captures or the like.

The main issue here is having the playback computer and the recording computer being one in the same. The source (game) and the destination (obs) need to have sync decoupled from each other. You get this by having two separate computers, one for gaming and one for recording/streaming. When it's the same computer, the content (game and recording program) gets synced together, for better or worse, whether you want it to or not, by windows. I now see why so many streamers have a 2 PC setup, it's not that their computer can't handle both at the same time, it's to get around OBS stuttering issues.

I fixed it by getting an internal capture card. I no longer record the desktop or game capture. The video goes in and out of the capture card, and to my monitor. Zero input lag. Because the content is coming through an external cable and not a screen/desktop/game capture, obs is free to make it's own sync and the video does not stutter. It helps that there's a buffer you can enable in the capture card settings in obs, I'm sure it helps that the card can buffer the video and make it smooth and ready for obs to record it.

It's perfectly smooth now, zero stutters. It's just recording what I see on screen through the HDMI cable, doesn't matter if it's desktop, full screen, exclusive full screen, it's all the same, smooth. I still have my secondary monitors to see what's being recorded and that has no effect on the results.

It really does come down to trying to record your screen as opposed to an external video signal (even if that same signal originated on the same computer) 4K 200 Mbs zero dropped frames zero stutters. Took like a year to figure this out T.T

 

[TKTV]

TLDR: It's windows forcing sync and causing stutters. Get a capture card or second PC for recording

After many, many months I think I have solved my stuttering issues with OBS and Factorio & Win 11. It was a deep rabbit hole that relates to vsync. Same thing as OP, everything is fine, then suddenly it's like the game forgot how to be smooth, then it goes away, starts after about 30 minutes.

It comes down to Factorio (the game I had problems with) being a windowed game (not exclusive full screen,) and windows FORCING desktop vsync, which creates timing errors when OBS tries to record a frame, and it has to skip it. OBS being a windowed program, also gets vsync forced upon it by windows. Some games you can turn off vysnc, which solves the stuttering, but then the content can look like garbage with tearing. You might be able to fix this with exclusive full screen and no secondary screen(s), but most people who record or stream have secondary screens to monitor what is being recorded.

Having some form of sync is integral to video, and the seeming lack of a "buffer" in this chain creates the occasional stutter. There doesn't appear to be a buffer when recording "internally," doing screen captures or the like.

The main issue here is having the playback computer and the recording computer being one in the same. The source (game) and the destination (obs) need to have sync decoupled from each other. You get this by having two separate computers, one for gaming and one for recording/streaming. When it's the same computer, the content (game and recording program) gets synced together, for better or worse, whether you want it to or not, by windows. I now see why so many streamers have a 2 PC setup, it's not that their computer can't handle both at the same time, it's to get around OBS stuttering issues.

I fixed it by getting an internal capture card. I no longer record the desktop or game capture. The video goes in and out of the capture card, and to my monitor. Zero input lag. Because the content is coming through an external cable and not a screen/desktop/game capture, obs is free to make it's own sync and the video does not stutter. It helps that there's a buffer you can enable in the capture card settings in obs, I'm sure it helps that the card can buffer the video and make it smooth and ready for obs to record it.

It's perfectly smooth now, zero stutters. It's just recording what I see on screen through the HDMI cable, doesn't matter if it's desktop, full screen, exclusive full screen, it's all the same, smooth. I still have my secondary monitors to see what's being recorded and that has no effect on the results.

It really does come down to trying to record your screen as opposed to an external video signal (even if that same signal originated on the same computer) 4K 200 Mbs zero dropped frames zero stutters. Took like a year to figure this out T.T

While I agree having a second pc with capture card would help immensely, there are many with single PC's without issue. There has to be a simpler (cheaper) way to resolve this. Also, when enabling buffering in the capture card settings, you also add a delay to the viewer.

 

[dacoffeeboy]

Hello, I made this account to help some people that's still looking in 2022.

So if your pc in-game drops frames when OBS is open and when it's closed it's fine.
If you go into task manager and OBS is using way to much memory.

If you got a mic installed on OBS, as the on that you set up to talk, if you put a filter on it called ''Noise Suppression'' inside you have 3 options.

Spexx.
RNNoise.
Nvidia Noise removal.

MAKE SURE ''Nvidia Noise removal'' IS NOT SELECTED. then reset OBS and it should be fixed.

Its Resource hungry.

My Specs.

3070 TI Founders, X570s arous, 1TB m.2 arous, 16GB 3600Mhz Ram.

So pc is perfect to run any AAA game and high and stream in 1080p.

Hope this helps, Happy 420

I know this is kind of late, but this helped me alot. I'm in a very open room with other people, and my mic is very sensitive. The only way I figured out to cut out everyone else is using nvidia noise removal, and that caused a frame drop around every 3-4 seconds, and changing that fixed my problem. Thank you!

