Recordings stutter but game is fine

[LucasVeras]

My recordings are getting stutters and I don't know what to do anymore. I replaced my entire system (GPU, MOBO, CPU and RAM) and the problem still persists.
I even changed platforms (AMD to Intel).
It doesn't matter the encoder, the bitrate, if the game is uncapped or if v-sync is on or off.
The problem even happens in Shadowplay too.

The problem is that a couple of months ago I didn't have the issue. It started out of nowhere.

My specs:
Intel i5 10400
RTX 3060
16GB RAM
2TB Corsair M.2 SSD

Unsuccessful troubleshoots:
• Game Mode: On and Off
• HAGS: On and Off
• Recording to other drives.
• Reinstalling Windows
• Installing Windows 10 and 11.
• Recording with only one monitor connected.
• Setting both monitors to 60hz.
• Older NVIDIA drivers.
• Different encoders.
• Different bitrates and configurations inside OBS.
• etc

Here's a log from a recent test recording: https://obsproject.com/logs/IVZwsRGxvvRGeXDb

Here's a video of the problem: https://youtu.be/obN-cFkd4Qk (recorded in my old system, but the problem is the same)

Please, any help is aprecciated!

 

[RicoZuave.TTV]

could u fix this???

 

[Acey05]

In the logs I'm seeing HEVC, so I'm going to assume it started in the 28 version of OBS and you're trying to use nVidia?

The defaults settings are bad, they have massive performance cost which affects both the OBS Streaming and Recording and most budget cards won't be able to run it properly, even depending on the kind of vsync they use.

This is especially obvious if your GPU is being hammered, even if you didn't get it for a few months, anytime your GPU needs to "hang" and load stuff (like new textures or assets that weren't in memory) or you defragged your PC and didn't play a game for many months, the casual small game "stutter" that is already pegging your GPU will pretty much kill your recording on you GPU.

- Reduce the Preset to 1 or 2, these are the free encoders which don't put stress on your GPU (even if Medium is the old High Quality, something changed here)
- Disable all other options and do a Single Pass (some cards cannot run Two Quarter).
- If using QCP, you can technically drop your BFrames to 0 (up to you).
- Make sure you run OBS as Admin.
- Key Interval is on you, some people recommend 1 but it makes for huge file sizes, and so on. It's makes editing videos easier at the cost of space.

If worse comes to worse, you might need to drop to H264 since it's technically lighter then HEVC (I couldn't find any information on nVidia Documents if HEVC required to use CUDA or such things which makes the performance worse, unlike H264).

 

[LucasVeras]

In the logs I'm seeing HEVC, so I'm going to assume it started in the 28 version of OBS and you're trying to use nVidia?

The defaults settings are bad, they have massive performance cost which affects both the OBS Streaming and Recording and most budget cards won't be able to run it properly, even depending on the kind of vsync they use.

This is especially obvious if your GPU is being hammered, even if you didn't get it for a few months, anytime your GPU needs to "hang" and load stuff (like new textures or assets that weren't in memory) or you defragged your PC and didn't play a game for many months, the casual small game "stutter" that is already pegging your GPU will pretty much kill your recording on you GPU.

- Reduce the Preset to 1 or 2, these are the free encoders which don't put stress on your GPU (even if Medium is the old High Quality, something changed here)
- Disable all other options and do a Single Pass (some cards cannot run Two Quarter).
- If using QCP, you can technically drop your BFrames to 0 (up to you).
- Make sure you run OBS as Admin.
- Key Interval is on you, some people recommend 1 but it makes for huge file sizes, and so on. It's makes editing videos easier at the cost of space.

If worse comes to worse, you might need to drop to H264 since it's technically lighter then HEVC (I couldn't find any information on nVidia Documents if HEVC required to use CUDA or such things which makes the performance worse, unlike H264).

I tried changing my settings to your recommended ones, but it didn't change much. The stutters/lags are still there.

 

[Acey05]

I tried changing my settings to your recommended ones, but it didn't change much. The stutters/lags are still there.

What about H264 instead of HEVC? I never found luck with HEVC since I started using it (it can stutter the video on pretty much any indie game on a 1060 for example).

If you want to make sure it's not your PC that's the problem, try recording on the cheapest QuickSync option possible, with a high quality CRF or CQP (like 16 or something) and check the video.

The file size will be huge, but it literally could narrow down if it's a PC issues (slow HDD for example) or HEVC itself.