Question / Help System crashing when using OBS through the GPU

[The Gent]

Hi there,

Only downloaded this today and I've been playing around with it. I'm having an issue that When I use the Radeon codec options...the program spits it back telling me that it's overloaded and crashes the program. Something I found odd as I run my Raptr recording software natively through the GPU at higher settings with no issues. Can someone help me work out how to fix this please?

The requirements I have for recording are as follows:

- 2 separate tracks, one mic audio, one game/desktop audio.
- GPU-based - the games I play are heavy-CPU usage and my CPU spikes to 100% usage causing obvious issues in game-play.
- 1920x1280p, HD quality (I am unsure what bitrate to use, but I know using 2500 was woeful quality last time) however, will be willing to concede 1080x720p if there's just no way around it.
- ONLY using it for recording to my SSD. I am NOT looking to do a stream.
- Framerate not so important, but I feel 20FPS is getting a little low. 30FPS preferred.

Here's the log:
https://gist.github.com/2cf8108059c5726d40d07992ac534e2d

Is there any way I can get around this issue? Thanks!

Specs:

Intel i5 4590
Radeon R9 290 (not overclocked)
32GB DDR3 1600 RAM
Corsair 1000W PSU

 

[FerretBomb]

Raptr/"Gaming Evolved" causes problems with OBS, due to the way the process hooking works. Uninstalling it completely is recommended.

You'd likely be best served by downloading the VCE branch of OBS. It can use the same on-card encoders that R/GE does. They deliver extremely poor quality compression, and bitrate will need to be used to compensate. If you're recording locally, 20,000kbps or so would be recommended for 1080p video, and then re-compressing later using Handbrake or another non-realtime video encoder to get the filesizes down.

If you were able to use some CPU, there's an excellent guide to perform low-impact local recording:
https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/how-to-make-high-quality-local-recordings.16/
It will result in vastly better video (even if it still will use quite a bit of bitrate), and remove some of the artifacting that can crop up when using on-card hardware encoder solutions. Make sure to follow ALL of the steps if you try the above guide; a lot of people will do most and skip some, get bad results, and complain. All of them are vital.

 

[The Gent]

Raptr/"Gaming Evolved" causes problems with OBS, due to the way the process hooking works. Uninstalling it completely is recommended.

You'd likely be best served by downloading the VCE branch of OBS. It can use the same on-card encoders that R/GE does. They deliver extremely poor quality compression, and bitrate will need to be used to compensate. If you're recording locally, 20,000kbps or so would be recommended for 1080p video, and then re-compressing later using Handbrake or another non-realtime video encoder to get the filesizes down.

If you were able to use some CPU, there's an excellent guide to perform low-impact local recording:
https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/how-to-make-high-quality-local-recordings.16/
It will result in vastly better video (even if it still will use quite a bit of bitrate), and remove some of the artifacting that can crop up when using on-card hardware encoder solutions. Make sure to follow ALL of the steps if you try the above guide; a lot of people will do most and skip some, get bad results, and complain. All of them are vital.

Copy that, thank you for your detailed response.

I will uninstall Raptr (will disabling via task bar context menu it be sufficient for test purposes?).

As for the VCE branch of OBS, as I mentioned, I'm very new to the software, I don't know where to find that or what it is, could you please point me towards the download for that? Thank you.

File sizes won't be an issue - I record to a 1TB SSD and have 7TBs of HDD storage space to move them to and re-render them through Sony Vegas when I edit them into a film anyway. It's simply getting the file at an acceptable quality that I'm having the issue with at the present time!

I will certainly consider using the CPU and I will try to set it up using the guide (exactly the same, as you recommended) if I can't get the GPU option to work, It's just the game I'm looking to record is ARMA 3 which is massively CPU-based (My i5 4590 probably gets to around 70% usage just with the game playing as normal) and as you can imagine, that does not sit too nicely with the CPU-based rendering on top of that, peaking to 100% quite often and at horrible quality with artefacts aplenty! (I was watching task manager/CPU temps and the preview on my second monitor to confirm it was the issue)

Thanks again with your response if I have any issues, I'll check in and see what's going on. Did the log produce anything useful to reflect on?

