Question / Help Random stuttering in preview which goes into recorded videos.

[darthclide]

I have the same problem as OP. 0 Frames dropped due to rendering lag. 0 Frames dropped due to network issues. OBS reports the preview is 60fps, but it appears like 30fps from time to time.

I have tested on multiple versions of Windows 10, and a 2018 version of Windows 7. My hardware is as follows:
Intel 8700k
Asus Maximus X Hero motherboard
RTX 2070 EVGA Black Edition
16 GB 2666 G.SKILL RAM
Samsung 960 EVO 1TB

 

[howlingshinobi]

Try the following:

- Go into the NVIDIA Control Panel
- Click on Manage 3D Settings
- Scroll down to Monitor Technology. Make sure it is set to Fixed Refresh
- Scroll down to Vertical sync. Change it to Adaptive (half refresh rate)

Also, I found that the Windows Preview player can show choppy playback when the footage is in fact smooth. So I sent the video to my phone to be absolutely sure and it worked perfectly.

Hope this helps.

 

[Some1CP]

I have the same problem as OP. 0 Frames dropped due to rendering lag. 0 Frames dropped due to network issues. OBS reports the preview is 60fps, but it appears like 30fps from time to time.

I have tested on multiple versions of Windows 10, and a 2018 version of Windows 7. My hardware is as follows:
Intel 8700k
Asus Maximus X Hero motherboard
RTX 2070 EVGA Black Edition
16 GB 2666 G.SKILL RAM
Samsung 960 EVO 1TB

I have the exact same issue, but with a capture card instead, the HD60 Pro. Already tried different drivers and Windows versions, but no difference. The game feels like it drops to 30fps randomly, whice it's running at locked 60fps.

 

[darthclide]

Try the following:

- Go into the NVIDIA Control Panel
- Click on Manage 3D Settings
- Scroll down to Monitor Technology. Make sure it is set to Fixed Refresh
- Scroll down to Vertical sync. Change it to Adaptive (half refresh rate)

Also, I found that the Windows Preview player can show choppy playback when the footage is in fact smooth. So I sent the video to my phone to be absolutely sure and it worked perfectly.

Hope this helps.

Ah, but here is the kicker: I thought the same thing you did. I saw that the output was smooth at the same time as my preview being choppy. But after further testing, I discovered that the stutter shows up in the output at random. The only way to quickly fix it is if you are not recording/streaming. You switch the colorspace or color range to something else, and then back again. Boom, the stutter immediately disappears until the next random stutter segment comes along. But this obviously doesn't help if you are streaming or recording. Clearly OBS needs to work on this bug, since it can be temporarily fixed by changing settings INSIDE obs.

*Edit* Furthermore, your suggestion assumes this bug exists only on variable refresh rate monitors. It occurs for me on plain old 60hz panels. Oh, and this stutter never existed before last year. OBS gave up on this problem 4 years ago when a few people reported it (I didn't have this issue then though). My hope is that with more posts they will have no choice but to fix this glaring bug that should take priority over frivolous design changes or "bugs" that can often be fixed with a little money or a more standard streaming setup. (aka, not Linux or Mac, or knockoff brand peripherals)

 

[BK-Morpheus]

If the CPU and GPU load is not running into a bottleneck at any time, the process priority won't do anything.
Also keep in mind that OBS has its own setting for the process priority within OBS, which might override whatever priority you set in the taskmanager, as soon as you hit record/stream.
If there is a CPU / thread overload problem, the higher priority in OBS will simply throttle the other process (for example the game) instead of the encoding process of OBS. So you might get some performance hits ingame instead of OBS stutter.
If you allow your game to run without limits at max fps, a high OBS priority can help (although sadly the priority is only for CPU, not for GPU). A better soution would be to cap the game fps to whatever your system can hold steady without pegging GPU/CPU load on max.

 

[Bramblejack]

@Lapppy has the method you've explained here: https://obsproject.com/forum/thread...-stutters-every-10-minutes.39269/#post-179644 still working. I'm also looking for a fix to this issue since my monitor reports 59.997Hz (even forced with CRU) so I'm thinking it may be related to this as well.

Have you also tried Game Capture with RTSS to limit the FPS to 60? If you're using V-Sync you propably think you don't need it, but RTSS evens out the frame time and maybe that's the issue as well? Technically Screen capture should be affected by the refresh rate, while game capture by the framerate and frame time, but if it was that easy the issue would propably be fixed by now.

 

[darthclide]

but if it was that easy the issue would propably be fixed by now.

Yep. Do not forget that this is **random**. This makes most solutions not work, because most solutions are relying upon a specific problem that happens in the same way like clockwork.

My second monitor died 3 weeks ago, and since then I have been on 1 monitor. The preview stutter still happens, but it feels like it might be happening less often? My second display just arrived today, and I have seen the stutter happen less often as well, so maybe Windows pushed an update that I wasn't aware of?

