Question / Help Tried lower setting but not sure why still getting "Encoding overloaded"

[Desecrator81]

Good day to all.

I have been trying to record some game play but no matter the setting I still seem to receive the "Encoding overload" issue.
The game it set to medium quality and I have tried reducing the resolution to 480p60 and 480p30.
I have tried using CPU and GPU encoding at the same settings with no luck.
I know my CPU is old but I'm hope that because it's an i7 it should be good enough.

Please see the attached files for details of tests and setup.
I'm not down scaling with OBS as I have reduced the resolution to 480p using startup commands.
I've also limited the in game FPS to 60 and 30.
The GPU or CPU doesn't seem to be overloaded (task manager and CPU-Z are in the screenshots attached for info)
For the capturing of the tests I captured at 1680x1050 (the game itself was still at 480P) so that i could have all the detail captured for record but normally I would just capture the game.

Any help/advise will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Desecrator81

 

[Narcogen]

Can you clarify what you mean by "not down scaling with OBS as I have reduced the resolution to 480p using startup commands"?

Setting the game to 480p lowers load on the game, but does not affect OBS-- it is still capturing at its specified resolution. The fact that this includes a lot of repeated pixels might make it easier to encode (maybe?) but doesn't dramatically reduce the load for rendering the frame. That said, you're not having rendering lag, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Also, your 1050 should support NVENC, so you might be better off using that as an encoder.

Although at a bitrate of 1000 you're not going to get great results out of any encoder, and NVENC will look noticeably worse than x264.

I think you may want to reconsider the strategy of having the game render at 480p but using a canvas size of 1050.

 

[Desecrator81]

Can you clarify what you mean by "not down scaling with OBS as I have reduced the resolution to 480p using startup commands"?

I have the game running at 480p, not running the game at 1080p and recording at 480p.
To get the game to run at 480p you have to add a command to the startup to run at the resolution as it doesn't go that low in the in
game menu settings.

 

[Narcogen]

Okay... OBS itself doesn't really care what resolution the game is set to, except insofar as those settings produce load on your GPU. GPU load isn't your problem, though, so I'm not sure why you're trying to get the game to go that low. Is there a particular reason?

Running the game at 480p and then telling OBS to capture at 1050p is asking OBS to do more work without any benefit, and then you tell it to produce a 1050p stream at a bitrate of only 1000.. which might work for a 480p stream, but what you actually have is a 1050p stream with 480p content. It sounds like a formula for producing bad quality on purpose.

12:10:48.086: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 159/2955 (5.4%)


Encoding lag in this case is CPU overload. You could avoid this by using NVENC, but decent quality with that encoder will require a higher bitrate than with x264. 1000 is impossibly low, is there a reason you have it set there if you are not streaming?

I would suggest running the Auto-Configuration wizard from the Tools menu to generate some reasonable defaults for what you want to do. Create a new Profile first if you want to leave your current settings alone.

 

[Desecrator81]

Setting the game to 480p lowers load on the game, but does not affect OBS-- it is still capturing at its specified resolution. The fact that this includes a lot of repeated pixels might make it easier to encode (maybe?) but doesn't dramatically reduce the load for rendering the frame. That said, you're not having rendering lag, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Also, your 1050 should support NVENC, so you might be better off using that as an encoder.

Although at a bitrate of 1000 you're not going to get great results out of any encoder, and NVENC will look noticeably worse than x264.

I think you may want to reconsider the strategy of having the game render at 480p but using a canvas size of 1050.

I have used:
Encoder: NVENC and x264
Bitrates ranging from 1000 to 20000
Resolutons from 852x480 to 1680x1050
All with the same result.
The thought was to keep lowering the setting until i reach a working result but i have gone this far and still receive error.

 

[Desecrator81]

Okay... OBS itself doesn't really care what resolution the game is set to, except insofar as those settings produce load on your GPU. GPU load isn't your problem, though, so I'm not sure why you're trying to get the game to go that low. Is there a particular reason?

Running the game at 480p and then telling OBS to capture at 1050p is asking OBS to do more work without any benefit, and then you tell it to produce a 1050p stream at a bitrate of only 1000.. which might work for a 480p stream, but what you actually have is a 1050p stream with 480p content. It sounds like a formula for producing bad quality on purpose.

I am playing at 480p and recording at 480p for testing purposes.
The fact that the log stats 1050 is that i recorded at that size for record purposes.

Encoding lag in this case is CPU overload. You could avoid this by using NVENC, but decent quality with that encoder will require a higher bitrate than with x264. 1000 is impossibly low, is there a reason you have it set there if you are not streaming?

In an effort to reduce load on GPU and CPU have have just been reducing everything to see if there is were the issues where coming from.

I would suggest running the Auto-Configuration wizard from the Tools menu to generate some reasonable defaults for what you want to do. Create a new Profile first if you want to leave your current settings alone.

I have tried the Auto-configuration and get the same error.

I would be happy with a 720p30 @ 6000 but at this point can't even get near there.
Could it have anything to do with where the game is being played (HDD, SSD) or where the video is being saved to (HDD, USB3)?

 

[Narcogen]

It is quite possible those different settings produced different errors, and it's necessary to know the difference in order to know what to change, not just to reduce everything and change.

It is absolutely possible for your machine to record Subnautica at decent quality. I would suggest running the tool and see what settings it suggests, and do a session and see what, if any, errors or problems occur, and use those logs as a guide for making adjustments.

 

[Desecrator81]

I have run the Auto-configuration and attached the log file.
The Auto-configuration chose NVENC as the encoder.
I have recorded as is and then also recorded using the same settings but with the x264 encoder

Still having the "Encoding overload" issue.
Any idea's?

 

[Narcogen]

OK I am wondering if your GPU is in the right slot and properly seated, or is for some other reason operating at a lower PCI speed than it should. I can't think of a reason why a 1050 would overload on 720p encoding.

Run GPU-Z and see what it says.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...-how-to-fix-it-or-if-its-even-fixable.231501/

 

[Desecrator81]

Hi, sorry for the delayed response.
I went through the supplied posts and can't seem to find any on the possible issues mentioned.
Attached is a screenshot of GPU-Z while the game is running and recording.

 

[Narcogen]

I don't see anything wrong there. I'm at a loss, honestly.

 

[Desecrator81]

I did quick test last night using Streamlabs OBS and it seemed to be working fine.
I'm going to do some more test and i'll post my findings.

Thanks for the help.
Sometimes it's not getting the answer that helps, its just being able to bounce the issue around.

 

[Narcogen]

Could be caused by a corrupted profile or scene collection, so deleting them and starting over might fix OBS as well. I don't know if SLOBS imports those settings from OBS or not.