Unexplained Preview/stream/recording Stuttering

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fatmatrow

Member
First off, I am old hat with OBS. I've been using it for years. I like to think I know what I'm doing but this has stumped me. I get a constant stutter in my obs preview AND stream And Recordings with ANY game no matter how demanding or light it is, I get it with any encoder or settings I use, and I even notice it before i even start streaming. Like it doesn't seem to get better or worse just always there.

Here is a Log File showing i have everything setup correctly, I will also include a short video showing the issue. This was done in the setup from the log file, a single gamecapture source with nothing else to muck it up. I didn't include a streaming one because there is really no additional info to be gleaned from one. I get less than .01% skipped or missed frames. It's not encoding overload from what I can tell. And it happens with x264 and NVENC.

This issue wan't present before I took my year off of streaming. I have done everything i can think of to remedy this including a clean install of windows and drivers. I've tried every gpu scheduling game mode on and off combo. I have update my bios. I have done benchmarks that show things are working fine, its JUST OBS thats having the problem. I tried shadowplay the other day and didn't notice a stutter, but it won't work for what I'm trying to do.

I have tried display capture, game capture, and window capture to no avail. I have spent hours trying to fix this problem playing with nvidia 3d settings, changing the vertical sync styles, trying no vertical sync, turning settings down to the point where the system has almost 50 percent overhead even in high motion scenes on the gpu and cpu and still i get stutter. Is this something to do with windows, OBS, DirectX, etc? I just want my smooth stream back.
 

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Schauerland

Member
I have massive lags with latest OBS and Cyberpunk recording 4K footage.
This is not my video but it shows the effect:

I think your problem is similar.

I could fix it using the tips in this video:
- set game to window borderless mode
- use window capture and select the exe
- set "windows 10" in capture mode in window capture

with these settings I could fix the stutter in cyberpunk. I think it has something to do with the fullscreen game capture hook.
Hope the devs will look into it
 
F

fatmatrow

Member
Schauerland said:
I have massive lags with latest OBS and Cyberpunk recording 4K footage.
This is not my video but it shows the effect:

I think your problem is similar.

I could fix it using the tips in this video:
- set game to window borderless mode
- use window capture and select the exe
- set "windows 10" in capture mode in window capture

with these settings I could fix the stutter in cyberpunk. I think it has something to do with the fullscreen game capture hook.
Hope the devs will look into it
Click to expand...
I appreciate the advice but unfortunately this fix doesn't work for black ops cold war, and i was still getting stutter when i tried this method a few hours ago...I tried it again and it worked at first for a minute before having the same behavior
 
Last edited:
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Schauerland

Member
fatmatrow said:
I appreciate the advice but unfortunately this fix doesn't work for black ops cold war, and i was still getting stutter when i tried this method a few hours ago...I tried it again and it worked at first for a minute before having the same behavior
Click to expand...

I had often similar issues in the past, I know your struggle.

- is there a difference between NVENC encoding and x264 encoding?
- is recording with other software (i recommend testing shadowplay) ok?
- can you notice difference if you disable the preview in OBS (right click on scene) <-- this removed most of the lags in the past but I think they fixed that with the newer versions but you could give it a try.

further testing: run (start) OBS on the same monitor where the game runs, disconnect all other monitors
ensure that the refresh rate of the monitor running the game is exactly the refreshrate of OBS (eg 60 hz not 59.something)
In the past i went so far "patching" the refresh rate of my monitor with some tools to fix lags.
 
F

fatmatrow

Member
Schauerland said:
I had often similar issues in the past, I know your struggle.

- is there a difference between NVENC encoding and x264 encoding?
- is recording with other software (i recommend testing shadowplay) ok?
- can you notice difference if you disable the preview in OBS (right click on scene) <-- this removed most of the lags in the past but I think they fixed that with the newer versions but you could give it a try.

further testing: run (start) OBS on the same monitor where the game runs, disconnect all other monitors
ensure that the refresh rate of the monitor running the game is exactly the refreshrate of OBS (eg 60 hz not 59.something)
In the past i went so far "patching" the refresh rate of my monitor with some tools to fix lags.
Click to expand...
-no difference, stutter present in both
-shadowplay seemed to be stutter free
-its the same either way

How do you patch the refresh rate of the monitor
 
F

fatmatrow

Member
So i did some tests, and because of the dx12 game capture stutter thing, I tried display capture and window capture with a little success but still got stutter, so I busted out my old capture card and it keeps the render times lower and the cpu usage lower than display capture thru OBS

I did have to add delays to other sources because its an old HD60 but i got things working and smooth and thats good enough for right now.
 