 

[Faz8]

TLDR: It's windows forcing sync and causing stutters. Get a capture card or second PC for recording

After many, many months I think I have solved my stuttering issues with OBS and Factorio & Win 11. It was a deep rabbit hole that relates to vsync. Same thing as OP, everything is fine, then suddenly it's like the game forgot how to be smooth, then it goes away, starts after about 30 minutes.

It comes down to Factorio (the game I had problems with) being a windowed game (not exclusive full screen,) and windows FORCING desktop vsync, which creates timing errors when OBS tries to record a frame, and it has to skip it. OBS being a windowed program, also gets vsync forced upon it by windows. Some games you can turn off vysnc, which solves the stuttering, but then the content can look like garbage with tearing. You might be able to fix this with exclusive full screen and no secondary screen(s), but most people who record or stream have secondary screens to monitor what is being recorded.

Having some form of sync is integral to video, and the seeming lack of a "buffer" in this chain creates the occasional stutter. There doesn't appear to be a buffer when recording "internally," doing screen captures or the like.

The main issue here is having the playback computer and the recording computer being one in the same. The source (game) and the destination (obs) need to have sync decoupled from each other. You get this by having two separate computers, one for gaming and one for recording/streaming. When it's the same computer, the content (game and recording program) gets synced together, for better or worse, whether you want it to or not, by windows. I now see why so many streamers have a 2 PC setup, it's not that their computer can't handle both at the same time, it's to get around OBS stuttering issues.

I fixed it by getting an internal capture card. I no longer record the desktop or game capture. The video goes in and out of the capture card, and to my monitor. Zero input lag. Because the content is coming through an external cable and not a screen/desktop/game capture, obs is free to make it's own sync and the video does not stutter. It helps that there's a buffer you can enable in the capture card settings in obs, I'm sure it helps that the card can buffer the video and make it smooth and ready for obs to record it.

It's perfectly smooth now, zero stutters. It's just recording what I see on screen through the HDMI cable, doesn't matter if it's desktop, full screen, exclusive full screen, it's all the same, smooth. I still have my secondary monitors to see what's being recorded and that has no effect on the results.

It really does come down to trying to record your screen as opposed to an external video signal (even if that same signal originated on the same computer) 4K 200 Mbs zero dropped frames zero stutters. Took like a year to figure this out T.T

which capture card do you have? if it's not too much trouble, would you mind recording a video from the back of your PC on how the cable goes? Been trying to fight this for the past half year since I've had my PC and I'm going crazy

 

[ProgFoxx]

Been dealing with this phenomena for years. Like, since the program came out. Here's my two cents:

It's definitely OBS, but the devs don't seem to look into it thoroughly enough for this to get solved. Competing apps don't contain the stutter (you know which ones). It happens on a window, display, game or video capture. It happens with/ without Gsync, it happens with/ without vertical sync and when limiting framerates. It happens on recording, streaming and on the preview window. I've tested this over the years with multiple different PC's, TV's, monitors, phones and tablets for the playback -- the microstuttering exists on all of them.

Here's the other fun part: Some people simply don't "see" it. Like, the micro stuttering is not noticed by some people even though they are looking right at it. Some people have a good eye, and others don't -- and unfortunately some folks that don't have a good eye are mishelping with this issue.

If you watch 80% livestreams that have 60FPS and are using OBS, you will see the same microstutter. Would love a fix. My going theory is everyone actually deals with this, but not everyone can notice it.

 

[sblantipodi]

Please try to leave an OBS window opened, in this way windows does not put OBS in the background processes list.

Please see if it improves the problem

 

[crisvsv]

I have same issue , stream is micro-stuttery for no reason..tried from lowest to highest nvenc preset no matter what the gpu usage is... How is OBS not fixed this i don't understand..please fix.

 

[crisvsv]

OK so disabling fullscreen optimisations for obs helped a bit, but most helped is desktop capture instead of game capture. For some reason, it's way smoother like this, for me. It still does it from time to time but not as bad or as for long. This issue is really pissing me off so yea... :))

 

[Graslu00]

I'm running into the exact same issue OP described, random frame drops while OBS is reporting constant 60FPS and my game is also running at a fixed 60FPS with no drops. What's even more strange is that this is on a dedicated streaming PC with an internal capture card (AverMedia GC573) with a 2080 Super, i7 9700k and 32GB RAM so it shouldn't have any issues with performance. It's like for some reason OBS keeps reverting back to 30FPS for 5-10 seconds and goes back to 60FPS, then repeat every few minutes.

I've done everything on this and other threads online and I just can't nail down why this is happening. It's driving me insane. Same issue on Streamlabs OBS, completely fresh scenes and groups, everything...

