Question / Help Really bad lag/freezing in final recording, smooth in game

NDHBadventure

New Member
Hey there. I'm really new to OBS and I've been trying to record some game play. No streaming as of yet. When i say new I mean I have no clue what I'm doing new (sorry).
I'm finding that while playing the game everything is smooth, but when I play back the final recording, not so much. I find that there will be scenes where I can be heard talking about something but the character isn't anywhere near what I'm talking about. An example is: I click on the characters cell phone and I can be heard saying "Looks like we have some new phone numbers here, let's call the first one" but in the recording me clicking on the cellphone doesn't show up. It stays frozen in the spot I was before I clicked the phone. Then the phone character answers and the on screen dialogue can be seen, but it lags and keeps getting stuck on previous dialogue. You can hear me and the characters talking about the dialogue but what the recording captured in terms of video is way behind. Or another example: The main character is in one room talking to another character, but the video hasn't caught up and still shows the main character in another room.

I hope that makes sense. I've been searching for a few weeks for what to do. I changed my output settings to 720, I tried reducing my bitrate. There seems to be a lot of information out there (both good and bad), and between old forum posts, tutorials on youtube and various guides I've gotten pretty confused and none of my plays are recording right.

Here is my log: https://obsproject.com/logs/ANTiB8AgbfHpXSl9

I hope that works. I recorded for around 45 mins today (give or take) so this log is for that record.

Thank you. :)
 

Narcogen

Active Member
12:14:01.260: Windows 10 Gaming Features:
12:14:01.260: Game Bar: On
12:14:01.260: Game DVR: On

Turn these off, they negatively impact performance.

You are trying to do 1080p60 on a machine that is not capable of it. Your machine is completely overloaded during recording.

13:12:43.211: Output 'adv_file_output': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 18751 (9.1%)
13:12:43.217: ==== Recording Stop ================================================
13:13:02.863: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 85476/85533 (99.9%)

You're scaling output down to 720 but you'd be better off just starting there in your canvas resolution, and also dropping to 30fps.

Suggest running the Auto-Configuration Wizard in the Tools menu and see what it suggests. You're using an integrated Intel GPU and it is not particularly strong.

You've also set a bitrate of only 2500 which will not produce watchable quality at 720p60; 3500 would be a minimum even for streaming quality, but for recording you should be using CRF rate control and a quality setting anyway; CBR is for streaming and setting it this way is giving you bigger files without getting you better quality.
 

NDHBadventure

New Member
Thank you, I disabled Game Bar. Game DVR doesn't show up in my settings anymore, but I disabled game mode as well.

I went down to 30 FPS. Changing the canvas resolution to 1280X720 wound up cutting off a lot of the screen in the recording, so I left it at 1920X1280.

The configuration tool suggested 1920x1280 with an output of 1280x720, which I already had set up.

It also suggested I use my hardware as the encoder. CRF isn't an option for my hardware, and I wasn't sure what to pick, so I left it at x264 and changed the rate control to CRF to test out the settings you recommended.

With those settings I'm still having the same problem. Here is the latest log. https://obsproject.com/logs/jWOivURAXr1BEF66
 
Last edited:

Narcogen

Active Member
If you want to use the QuickSync hardware encoder, I believe the rate control option(s) you want are, in order of preference:

  • LA ICQ
  • ICQ
  • CQP

I would definitely try that as your current settings are still overloading the encoder:

22:58:24.499: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 28621/46116 (62.1%)
23:25:33.812: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 21720/22126 (98.2%)


This much lag at only 720p30 indicates that your CPU is really just not strong enough to encode and run your captured application. I would definitely try QuickSync as your best option.

Also according to this log the gaming features are still on:

22:16:32.232: Windows 10 Gaming Features:
22:16:32.232: Game Bar: On
22:16:32.233: Game DVR: On
 

NDHBadventure

New Member
Game Mode and game bar are definitely set to off. I'm on the latest update of windows and game DVR doesn't show up as an option anymore. In it's place is "captures." but I do have game mode and game bar set to off. I also created a new value in the registry to set game mode to off.

I set my encoder to quick sync with LA IQC. Here's the latest log. https://obsproject.com/logs/GJlrK1CFQ8X7HEtO

I think it turned out pretty okay this time. No huge freezes, at least from what I can tell. The only thing I'm seeing now is that on the recording the audio now sounds a bit muffled.

How does the log look?

Also thanks for all your help dude!

ETA: here's another log just in case. https://obsproject.com/logs/LBoIdtpoXIQrHhon
 
Last edited:

Narcogen

Active Member
18:30:13.438: Windows 10 Gaming Features:
18:30:13.438: Game Bar: Off
18:30:13.438: Game DVR: Off
18:30:13.438: Game DVR Background Recording: Off
18:30:13.438: Game Mode: Off


That all looks good.

There's no session in this log, so no performance information, but sounds like you're getting there!
 

NDHBadventure

New Member
No info in either of the logs?

It looks at least from the video that it isn't too bad now. Do you know how many dropped frames it takes to become an issue?
 

Narcogen

Active Member
I mean there is no recording or streaming attempt in the log, so no information is written about dropped frames.

You need to open the app, start either recording or streaming, observe your issue, stop the streaming or recording session, and then upload the log to ensure there is information in the log relevant to performance during streaming or recording.
 
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