Question / Help Random Stuttering

[Frank Lepore]

For as long as I can remember I've had this random stuttering in OBS. I have no idea what's causing it and I'm sure I've tweaked practically every setting. Here are some funny details:

1) I've basically upgraded every component in my PC this year and everything is high end. The problem occurred both before and after the upgrades.

2) This is a problem that is visible in the OBS preview, and it happens before I begin streaming or recording, so I can assume it isn't internet related.

I'm going to link to a short clip so you can know exactly what I'm referring to; it happens twice during the clip and is most noticeable in the lower left where the webcam is: https://youtu.be/o0o1XYS_AB8. I've also included the log file from that specific stream.

As I mentioned, this problem has basically persisted forever, through hardware changes and when I'm neither uploading or downloading. OBS Studio is completely updated (version 20.1.3) and 64bit.

Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Frank Lepore]

Has anyone experienced this? It seems like it should be an easy fix if I could figure out the cause. :(

 

[Fenrir]

Looks like you're getting some GPU overload due to the sheer amount of sources/filters you have going on.

00:50:25.464: Output 'simple_stream': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 8978 (3.2%)
00:50:29.381: Output 'simple_file_output': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 8573 (3.3%)

I would recommend trying to break out your scenes into Scene Collections instead (menu at the top of OBS) to try and keep the loaded number of sources/filters down as much as possible. All those media sources with chroma keys are going to bog down your GPU pretty quick.

 

[Frank Lepore]

Fenrir, thanks a ton for the input! I've always had all games under the same scene collection and just switched scenes when I switched games (as per the image). Is this not recommended? I've never used Scene Collections in such a way, so am I correct in assuming these are just different scene packages that we can load individually, that prevent all of the excess and unnecessary files from loading during every stream?

 

[Fenrir]

That's correct, yup.

Basically, you want to group them logically with "What scenes would I switch to during an actual stream?" and keep them grouped together. If you have scenes that you'd never use during, say, a Hearthstone stream, you'd move those to their own Scene Collection and group them. Duplicate can help if you have certain scenes you want in EVERY collection, since you can just easily duplicate the main scene, and then delete the extra.

In your case, I would make a Scene Collection for Magic, one for Hearthstone, one for GTAV, etc.

Also, you CAN switch Scene Collections during a stream and it won't hurt anything, but there will be a short (few seconds at absolute most) black screen while the current Scene Collection is unloaded, and the new one is loaded.

EDIT: For further clarification, the reason you want to use Scene Collections is that in OBS Studio, all sources are considered global sources. This means even when they're not active in the current scene, they are still loaded.

 

[Frank Lepore]

I always had a feeling about this, but was never sure how it affected things. Seriously, thanks a ton for the help!