Question / Help Streaming issues with NDI Source From Skype - Audio DeSync

S

SeanONeill

New Member
Hi There,

So I've been streaming with three other individuals since around this time last year and have been streaming all of our face cams, mine through my web cam Logitech C920 and theirs through Skype. At first I just did a window capture and then framed each individual into a face cam overlay. But the update of skype stopped allowing this so I started to use NDI source to get their face cams.

Let's just say I've not had the best of luck with this.

The audio from the whole skype gets added in so I have to mute two sources in the audio mixer. Didn't do that for the first attempt so weird echo in stream.

Then cameras would keep moving, seem to have fixed that with inner scale bound in edit transform.

But now, for a new season of content we've upgraded everything, layout, transitions and intro. We go to stream and audio is out of sync but not for everyone. One person is perfectly in time. Then one is slightly out but noticeable, and then two of us are pretty badly out of sync including myself.

Now I attempted to fix this issue the next day with two of them in a test stream. I managed to get myself in sync because the C920 just needed auto lighting turned off. But whilst I fixed the other person's audio sync issues by just deleting all sources and starting from scratch, the person that was only just out of sync suddenly becomes extremely out of sync.

Apart from the change in graphics being used and I believe an update in skype, the only other thing that I've changed is my stream settings by auto configoration wizard. Using this has seemingly made my streams a lot more stable as far as what is getting sent to Youtube though. Could this be causing the audio desync.

Also I now have a stream deck, I didn't before.

Below is my log file. Unfortunately I've run other recording sessions since these issues so I've put a link to one drive of the wordpad files. Hopefully this is okay

Help would be massively appreciated as this is like the biggest time for the content we produce and a lot of work has gone into being really good this year.

https://1drv.ms/t/s!Aqck5cWClTWGhwj71c0zbI41OU7D - The Actual Stream

https://1drv.ms/t/s!Aqck5cWClTWGhwnvWiM1oq8Wy0yf - The Test Stream
 
Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
23:40:00.214: Output 'simple_stream': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 9714 (6.2%)

Your GPU is overloaded. Probably needing to duplicate the NDI sources doesn't help.

https://obsproject.com/wiki/GPU-overload-issues

23:43:49.231: adding 46 milliseconds of audio buffering, total audio buffering is now 278 milliseconds (source: Media Source)
23:43:49.554: adding 116 milliseconds of audio buffering, total audio buffering is now 394 milliseconds (source: Media Source)

System overload is causing audio to buffer.

It's likely that using NDI is more resource-hungry than your old method (and also that Skype's NDI implementation isn't great, but I think you're realized that already.)

Also you should update WIndows as your version has a broken feature that negatively impacts OBS' access to GPU resources:

22:08:04.653: Windows Version: 10.0 Build 17134 (revision: 829; 64-bit)
 
S

SeanONeill

New Member
Thanks for such a quick response.

I'm presuming there is no work around to duplicating the ndi sources as I'm bringing in three different cams. Because we didn't face this issue say back in May and I was doing the same thing then.

I will also try an update my windows to see if that works.
 
Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
Since Microsoft has chosen to implement NDI this way, no. It should have been one separate video/audio feed per participant, but it looks like they chose not to do that, for whatever reason, so I think you're stuck with it.

I use NDI regularly but I abandoned Skype long ago and only ever used it for audio anyway, so I honestly don't know if there's a workaround. I suspect for 1v1 calls it might be fine but perhaps the conferencing implementation is not where it should be yet.
 
S

SeanONeill

New Member
do you think having obs use my CPU instead of GPU could help? I only started researching obs properly this summer and changed the settings because everything I read suggested I'd be better of going through my GPU
 
Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
No.

OBS uses GPU for rendering regardless of the encoder chosen.

Your encoder is either your CPU (x264 encoder) or dedicated hardware on your GPU (NVENC).

Switching from NVENC to x264 in your case will increase CPU load (which I think is causing your audio issue) but not reduce load on your GPU, because the NVENC encoding is not actually loading your GPU, and the rendering lag will still occur because OBS still needs to render every frame before encoding.

Dropping frame rate or frame size would reduce rendering lag. That or a stronger GPU.
 
P

plzhalp

Member
This more or less has been an issue for me as well -- multiple guests via Skype and audio lip synch with all of us at various times lagging or freezing. With one guest it works out fine but adding another always invites chaos.

