Tech clueless - home recording gutar - Dell laptop battery tanked?

[Paul luddite]

Hi,

Right up front, let me admit I'm tech clueless. I merely wanted a means to use my low-end Dell Inspiron 15 with integral camera to view my guitar playing, trying to eliminate stuttering/lagging, etc. (I play gypsy swing. The right hand technique is very fast, and position, motion, etc., pretty exacting - it's tough to do when the hand is just a blur of motion). I went through a youtube vid that was helpful in that it did seem to eliminate the issue - but my (newish - few months old) battery is dead, and won't take a charge. I've eliminated the charger and charging port as an issue; the battery will no longer charge. The computer will operate with the charger connected, but that's it.

As I said, I'm clueless so don't know if it's the changes I made to the OBS config. that asked too much of a low-end system, or not. It's the only thing I can think of. A new battery is coming but I fear that if it is the OBS setup, I'll just have the same issue again.

Any advice? Can I merely back everything out, to re-establish the system as it was before the OBS changes (if these even have anything to do with it)? Or is this unrelated?

Thanks for any help.

 

[JohnPee]

Hi @PaulLuddite can you post a log from your system.

Please post a log with your issue! Here's how...

OBS Studio creates a log file each time you run it which contains very useful diagnostic information. Without a log file, it's much harder for any support volunteers to figure out problems and your post may be ignored. To upload a log file, go to the Help menu > Log Files > Upload Last Log...

obsproject.com

 

[FerretBomb]

No, OBS isn't going to do any hardware damage. It didn't kill your battery, most likely just simple age did.

That said, batteries age faster the more they're used. Lithium cells have a finite capacity to be recharged, before their storage capacity falls off.
(NiMH batteries are kept healthy by only recharging them when they're almost/completely dead, topping-off causes them to age faster. Lithiums conversely HATE being fully discharged, and will overall be kept healthiest by topping off at every opportunity.)

Real-time video encoding IS a computationally demanding task, which requires more power than simple web browsing/email tasks. It would be a good idea to plug your laptop in any time you're doing *anything* demanding, to minimize the amount of power drawn from the batteries (and therefore how much they need to be charged up again).
But it wouldn't be like flipping a light switch. Just a 'faster burn' the more you use the battery.

 

[Paul luddite]

Hi @PaulLuddite can you post a log from your system.

Please post a log with your issue! Here's how...

OBS Studio creates a log file each time you run it which contains very useful diagnostic information. Without a log file, it's much harder for any support volunteers to figure out problems and your post may be ignored. To upload a log file, go to the Help menu > Log Files > Upload Last Log...

obsproject.com

Thanks John.

https://obsproject.com/logs/QfhWB3eDlsONJcg8

 

[Paul luddite]

No, OBS isn't going to do any hardware damage. It didn't kill your battery, most likely just simple age did.

That said, batteries age faster the more they're used. Lithium cells have a finite capacity to be recharged, before their storage capacity falls off.
(NiMH batteries are kept healthy by only recharging them when they're almost/completely dead, topping-off causes them to age faster. Lithiums conversely HATE being fully discharged, and will overall be kept healthiest by topping off at every opportunity.)

Real-time video encoding IS a computationally demanding task, which requires more power than simple web browsing/email tasks. It would be a good idea to plug your laptop in any time you're doing *anything* demanding, to minimize the amount of power drawn from the batteries (and therefore how much they need to be charged up again).
But it wouldn't be like flipping a light switch. Just a 'faster burn' the more you use the battery.

Thanks for the info. The thing is, this machine is new, or a couple of months old, only. I do not actually use the program and use the machine for very mundane things (open office, e-mail, playing audio). Given the changes I recalled making to optimize according to the youtube I saw, I was just wondering if somehow those would tax this (poor) lower level machine such that the battery is in higher use generally.

 

[koala]

If you use OBS for recording while your laptop is running on battery power, it contributes to discharging the battery of course. Since video encoding is a very resource intensive task (on low end systems: uses up to 100% CPU load), video encoding will discharge your battery very fast. There is no other use case that will make the battery discharge faster.

However, this is still standard use of a battery. Discharging will not break your battery. High usage will perhaps make it age a bit faster, but it will not damage it. If your battery is already dead after a few months, this is either a sign of a defective battery as it was delivered, or bad quality of the laptop hardware in general. You should look into the product information what is said about standard battery usage and standard battery life. Extremely bad for battery life is letting it discharge completely often until the laptop goes off due to no charge left, and keep it discharged without recharging. Charging an already full battery as FerretBomb said is not good as well, but this is usually prevented by the charging circuit in the laptop. Overcharged batteries is more an issue with dumb devices like mobile phones.

Having said this, running video encoding on battery is a bad idea. This is so resource intensive, it will drain your battery so fast you need to recharge after 1 or 2 hours anyway. High temperature is bad for battery life as well. If you run video encoding, and your laptop heats up due to high CPU usage, and the heat isn't ventilated away, this might actually damage the battery.

 

[Paul luddite]

If you use OBS for recording while your laptop is running on battery power, it contributes to discharging the battery of course. Since video encoding is a very resource intensive task (on low end systems: uses up to 100% CPU load), video encoding will discharge your battery very fast. There is no other use case that will make the battery discharge faster.

However, this is still standard use of a battery. Discharging will not break your battery. High usage will perhaps make it age a bit faster, but it will not damage it. If your battery is already dead after a few months, this is either a sign of a defective battery as it was delivered, or bad quality of the laptop hardware in general. You should look into the product information what is said about standard battery usage and standard battery life. Extremely bad for battery life is letting it discharge completely often until the laptop goes off due to no charge left, and keep it discharged without recharging. Charging an already full battery as FerretBomb said is not good as well, but this is usually prevented by the charging circuit in the laptop. Overcharged batteries is more an issue with dumb devices like mobile phones.

Having said this, running video encoding on battery is a bad idea. This is so resource intensive, it will drain your battery so fast you need to recharge after 1 or 2 hours anyway. High temperature is bad for battery life as well. If you run video encoding, and your laptop heats up due to high CPU usage, and the heat isn't ventilated away, this might actually damage the battery.

Thanks very much for the post, Koala. I appreciate not only the info but your writing as well, which was exceedingly clear and helpful. Between you and FerretBomb, I learned some key things I didn't know before.

I should have said it upfront - When I'm running the sessions, I'm plugged in. It's my usual practice (that may change, now that I've read the above from the both of you) to simply plug it in when it was "getting low," usually timing it with going to bed at night.

So this will illustrate my "luddite" status, I'm sure...I was just wondering if somehow the changes I implemented using OBS would somehow set parameters generally such that battery drain was put in essence on overdrive even if, for example, I was just using W10 camera as a simple kind of monitor (in video mode, no recording), and not running OBS. It sounds like that's not possible, and that a defective battery (or something else) might be the problem?

 

[FerretBomb]

Not really, no. It sounds like you just got a bad battery.

 

[Paul luddite]

Not really, no. It sounds like you just got a bad battery.

OK, thanks very much.