Question / Help suddenly dropping frames/ lagging

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Retrofuture

New Member
I have been streaming consistently with the same settings for the past few months, but when I started up my stream the other day it was incredibly unstable. None of my settings changed. Restarting my PC / internet changed anything and I did an internet speed test to see if my internet had slowed, but its the same as it has always been. My CPU is an i5-6500, my graphics card is an amd R9 380, and I have 16 GB of ram. I am encoding my stream through the H264/avec AMD encoder with a bitrate of 4750, pre pass mode enabled, audio bitrate of 112, bilinear downscale filter to 1280 x 720 at 60 FPS. My stream has had no problems for the past several months until it started acting up just the other day.
 
R

Retrofuture

New Member
BornDownUnder said:
Unfortunately the logfile you uploaded does not contain any streaming attempt output...

Can you do a few minutes' worth of streaming (Doing what you would normally do in-game) then stop the streaming session, then upload a current logfile please so I or someone else can further assist in troubleshooting:
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/please-post-a-log-with-your-issue-heres-how.23074/
Click to expand...
https://gist.github.com/5fdb9e3a191a7b57f0c3a1889b940b97 here is the log file.

also the stream worked fine once yesterday with all the same settings as above, except with a bitrate of 4750.
 
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B

BornDownUnder

Member
Your scene 'esea que' has both Monitor and Window Capture as sources.
Using Monitor Capture in the same scene as Game/Window Capture can have a detrimental effect on performance as Monitor Capture is essentially 'always on':
Game/Window capture grabs the frame directly from the graphics card for OBS to encode before sending it back to the graphics card for final rendering of the frame.
Monitor capture has the graphics card write the frame to system RAM (Which is really slow to write/read from) before OBS grabs it to encode, then sends it back to the graphics card to render for final output.

If you want to use Monitor Capture, you should create a scene for it by itself without any other capture methods included in that scene.

From your logfile:
12:16:52.481: Output 'adv_stream': Total frames output: 14152 (24407 attempted)
12:16:52.481: Output 'adv_stream': Total drawn frames: 23923 (24498 attempted)
12:16:52.481: Output 'adv_stream': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 575 (2.3%)
12:16:52.481: Output 'adv_stream': Number of dropped frames due to insufficient bandwidth/connection stalls: 10255 (42.0%)
12:16:52.481: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 3/24434 (0.0%)

You some very very minor encoding lag, I would not even concern yourself about this as I think it would clear up once you get the rendering and bandwidth issues under control.
You have some rendering lag. Given the game is cs:go, do you limit your fps in-game? If not then you need to set one as your GPU just can't keep up with the load of high frame rates and rendering the frames whilst streaming.

In saying that, it isn't even an issue at present in comparison with your bandwidth related issues.
Deal with this bandwidth issue first and foremost, it is the most important one.

Standard internet speed tests are not indicative of actual throughput for streaming performance/potential. Can you go to the below link and download r1ch's TwitchTest utility, it will assist you in finding the best Twitch ingest server for your location to stream via.
Below is a link to R1ch's TwitchTest Utility. It will assist you in selecting the most optimal Twitch ingest server based upon your location:
https://r1ch.net/projects/twitchtest
It is best to do a medium length test duration.
Once it has completed choose the server that as first priority, has the highest Quality and second priority, the lowest RTT (Round Trip Time) For good stream throughput, quality should be 80+.
TwitchTest utility will also provide the estimated potential (Twitch only allows up to 6,000 kb/s) bitrate you can stream to for each particular server as well, which may or may not assist you in regards to your upload speed.

Can you upload a Windows Snip (Found via Start Menu --> Windows Accessories --> Snipping Tool) of the results of TwitchTest please.

Also, can you upload the logfile of the stream that worked fine please, for a comparison.
 
R

Retrofuture

New Member
wow, thanks for the help! The log file for the stream that worked is no longer in my log file folder.


TwitchBandwidth.PNG
 
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BornDownUnder

Member
Going by your results from TwitchTest, Ashburn is your best, New York is ever so slightly behind.
You do not want to stream via an ingest server that has less than 80 (r1ch has stated that minimum 80 quality should provide a good stream output)

For the stream session you did where there was no issue, was it at a different time of day than normal? If so, it may give an indication of network congestion (Whether it be your local area or your ISP) which leads on below:

Are you seeing any other issues in regards to your internet connection? Are you noticing download or upload speeds less than normal from regular sites you download from or upload to?

In regards to streaming via Twitch:
Going by the TwitchTest results, you should have no issues whatsoever at 4750kb, you could even do the maximum recommended of 6000kb via Twitch. I am guessing it is an issue with your ISP and the route they send your stream data on to the Twitch ingest servers at present. Maybe it is a peering issue, in which the other ISP they peer with (Have a deal to offload data when their own routes are becoming congested) are not increasing bandwidth enough to allow for the increased load?

If there is no other apparent issues with your internet connection:
Unfortunately there is nothing much you can do at this point, in regards to tracking down where along the lines the problem is by means of a traceroute to the Twitch ingest server (They block ICMP calls, to which your traceroute attempt will time out)
The only real alternative is to contact your ISP and ask them if they are having issues with their their own route to the Twitch ingest servers (Let them know the location of the Twitch server for a better idea of the region) or their peer partner, as you are seeing poor performance only when streaming to Twitch. You may have to research for the specific IP addresses of the Twitch ingest servers you have chosen to stream to (There will be multiple, it could be any of them that you connect to each time you stream)

There is however, a newer driver available for your NiC, the link below is to Intel's download page:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/82186/Intel-Ethernet-Connection-I219-V

Out of curiosity, who is your ISP?

Side note,
I have seen a few new posts of this recently as well. Same scenario as yours, similar results from TwitchTest utility.
 
R

Retrofuture

New Member
You have gone above and beyond man, seriously, thank you.
After switching servers(which i find strange because i am very much in the west, but the best servers are in the east, and deleting the ESEA que scene i tried streaming again, and it worked great. Here is the log file if you are interested: https://gist.github.com/43bcb7278d0555236679f64b3da83b1c
I live in a college dorm, so maybe the internet just had a fit and we were not informed about it. regardless, thank you so much man you have really helped a ton. all the best.
 
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BornDownUnder

Member
No problem at all, unfortunately the logfile you uploaded in your last reply is incomplete (It does not have a recording/streaming attempt within)

I also noticed whilst looking at that logfile you have a 64 bit OS, yet you are running the 32 bit version of OBS. Your first logfile is from a 64 bit version of OBS, do you by chance have two versions of OBS installed? The 64 bit version of OBS will provide a small uplift in performance (Especially for x264 encoder)
 
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BornDownUnder

Member
The latest uploaded logfile again doesn't display any streaming attempt output. All good though.

Am just glad to hear your streaming attempt is performing as expected :)
 
E

elsieespinoza99

New Member
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millssteven

New Member
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