 

[Marsh]

I use this exact same capture card, and it's still working for me with no micro stutters. First thing you need to do is make sure you're not playing on the same screen you're recording. You do this by using the HDMI passthru of the input card. So HDMI from your GPU into capture, then out of capture onto screen, and play on that screen. This decouples the two screens and simulates having two computers. There's two screens, the one that the capture card pulled, and the one you're playing on.

If you expect it to be smooth while doing game capture, screen capture, or anything that isn't an external signal being input, you will not get rid of the stutters. It's part of windows. I used to record on a win7 computer and it was fine.

Go into the capture card properties and make sure buffering is enabled. The lag won't effect you since you're not gaming on the obs window. Then look at all your GPU sync settings. Turn off gsync/freesync for sure. Make sure to switch to full screen mode so the GPU can control sync. In windowed or borderless mode windows controls the sync, and I think that is the source of these micro stutters. In game, if v sync is on, turn it off, and if it's off, turn it on. In my case, the game is Factorio which is a windowless full screen game, so turning off sync helped, because in windowed mode windows is going to give you sync if you want it or not, it's baked into the OS.

Also you should probably make sure your desktop and game are synced to the same framerate you want... 60. You want to create the *exact* signal you intend to record. If you get rid of the micro stutters then come back here and see if you can get a higher FPS if that's what you want.

Another way to test your input card is to plug in a console to the HDMI input and see if there's any stutters. If there are, then the problem is either your capture card or OBS settings. If there isn't, then the issue is windows sync as mentioned above. Use full screen mode with v sync on or off, whatever is smoother. It was an eye opening moment for me when I plugged my switch in and it was perfectly smooth.

 

[Graslu00]

Good call about testing a console, I'll do that soon. Usually the games I stream are 60FPS max, and I use borderless fullscreen so Windows applies v-sync or else the capture card will have a lot of screen tearing. Using the in-game v-sync options either introduce tons of input lag or outright doesn't work (old emulator things).

Problem about doing the whole GPU -> Capture Card Input -> Output to GPU is that my monitor only supports DisplayPort for 165Hz and that's my main refresh rate if the game is not on emulator. Again with the whole borderless fullscreen I never had issues with tearing or mismatching framerates causing stutters, it just started to happen just because.

I'll test the console thing soon, and also lowering the refresh rate to 120Hz to see if it makes any change.

 

[Marsh]

Good call about testing a console, I'll do that soon. Usually the games I stream are 60FPS max, and I use borderless fullscreen so Windows applies v-sync or else the capture card will have a lot of screen tearing. Using the in-game v-sync options either introduce tons of input lag or outright doesn't work (old emulator things).

Problem about doing the whole GPU -> Capture Card Input -> Output to GPU is that my monitor only supports DisplayPort for 165Hz and that's my main refresh rate if the game is not on emulator. Again with the whole borderless fullscreen I never had issues with tearing or mismatching framerates causing stutters, it just started to happen just because.

I'll test the console thing soon, and also lowering the refresh rate to 120Hz to see if it makes any change.

A big thing to avoid tearing is to play the games at the same frame rate that you're recording at... 60hz. Playing higher than that is asking for problems. If you're going to do it, do it at 120hz because at least that is a multiple of 60. It will be a little janky but you can convert HDMI to displayport, so long as the data rate is low enough for HDMI. But video capture cards are almost exclusively HDMI, so that's what you're going to have to use. My monitor has two inputs, one is HDMI for 4K60, and the other is DP for 4K144. You can switch between them as your games demand, but ultimately you're going to need to work with HDMI and it's limitations unless there's a capture card out there that takes DP.

Another thing you can do is do a mirrored split screen, send one to the input card and the other to your monitor, but they're going to need to be identical signals, limited by the HDMI and your capture card.

 

[sblantipodi]

A big thing to avoid tearing is to play the games at the same frame rate that you're recording at... 60hz. Playing higher than that is asking for problems. If you're going to do it, do it at 120hz because at least that is a multiple of 60. It will be a little janky but you can convert HDMI to displayport, so long as the data rate is low enough for HDMI. But video capture cards are almost exclusively HDMI, so that's what you're going to have to use. My monitor has two inputs, one is HDMI for 4K60, and the other is DP for 4K144. You can switch between them as your games demand, but ultimately you're going to need to work with HDMI and it's limitations unless there's a capture card out there that takes DP.

Another thing you can do is do a mirrored split screen, send one to the input card and the other to your monitor, but they're going to need to be identical signals, limited by the HDMI and your capture card.

stupid question, but is it possible to record taking into consideration of the VRR (variable refresh rate) ?
most players uses GSYNC or FreeSync, is it possible to record the screen with OBS taking VRR into consideration?

 

[Marsh]

stupid question, but is it possible to record taking into consideration of the VRR (variable refresh rate) ?
most players uses GSYNC or FreeSync, is it possible to record the screen with OBS taking VRR into consideration?

Will it work, yes. Will it work well, no. Constant (and the same) refresh rate for both monitor and video will produce ideal results.