Also, given my specs, do you feel I should be able to achieve what I'm looking for with some tweaking or might it be a bit ambitious?

I'm considering a higher-end i7and overclocking (birthday soon) would that greatly help or only slightly do you reckon?


Regards,

The Gent

 

[FerretBomb]

Here you go: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/obs-branch-with-amd-vce-support.13996/

The CPU-based best-recording settings are pretty simple, and very lightweight. It might be worth creating a new Profile in your current version of OBS, and adding the settings there before jumping to the VCE branch. I'm not sure how they will impact an i5, but my old i7-920 was able to record smoothly at 1080p@60fps with almost zero impact on the Ultrafast preset (and the bitrate used compensated for the bad compression).

Do make sure CFR is enabled; Vegas tends to pitch a fit unless it is.
Also, my sympathies. Yeah, just about anything Bohemia Interactive has put out lately has been terribly optimized, and runs into the same CPU load issues.

An i7 really is helpful when it comes to video work. If you plan to get into livestreaming, a 5820k will give you a lot of slack to work with, and room to crank down your presets. For primarily gaming and some recording, an i7-6700k should be fine. If you're looking for bang-for-buck though, an older 4790k is the way to go. It's not the speediest any more, but you can pick them up for fairly cheap compared and the performance-per-dollar ratio is pretty darn good.

 

[The Gent]

Here you go: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/obs-branch-with-amd-vce-support.13996/

The CPU-based best-recording settings are pretty simple, and very lightweight. It might be worth creating a new Profile in your current version of OBS, and adding the settings there before jumping to the VCE branch. I'm not sure how they will impact an i5, but my old i7-920 was able to record smoothly at 1080p@60fps with almost zero impact on the Ultrafast preset (and the bitrate used compensated for the bad compression).

Do make sure CFR is enabled; Vegas tends to pitch a fit unless it is.
Also, my sympathies. Yeah, just about anything Bohemia Interactive has put out lately has been terribly optimized, and runs into the same CPU load issues.

An i7 really is helpful when it comes to video work. If you plan to get into livestreaming, a 5820k will give you a lot of slack to work with, and room to crank down your presets. For primarily gaming and some recording, an i7-6700k should be fine. If you're looking for bang-for-buck though, an older 4790k is the way to go. It's not the speediest any more, but you can pick them up for fairly cheap compared and the performance-per-dollar ratio is pretty darn good.

I was honestly thinking about the 6700k*. Even at stock clocking (4.0GHz), it's sounding pretty good unless there's a reason you know of to avoid it? I do have a pre-bought water cooling system to keep her nice and cool :)

I'm only interested in recording in HD and video rendering at this time.

And I'm pretty sure I did everything on that list correctly and, quite right, it recorded nicely without peaking the CPU usage, but the quality and artefacts were still very poor. If I pushed some of the settings a bit up, it peaked and crapped out.

It's interesting actually, I do have a recording of when I was testing out OBS for the first time of my title screen (which does render things in and uses the CPU to a reasonable extent) and it was exactly the quality I needed, but the only difference I could see was the multi-channel audio was not enabled...is that really that intensive or could it just be coincidence?

*Edit: Ahh. My mobo doesn't support the 6700k...*sadface*

Asrock Z9Z Anniversary

 

[FerretBomb]

Yes, when upgrading CPU you generally will need to upgrade the motherboard as well. For the 5820/6700, you'll also almost definitely need to replace the RAM, as both work on DDR4 instead of 3.

Post a logfile from the recent recording, and we'll take a look. If there were artifacts and problems, some of the settings were missed. That guide, when followed fully, will give perfect-quality recordings.

If you're using VCE, that may still have issues, and needs settings other than that guide.