Question / Help Skipped frames recording to external HDD?

[WelshJester]

So i only just noticed this, but when i record to my external USB 3 HDD i seem to be getting skipped frames along with the message stating at the bottom: Encoding overloaded. etc. The message only stays for maybe some seconds then goes away.

I set the recording path directly to my SSD instead and no message popped up in the couple of recordings i tried, it doesn't say anything about skipped frames when recording to the SSD in the log file either. The HDD is a WD My Passport 2TB. My SSD is a Samsung 512GB 840 Pro. Also using a 5820k CPU & 32GB of RAM.

Anyone have any idea on this? And i did check to make sure the external HDD is plugged into a USB 3 port. Is the HDD just not suitable for this? I wouldn't have thought It'd be an issue.

 

[Banyarola]

I would think it would depend on how fast the HDD writes and if the USB port it's plugged into is fast enough to handle the data from the SSD... Just my opinion...

 

[Mroczny_Gustaw]

This is totally normal. USB disks are sleeping unless poked to read/write. When you press record button you send data to write immediately but disk plates need some time to wake up. This is when OBS says its overloaded. Ignore or change usb sleep settings in power options if this realy bothers you - it should not.
Every usb2 hdd should be fine in terms of writing speed. 50k bitrate is 6,2MB/s. USB2 disk can pull 40MB/s

 

[WelshJester]

I see so the skipped frames only happen at the beginning and shouldn't cause lag at other points of the recording? Usually when the drive is already active i only see around 20 or so skipped frames in the log file, though I've seen a couple in the 380 range but no higher.. it's usually after the drive wakes up, possibly not always though.

 

[Mroczny_Gustaw]

I see so the skipped frames only happen at the beginning and shouldn't cause lag at other points of the recording?

yes
usually ~1% of dropped frames in the recording is not big deal
make sure to switch windows from balanced to high performance mode for the time of using obs

 

[WelshJester]

yes
usually ~1% of dropped frames in the recording is not big deal
make sure to switch windows from balanced to high performance mode for the time of using obs

Alright, thank you.

I have a couple of other questions as well so I'm not sure whether to ask here or make a new post, one might be related to the external HDD but I'm not exactly sure, also my windows is already on high performance, it could just be the type of drive i have that parks the head sooner? Anyway i have noticed the slight odd pop/click of sound in some parts of the recordings, could this be related or some other issue?

Second, when i edit & render my saved videos from Sony Vegas i notice the overall quality isn't as good as the original files even if saved at near the same bit rate, would that be because it's going through encoding a second time? I only captured from a smaller (roughly) 720p game window and i noticed it was saved in 1080p, but when i edit and save at 720p or 1080p again it still looks a bit fuzzy compared with the originals. I guess the only option here is to record using other software that records uncompressed video?

 

[Mroczny_Gustaw]

the time after disk goes stand by is a setting in power options in windows
click/pop - set soundcard and obs to the same sampling frequency - for example 48000 so no resampling will be required. also install CoreAudio - info in my signature
every encoding is lossy process. im not sure if I understand correctly but if you record 720p game and end up with 1080p you probably need to disable Rescale Output option in obs output tab. upscaling 720p to 1080 in the encoder wont increase quality