This is still irritating to see the preview stutter show up in my broadcast in spite of there being 0 dropped frames due to encoding lag.

**Edit** Nevermind. It looks like the stutter comes and goes like it always has. every 10-15 minutes it comes for 20 seconds and then leaves. In addition I get weird "jumps" at sporadic times as well.

 

[Bramblejack]

I was messing around with G-Sync and came to some weird results (not related to G-Sync in any way). While I was testing it, I was also testing different refresh rates and for some reason the game capture was also affected by the refresh rate of the display (with G-Sync OFF), which is weird as from what I've been told it should be affected by the frame rate.

What I did was I set my display to 63Hz and launched Minecraft with nVidia V-Sync ON and in-game frame limit set to 60. Recording the game at 60FPS gave me an unbearably stuttering footage. I brought the refresh rate back to 60Hz. This time the recording was smooth as butter (at least for the time I was recording). The thing is, my display refresh rate when set to 60Hz is actually refreshing at 59.997xxxHz and at this point I'm leaning even more towards the idea of the refresh rate being the issue here. However, whether the fault is on the display or OBS side is another story.

 

[BK-Morpheus]

Did you make sure, that you set your refreshrate back to 60Hz, when you watched the 60fps recordings?
If not, the discrepancy between 60fps video on a 63Hz display is enough to introduce visible stutter while watching.

That's the reason, why my 70Hz monitor is set to 60Hz (and I edited the refreshrate to exact 60Hz with the Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) software).
As I want to reduce input lag, I do not simply activate freesync and vsync. Instead, I limit the game framerate (with RTSS for example) to 58fps, so I still have the benefit of freesync but not the additional input lag from vsync. Problem is: 58fps ingame in a 60fps video/stream will not look smooth, so my workaround is this: Set the monitor to 75Hz and the fps limit to 60fps. Start game, record. Close game, stop recording, set fps limit back to 58 and the monitor refreshrate back to 60Hz.
I do this procedure only, because I rarely record/stream and as most online video content has 25, 30, 50, 60 fps, I will get smoother playback with 60Hz instead of 70Hz.
If my monitor would go up to 144Hz, I would set it to 120Hz to be compatible to common video framerates and limit ingame fps to either 120 or 60fps (depending on the GPU load of the game).

 

[Bramblejack]

Did you make sure, that you set your refreshrate back to 60Hz, when you watched the 60fps recordings?
If not, the discrepancy between 60fps video on a 63Hz display is enough to introduce visible stutter while watching.

Yes, I made sure that this was the case.

I tried CRU as well, but my display still reports 59.997 on displayhz.com, someone on reddit told me that it is how nVidia GPU does it.

I'll try to mess around with the refresh rate once again since I have Freesync as well. I was trying to use G-SYNC compatibility mode, but maybe I should try Freesync instead.

Could you also post a screenshot (can be through PM) of your CRU settings? Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

 

[BK-Morpheus]

Sure, this is my CRU setting:

 

[darthclide]

I assume none of you have tested long enough to confirm these ideas 100% completely remove the problem? As stated in the OP, it is the random part of this bug coming and going that is so frustrating. If your stutter is happening 24/7 then you need to move your discussion to a different thread please.

 

[Bramblejack]

Has anyone tried to test this with High Precision Event Timer either enabled or disabled? I would but I don't have such option in BIOS since I'm on a laptop and I don't know whether it is enabled or not by default. I can disable it in the system, but having it enabled in BIOS and disabled in the system is supposedly a bad idea and I personally don't know where my settings are standing. It just had an idea that it may somehow affect this.

 

[darthclide]

Has anyone tried to test this with High Precision Event Timer either enabled or disabled? I would but I don't have such option in BIOS since I'm on a laptop and I don't know whether it is enabled or not by default. I can disable it in the system, but having it enabled in BIOS and disabled in the system is supposedly a bad idea and I personally don't know where my settings are standing. It just had an idea that it may somehow affect this.

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?83654-HPET-and-Windows-10-on-RVE

It seems there are no programs today that use this timing anymore. So if someone else wants to try it, by all means go ahead. I just don't see how it will help any.

 

[Pink0Panda]

Did anyone find a fix for this? I never had any issues until about a week or so ago and can't seem to track what or exactly when it started. The game will be a smooth 60 across the board then ill notice in the preview and stream that its stuttering to a framerate somewhere between 30 and 60 yet OBS preview and twitch both say I'm holding a solid 60.

 

[kzpl23]

Nope still having issues. 2 PC setup one for gaming one for streaming. I ditched the capture card since i had issues with 144hz monitor and the 60hz capture card.. i thought thats why my obs preview was all messed up so last night I set up NDI and still have low fps in obs preview and it goes into recording too.. pretty much looks like 30fps even though everything is set to 60. Had this issue forever now and cant figure it out. I did an hour recording yesterday with fortnite and i only had like 40 lagged render frames on my gaming pc so it was still 0%. Dont think thats an issue.

