Question / Help Spikes in CPU usage

[Rehan]

I'm having some major issues with the ExtremeCap U3 at 1080p and 1080i when CPU usage gets above 20%-30% (which OBS sometimes does). I don't know whether it's considered flickering or stuttering or what, but it's completely unacceptable. I have an Intel i7-4770 CPU.

Here's a sample video of the problem:

I was just zooming in and out of a corner of the room, and after a few seconds in the video you'll see the problem.

I emailed Avermedia technical support about it, and they said that the CPU usage could be the problem... But 20-30% is not very high. I'm still trying to find a way to resolve this issue.

 

[Rehan]

Hi, folks. I'm new to OBS and hoping to switch to it from FMLE. My biggest issue is with CPU usage, because the AVerMedia ExtremeCap U3 video capture device I'm using has some major problems when the CPU usage goes above 20%-30%. I've discussed it with AVerMedia and reinstalled the drivers, so there's nothing else I can do from their end. (The problem is worse with FMLE, because it uses the CPU even more than OBS.)

The PC has an Intel i7-4770 CPU with 8 GB RAM and an Nvidia GTX 660 video card. My input is 1280x720 at 30 fps, and I would like to broadcast at that same quality. I'm also saving the stream to a local file.

I typically run OBS for about 2-3 hours at a time. About 80% of the time, the CPU usage of the OBS.exe process hovers nicely around 5%, but sometimes it goes up beyond 30% for several seconds. Then it goes back down by itself without any intervention.

What could be the cause of CPU usage spiking once in a while? Would it make a big difference if I don't save to file?

Thanks for any suggestions.