Question / Help [SOLVED] Unidentified Freezing/Stuttering Problem with AMD VCE

BluesAdam

New Member
Hi everyone.

Before explaining the problem, first I should list my pc specs:

  • Motherboard: Gigabyte 990XA UD3 Rev 3.0 (fEH Bios)
  • CPU: AMD FX 6350 3.9ghz
  • GPU: ASUS R9 270 DirectCU II 2gb
  • HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blues 1TB
  • Sound Card: ASUS Xonar DGX Pci-Express
  • Ram: G Skill Ripjaws 2x4gb DDR3 1600mhz CL9 1.5v
  • Monitor: AOC E2262Vw 1080p on DVI
And here are the OBS Multiplatform settings:

  • Recording Format: Mp4
  • Encoder: AMD Video Encoding Engine H.264 Encoder (Media Foundation)
  • Three Audio Tracks (Gameplay, Microphone and VoIP)
  • Profile: High
  • Keyframe Interval: 2
  • Rate Control: Variable Bitrate (Tried CBR as well, no luck)
  • Bitrate: 20.000
  • Use Custom Buffer Size: Disabled (Tried 20.000 and video became entirely choppy and useless)
  • Use Custom Bitrate: Disabled
  • Low Latency: Disabled (This option makes the entire video choppy)
  • Consecutive B-Frame Count: 0 (VCE 1.0 GPUs can not create B-frames thus it is set to 0)
  • Minimum QP: 1
  • Maximum QP: 51
  • Resolution: 1920*1080
  • FPS Value: 30

Now. The problem is that, while recording, out of the blue, the recorded video seems to play at one frame per second for about 10 seconds or so. However, in Arma 3 or DayZ Standalone for example, this problem never happens. But when I try to record The Witcher 3 or Dirt Rally, this problem starts to happen randomly. Here is the latest log file:

https://gist.github.com/36cfb8e8cddccd49c97a

Performance is not an issue. I am monitoring all the system values using MSI Afterburner and in Dirt Rally GPU usage never goes above 60% and VRAM usage is around 1.4gb so it has enough breathing room to power the encoding engine of the GPU. In The Witcher 3, GPU usage is at 85-90% while recording is on, VRAM usage is at around 1750mb (never goes above 1850mb) and fps is capped to 30 and it never dips below 30fps. Frame time value is at stable 33.3ms as well so in both games, fps is capped and rock solid and GPU has enough room to play while recording. I especially make sure GPU is not under too much load and if necessary, I lower the graphical settings because all I care about is a smooth gameplay video.

In the last Witcher footage I recorded, the full video length is 52 minutes 44 seconds and the freezing only happened during one of the two boss fights. I should remind you that the boss fight is by no means abnormally high motion or strains the system any more than the regular gameplay as the fighting scene is very small, there is only a single enemy and not much effects going on whatsoever yet during the fight, in three different places the video stutters horribly for 10 seconds or so. The second fight has 8 enemies and one of the enemies is a magician so there are lots of effects going on very close to the camera and there is no stutter whatsoever. So I don't know what is causing the problem and am stuck. This is really negatively affecting my YouTube channel as I don't want to upload a choppy video and recording again and again but nothing gets fixed.

One thing I noticed is that, although the bitrate is set to 20.000, video properties show that it was recorded at 13.000kbps so there is probably something wrong going on there. I also know that you will tell me to record on a separate hard drive, however I don't think that's the issue because otherwise the whole video would have freezing and stuttering instead of just one part of a boss fight. It sometimes even happens during random cutscenes with no motion at all.

So I am here asking for help, any idea is appreciated. Please help me solve this problem and I will be forever grateful. Thanks for sparing your time and I wish you a good day.

Take care.
 
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BluesAdam

New Member
So, no one here can help me? Please try to help me because this is causing serious headache. Just recorded another Witcher 3 episode, a thirty minutes long video, no freezes at all, but some reason in a very low motion cutscene the video starts to freeze completely. There is no picture flow for more than a minute.

Someone must know something about this. Here is the log file it it helps: https://gist.github.com/36cfb8e8cddccd49c97a

Thanks in advance.
 

BluesAdam

New Member
So, installed VLC Player today and checked video properties as the video was running. At the stuttering part, input bitrate drops down from 20.000 to 3.000.

So something makes the input bitrate drop in some scenes but I do not know what is. If anyone knows anything about it, please respond.

EDIT: Problem solved. In The Witcher 3, cutscene lighting method is different than regular gameplay engine, thus it uses more GPU during cut-scenes. Where the freezing occured, the GPU usage was hitting 99% and it was causing the video to freeze.

Thanks for all the help. Case closed.
 
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