I did try capping my frames in game and that makes no difference.

 

[Pink0Panda]

Yea a month later and I still seem to have this issue, just a real shame because I never had this issue until my original post. Can't think of anything that could of changed it and have tried a variety of options to fix it.

 

[aezaungo]

OK, I've done some more testing and here are the results... I've recorded a few more hours of footage and so far so good. The micro-stuttering in the preview window on the streaming/recording PC is no longer visible (to my poor eyes at least), and the recording had no micro-stutter either. The only problem I had was when I did some editing in Sony Vegas afterwards (I use it to clean up my microphone's audio track). The rendered video had a bit of a micro-stutter to it but I think this was due to the fact that I recorded the footage with the same fractional FPS value that the OBS frame-rate setting on the gaming PC was set to (59999/1000) and my Vegas settings were set to render at 59.94fps (Vegas Pro 15 doesn't allow me to use a constant 60fps or any other custom value) so... I'm no expert but I think that by setting OBS video settings on the recording PC back to 59.94fps, it should be better for editing in Vegas.

I've recorded some footage at 59999/1000 and also at 59.94fps, I didn't get around to rendering the 59.94fps footage in Vegas to see if the rendered video was stuttering but there wasn't any visible difference when I played the videos with PotPlayer and the preview in OBS was hunky-dory during the recording as well. So my guess is that it doesn't matter what frame-rate you use on the recording/streaming PC as long as the OBS frame-rate settings on the gaming PC is an exact match to the recording/streaming PC's monitor refresh-rate.

So in conclusion... For a 2 PC setup using NDI plug-in follow these steps:

1- Verify what the exact refresh-rate is on the streaming/recording PC's monitor by using https://www.testufo.com/refreshrate (the refresh-rate might say 60Mhz but it could be slightly different like in my case 59,999Mhz)

2- On the gaming PC, under the OBS video settings tab, set the frame-rate to match the refresh-rate of the streaming/recording PC monitor by using the "fractional FPS value" setting (for example in my case : My monitor = 59.999Mhz ; setting the Numerator to 59999 and the Denominator to 1000 will result in a 59.999fps value)

The preview window on the streaming/recording PC should no longer have any micro-stutter and you should be able to stream or record your gaming at whatever frame-rate you wish without any trouble.

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to be as thorough and comprehensive as possible for anyone less knowledgeable about OBS video and frame-rate settings. This method seems to work for me, I hope it helps anyone with a similar setup.

Hi, brother I think you solved my problem in the ndi stream. I've been testing it for weeks, I thought there was a network or ndi problem but I always saw that there was a sync problem but I don't know exactly what. Lots, I did a lot of tests on fps settings, 60 59.4 etc. finally staying at 59.4 fps was the most ideal for me but it wasn't perfect. but now I looked at the monitors one
59,996hz the other 59,940hz. I brought them in sync and it works. currently both monitors are at 59,940hz, obs 59,94fps, RTSS fps limit 59,940, This was now a short test which worked well later i will do more and write! thanks

 

[aezaungo]

Hello! ( 2 PC NDI Prewiev , record and stream stutter)

Not my best English, sorry I try to somehow understand how I tested the frequency problem between 2 monitors. (preview lag in stream pc) NDi 2 pc stutter sync problem is supposed to be solved. So I've read here that the 2 monitors operate at different frequencies. I tested them all at https://www.vsynctester.com/. In my gamer case i use IPS monitor is 59,997 hz. And my second monitor old 100 year old samsung monitor (stream pc) is 59,948 hz. Now this monitor is terrible even in the test itself. https://www.vsynctester.com/ Now I tried these broken obs fps settings 59997/1000 etc. It helped a bit, but it wasn't perfect. My idea was to unplug this old monitor from my Stream pc and plug in my good ips monitor 59,997 hz (to stream pc) ((Now in game pc not have monitor) ) which set it at 60fps in both obs!. Funny and I started playing on the stream pc preview image. And the picture was perfectly fluid ZERO lag. I started thinking then how to fix it so that the wrong monitor would have a good preview, recording stream. It's very simple. Both PCs and obs need to turn on performance mode .

postscript. I locked the game to 60 fps with Nvidia inspector. limiter in v2 mode. perfect picture. I also tried Uncapped fps but it wasn't 100% fluid



It offered me a solution. 144hz and other problems I can't help. But maybe this thread might offer you a solution. I don't know how I helped with this, I hope so. Good luck for everyone

 

[relaksmedia]

I’ve had the same issue for the longest time now. I am sure I have tried a good chunk of the given possible work arounds on this thread. But here’s what I have known to somehow work in my case.
I am running OBS as Admin, I have 2 monitors same refresh rates but the game monitor has a 21:9 aspect ratio. What I tried the other night is set the base canvass and output to match my game resolution (2560x1080) it’s working smoothly so far. I will post an update if the issue comes back.
I hope this helps, and I hope this really fixes my issue.