I've gone in the 'Advanced Audio Properties' and utilized sync offsets to deal with the lip synch and it's hit or miss in that throughout the course of the stream one of the guests will always go awry.

I've attached the log file. My boss invested in an Acer Predator Helios 300 specifically for this project so I'm hoping it's not a lack of hardware. I'm at 12Mbps upload (the other guests are at 9, 11 and 22 -- oddly, the guy at 22 is the one who lags the worst); my boss has offered to upgrade my internet if that were to help but a friend of mine who's used OBS says 12Mbps is sufficient. Basically, he thinks I'm incompetent, ha -- but I'm trying to let him know 3 guests over Skype isn't really what NDI/OBS were intended for, or is this a do-able thing?

Any help is appreciated.
 

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Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
Pretty sure this is just a consequence of Skype's implementation of NDI-- multiple video feeds, one audio feed. I doubt network connectivity is the issue.
 
P

plzhalp

Member
Narcogen said:
Pretty sure this is just a consequence of Skype's implementation of NDI-- multiple video feeds, one audio feed. I doubt network connectivity is the issue.
Click to expand...

Could I theoretically set up a second monitor and fullscreen the Skype guests on there and use Display Capture? I'm using VAC to route the audio into OBS. Or would that invite a whole other slew of issues?
 
Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
Might work, but yes, other issues-- the issue being there's no mechanism that's even trying to keep your display capture in sync with that audio. In theory, NDI should be doing that, but I suspect Skype has done something wonky behind the scenes, so that the audio is always synced with one particular video feed, so if one or more lose sync, the audio is never adjusted.
 
M

Matteo897

New Member
I have the same problem too!

If there's a way to have multiple video/audio feeds would be awesome!

Anyway, I know some people that use Skype NDI with multiple guests and do not experience such problems :-(
 
TAG

TAG

New Member
I doubt there is a fix. I run skype to produce a show where I need to display 2 callers on screen. Audio just will not stay in sync. Why have all these features when they are useless. It's not my PC or my internet connect. I have 500Mbps down 50Mbps up link with 16ms ping and no jitter. My CPU is an intel i7 9900k at 5ghz and mu graphics card is a Geforce 2080ti. 64gigs of ram and nothing but Skype and OBS run when broadcasting. CPU usage is 2.7% and GPU usage is 19%. Now tell me that it is my system.
 
M

maximalgraphics

New Member
SeanONeill said:
Hi There,

So I've been streaming with three other individuals since around this time last year and have been streaming all of our face cams, mine through my web cam Logitech C920 and theirs through Skype. At first I just did a window capture and then framed each individual into a face cam overlay. But the update of skype stopped allowing this so I started to use NDI source to get their face cams.

Let's just say I've not had the best of luck with this.

The audio from the whole skype gets added in so I have to mute two sources in the audio mixer. Didn't do that for the first attempt so weird echo in stream.

Then cameras would keep moving, seem to have fixed that with inner scale bound in edit transform.

But now, for a new season of content we've upgraded everything, layout, transitions and intro. We go to stream and audio is out of sync but not for everyone. One person is perfectly in time. Then one is slightly out but noticeable, and then two of us are pretty badly out of sync including myself.

Now I attempted to fix this issue the next day with two of them in a test stream. I managed to get myself in sync because the C920 just needed auto lighting turned off. But whilst I fixed the other person's audio sync issues by just deleting all sources and starting from scratch, the person that was only just out of sync suddenly becomes extremely out of sync.

Apart from the change in graphics being used and I believe an update in skype, the only other thing that I've changed is my stream settings by auto configoration wizard. Using this has seemingly made my streams a lot more stable as far as what is getting sent to Youtube though. Could this be causing the audio desync.

Also I now have a stream deck, I didn't before.

Below is my log file. Unfortunately I've run other recording sessions since these issues so I've put a link to one drive of the wordpad files. Hopefully this is okay

Help would be massively appreciated as this is like the biggest time for the content we produce and a lot of work has gone into being really good this year.

https://1drv.ms/t/s!Aqck5cWClTWGhwj71c0zbI41OU7D - The Actual Stream

https://1drv.ms/t/s!Aqck5cWClTWGhwnvWiM1oq8Wy0yf - The Test Stream
Click to expand...
did you ever figure this out?
 
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