Too much delay in my recordings

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Vittorio Fedele

Member
In this week, I noticed that OBS records at a large delay in comparison to my imput, way more than usual, and at times, even though I use 30 frames per second, it seems like a few frames are missing. That also hinders my timing when I have to stop recording, but the biggest problem is that it makes it more difficult for me to record clips for my videos. It didn't have those problems earlier, and my PC is new. How am I supposed to record like this? Ever since April, I never had these issues previously. Please fix this.
 
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AaronD

Active Member
A recording is inherently a large delay, or rather, a delay is (and only can be) made by recording in some form and playing it back. Even analog delay lines work like that, using a tape, film, or a slow cable of some kind as the recording.

Do you actually mean sync? As in the sound and picture don't line up? For that there's a Video Delay filter, and a Sync Offset for audio. Delay the fast one(s) so that everything lines up. If it's consistent, then you're done. If not, then we have some more troubleshooting to do.

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Vittorio Fedele

Member
I don't think it's that. I never even use these outside of perfecting the audio volume. Maybe it's the framerate, but I never had this type of problem before this week, and I used my usual settings. As of this week, I've noticed that the imput for starting to record via the shortcut button I assigned either comes out very slow or the imput didn't register at all. It never happened before. Maybe it's a framerate issue, but I don't know, before this week, everything was normal, and I use OBS since April.
 
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AaronD

Active Member
Just because you don't have a delay there, doesn't mean it's perfect. Other things could delay different parts differently, so these settings exist to fix it back up again. A frame buffer in a capture card, for a common example.

What input devices do you have, and which direction is it off? I've seen some cheap HDMI -> USB capture cards with *variable* latency of their own, before the picture even gets to the computer. That's fun! :-/
 
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Vittorio Fedele

Member
Screen capture only shows the screen for OBS, so I use Window capture for video clips. It isn't a problem with just a webcam for other kind of videos. Even if I could use the Screen capture for that, it might result too gimmicky and hard to use.
 
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Vittorio Fedele

Member
I guess it overloads the codify process when I'm trying to record via window capture. Weird, it never happened before like this, and I don't know what to do about it. Wait, I found a setting for hiding the OBS window from the screen capture, let me see.
 
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Vittorio Fedele

Member
I checked it out and it seems similiar. I think the problem is more with the shortcut buttons, but don't know why the imputs with those are now less responsive than usual. I don't understand.
 
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AaronD

Active Member
Vittorio Fedele said:
Screen capture only shows the screen for OBS, so I use Window capture for video clips.
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If you're running a single screen, that would be more-or-less true:
  • Screen capture is essentially a capture card on the physical output. So whatever's on the selected screen at the moment is what you get.
  • Window capture "sticks" to the selected window, regardless of which screen it's on or whether it's on top or not. It just can't be minimized.
I think the reason you said the Screen capture only captures OBS is because you have a single screen and so to check it you have to show it, and it captures what's currently showing. If you're looking at something else, it'll capture that too.
Vittorio Fedele said:
Wait, I found a setting for hiding the OBS window from the screen capture, let me see.
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Nice! I didn't notice that that had been added. Good idea. But it wouldn't do anything for a bad sync, as you found out.

Vittorio Fedele said:
I guess it overloads the codify process when I'm trying to record via window capture.
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I doubt it. Compositing and encoding are completely independent. The compositor figures out what the "movie" ought to be, based on the global audio selections and whatever you have in your scenes, and then the encoder takes the single "filmstrip" that was just produced and reduces the bitrate to send somewhere else.

Vittorio Fedele said:
I think the problem is more with the shortcut buttons, but don't know why the imputs with those are now less responsive than usual. I don't understand.
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I doubt that too. Again, completely independent.


If I put everything together correctly, I think you're saying that the Screen and Window captures have enough extra latency to arrive noticeably after the audio, but the webcam is okay?

Where does the audio come from?

How can you tell that the screen/window capture is that far behind? There's usually not enough correlation from there to say it as definitively as you do...unless you're window-capturing a video player? OBS can play videos directly, which would fix that problem.
 
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AaronD

Active Member
So it *drifts* out of sync? That's been a known issue for a while, with several threads about it in different places. Though (so far) it's only been the Monitor output that did that, that goes to headphones, and not the Main out that goes to the stream and recording.

If you're using the Monitor out as your Main out, then it might be worth revisiting your audio chain. Until OBS gets a physical Main out, it can be excused in *some* cases, like to feed a remote meeting or overflow room, but just plain recording isn't one of them.


There are a bunch more threads about OBS's audio system needing a fundamental complete overhaul anyway. (adequate originally, then a bunch of add-ons later...) From reading those threads, it sounds like no one currently on the OBS dev team wants to tackle audio, so it kinda is what it is until someone comes on to do that.

But it should still *work*...if you keep it dirt simple or you know the gotchas.
 
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Vittorio Fedele

Member
I had to put the audio filters because in my first few months, I struggled to find a perfect balance in some parts, like the music from the audio desktop or my voice: either my voice was too loud and had had a distortion effect that was ugly to hear, was too low and thus the music was so loud it covered too much or the background music was too low to create the atmosphere. Anyway, when I put them a few months ago, there was no problem. So, do I have to remove them? The issue doesn't seem to be the sync with video and audio or that it drifts out, from what I saw, it's more the imput for starting and stopping the recording is registred late, because I noticed that it has become noticeably slower than it was two months ago. It's not about when the recording starts or if audio and video are synchronized or not, but the imputs to start and stop ther recording seems to have been greatly slowed down for some reason. Is it because of one of the recent updates for version 29?
 
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AaronD

Active Member
Vittorio Fedele said:
I had to put the audio filters because in my first few months, I struggled to find a perfect balance in some parts, like the music from the audio desktop or my voice: either my voice was too loud and had had a distortion effect that was ugly to hear, was too low and thus the music was so loud it covered too much or the background music was too low to create the atmosphere. Anyway, when I put them a few months ago, there was no problem. So, do I have to remove them?
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No, that's not it either. By the way though, you might look at some tutorials about how to make a good broadcast mix using pro gear. Analog rackmount compressors and other stuff, or their digital equivalents in a console or DAW. All of those concepts translate directly to OBS's plugins, with the same names.

Vittorio Fedele said:
The issue doesn't seem to be the sync with video and audio or that it drifts out, from what I saw, it's more the imput for starting and stopping the recording is registred late, because I noticed that it has become noticeably slower than it was two months ago. It's not about when the recording starts or if audio and video are synchronized or not, but the imputs to start and stop ther recording seems to have been greatly slowed down for some reason. Is it because of one of the recent updates for version 29?
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So everything works, but you have not enough leader and too much trailer? That *could* be part of an update, but the general use case is to have enough leader and trailer that it doesn't matter. If you need something exact, trim it later in a video editor.

That said, I *have* used OBS before, as a single-stage recorder from capture to file with tight timing, so I'll have to try it again myself.
 
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Vittorio Fedele

Member
Another 10 days and it's still not solved. Unless I record with no capture, the framerate is not consistent. How? Reducing the framerate in an attempt to compensate seems even worse. Do I have to uninstall and reinstall everything? Did the 29.0.2 update introduce a bug? I guess it's that, since it never happened earlier. Youtube doesn't seem to be that consistent either these days, the video sometimes stops for no reason, but OBS is the bigger problem.
 
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