Question / Help Recorded Video Has Massive FPS Drops

[Raspica Blue]

I'm trying to record gameplay and save the video onto a secondary SATA HDD with OBS Studio, but no matter what settings I use, the frame rate of the video is noticeably well below 60fps, even though 60fps is the setting. When I'm gaming while recording, the in-game frame rate on my "test bench" (Rainbow Six Siege) is usually above 150fps, the lowest being around 110fps, so it's definitely not the GPU causing massive frame drops. For settings, I'm using NVENC H.264 because my graphics card is a GTX 1070, and other than that, I've pretty much tried everything there is under Output > Advanced mode > Recordings tab. The Video options are at 1920x1080, I tried out bilinear and bicubic, and frame rate is obviously set to 60. I've attempted to record gameplay both through Display Capture and Game Capture for sources, and I run my game at fullscreen. Display Capture seems to have fewer frame drops, but my videos seem to often end up corrupted.

Strangely enough, the only "fix" I've actually found was putting on an fps limiter to 100fps or below. Of course, that is unacceptable in a multiplayer shooter, so I'd like to see if there are any alternatives. Key note: I just came from Nvidia's Shadowplay, and although it's a solid recording application, its options are severely limited, especially in the audio department. I really like the features of OBS, so I definitely would like to see my one and only (but incredibly dire) issue fixed. If it can't be fixed, I'll unfortunately have to return to Shadowplay because at least its captured footage guarantees 60fps.

 

[Harold]

Post your OBS log and a screenshot of gpu-z.

 

[Raspica Blue]

Let's see if the upload worked...

 

[Raspica Blue]

I don't know how to upload multiple files into a single comment. Don't see any "add additional file" button or anything

 

[Raspica Blue]

Update: I've started running the application in admin mode since I've noticed that I wasn't doing it based on the log. I'm seeing initial improvements in recorded video frame rate, but I'll have to keep retesting in the possibility that the problem is already solved.

 

[BornDownUnder]

Very nice PC setup you have!

Unfortunately you have not included a recording attempt within the uploaded logfile.
Can you do another recording attempt at the same Output settings in OBS, closing down OBS after you have finished your recording attempt then restart OBS and upload the last logfile please. This will also enable in your logfile the profiler time statistics.

 

[Raspica Blue]

New log with OBS Studio 18.0

 

[BornDownUnder]

Cheers for the log,

What are your fps limit and video settings for in-game?
If cap your fps (via MSI AfterBurner, EVGA Precision, or V-Sync though V-Sync can introduce input latency) to 61-63 in-game,
If you reduce your graphics a tad if you have capped your fps should do the trick for smooth recordings & fps in-game.

You should also be able to run a much higher bitrate with your PC setup, should be able to crank it right up to maximum quality at 50k+ bitrate. You could also try using a high quality low latency profile for the NVENC encoder, it will reduce your total file size whilst providing just as much quality at higher bit rates.

 

[Raspica Blue]

@BornDownUnder I just happened to lower the bitrate in an attempt to improve the frame rate, and I didn't yet re-raise it in that log. As for a frame rate cap, I do set it in most games, but for multiplayer shooters like Rainbow Six Siege where I want the lowest possible input lag, not only do I turn down my settings to medium or lower but I also remove the frame rate cap on RivaTuner (the MSI Afterburner companion). Although I did once set a 144fps cap, I saw very little improvement probably because there were some dips to 110-130fps here and there. As stated in my original post, I needed to lower the cap to 100fps or lower to actually get a consistent 60fps in my recordings, and I don't want to do that for multiplayer shooters.

In short, I've already figured out your workarounds before posting this, and I was hoping there'd be a way to not need to cap my frame rate to get 60fps recordings. Thanks for your suggestions, anyway, but I still haven't quite gotten the answer I wanted. I'll try out your profile suggestion for the quality aspect, though.

 

[BornDownUnder]

I find capping it at 61fps via RTSS in battlefield 4 isn't bad, no input lag just dodgy hit rego sometimes. In saying that I have never gamed at 120/144 or with SLI/CF combination.

 

[Raspica Blue]

I find capping it at 61fps via RTSS in battlefield 4 isn't bad, no input lag just dodgy hit rego sometimes. In saying that I have never gamed at 120/144 or with SLI/CF combination.

BF4 is honestly a pretty casual game, and the input lag doesn't matter too much since the TTK is much slower compared to R6S. Also, you can adjust the amount of motion blur to help smooth out lower frame rates; meanwhile, R6S sticks more to competitive play, where raw frame rate output smooths the experience. And like most people with single cards, SLI is still merely a distant dream for me, too.

 

[BornDownUnder]

Sorry for the late reply,

BF4 is a casual fps game for sure, I used it as an example as it has been the most frustrating game for me to nail down the settings just right for smooth recording and game play with my i5 2500 & r9 290x setup.

Whilst it is most definitely advantageous to have your frame rate as high as possible to remove any side effect of frame drops/dips, I have found in testing for myself it is more important to have the most stable frame rate possible (Minimal variance in fps) If you can achieve a consistent frame rate in conjunction with low latency for frame display time, you will enjoy a far smoother experience overall.

Without putting an artificial limiter on your system performance via a frame rate cap, either V-Sync (Which induces input lag) or 3rd party software (EVGA, RTSS, etc) you will run into issues trying to record/stream as your system will prioritize resources to the game first and fore-most. You could try having a higher priority via Task Manager set for OBS Studio than for your game, though I imagine you would have more or less the same issue, just with the choppiness being in-game and not just the recorded footage.

Forgot to mention in my first post, ShadowPlay uses I imagine ultra-low latency encoding, which would be minimum settings possible and relying on high bitrate to achieve quality output, at least that is what AMD does with their ReLive software. You can get far better quality with OBS Studio, just need to cap your fps a bit to let your system breathe a tad more whilst gaming and recording.

If you take a look at your last logfile (Not the logfile you uploaded, the logfile from the last time your recorded game play with OBS) at the bottom of it you will see the profiler statistics, to gauge your recording quality at 60fps recordings you need to have a maximum of 16.67ms for your download frame time, example:
14:46:34.616: ┃ ┣download_frame: min=0 ms, median=0.01 ms, max=4.568 ms, 99th percentile=0.18 ms

As long as you have sub-16.67ms your recordings should be perfectly fine for 60fps. Sometimes you can see a wild variance, such as 200+ms values, this generally happens at the very beginning when the encoder is trying to catch up to what is being displayed at the time when you start to record.