S

Schauerland

Member
this is the tool for changing the hz of monitor.
use at own risk:

Custom Resolution Utility (CRU)

Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) is an EDID editor that focuses on custom resolutions. CRU shows you how the monitor defines resolutions and other capabilities and gives you the power to change it. Add
www.monitortests.com

yea i used to use a capture card as well, but OBS also had problems.

good luck
 
F

fatmatrow

Member
Schauerland said:
this is the tool for changing the hz of monitor.
use at own risk:

Custom Resolution Utility (CRU)

Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) is an EDID editor that focuses on custom resolutions. CRU shows you how the monitor defines resolutions and other capabilities and gives you the power to change it. Add
www.monitortests.com

yea i used to use a capture card as well, but OBS also had problems.

good luck
Click to expand...
So i tried using this, and while ALL my monitors are set to 60hz, when i do the blur busters vysnc test, on my main monitor it goes between 60 and 59.99 and I think this may be what the issue is but i can't seem to fix it. Any idea?
 
dodgepong

dodgepong

Administrator
Community Helper
There is a known issue when using game capture to capture DX12 games like Cold War and Cyberpunk where frames can get returned out of order. Unfortunately the fix for this is rather complicated, but it's being worked on. For now, the best solution would be to lock your game to 60fps and change the hook rate setting in the game capture source to "fastest". Otherwise, you can try using display capture instead.
 
F

fatmatrow

Member
dodgepong said:
There is a known issue when using game capture to capture DX12 games like Cold War and Cyberpunk where frames can get returned out of order. Unfortunately the fix for this is rather complicated, but it's being worked on. For now, the best solution would be to lock your game to 60fps and change the hook rate setting in the game capture source to "fastest". Otherwise, you can try using display capture instead.
Click to expand...
I'm just finishing up a fresh install of windows and then I'll try all this, I have tried both changing the hook rate and display capture. Display capture doesn't seem to stutter in preview but does stutter in stream output for some reason, similar to the game capture stutter.

Also, I tried using a capture card and feeding it into OBS (I know under normal circumstances this is highly unnecessary but desperate times) and even it stuttered in the preview

Thank you so much for your help, and any additional help. I really feel like I'm going crazy with this
 
B

boomyak

New Member
didn't fix it for me, although i do think it got better switching to normal profile, forgot i'd been on high for god knows how long. Still the fix eludes me.

BTW I tried SLOBS and it works %100 perfectly, with the exact same scene with all of the assets loaded, same transitions, everything. The issue I have with SLOBS is that it crashes whenever i load a VST, so it's useless to me too.

Is there any other alternative? I'm sorry, but just by reading this forum, this exact issue has gone on for years and years without any fix in sight, let alone an acknowledgement from the devs. Would be nice to at least get their insight on this as opposed to compete silence.
 
F

fatmatrow

Member
boomyak said:
didn't fix it for me, although i do think it got better switching to normal profile, forgot i'd been on high for god knows how long. Still the fix eludes me.

BTW I tried SLOBS and it works %100 perfectly, with the exact same scene with all of the assets loaded, same transitions, everything. The issue I have with SLOBS is that it crashes whenever i load a VST, so it's useless to me too.

Is there any other alternative? I'm sorry, but just by reading this forum, this exact issue has gone on for years and years without any fix in sight, let alone an acknowledgement from the devs. Would be nice to at least get their insight on this as opposed to compete silence.
Click to expand...
It didn't actually fix it for me either. The devs have acknowledged the issue. There is a support ticket open for it. They're working hard on getting OBS 27 out the door, they'll be looking into it in earnest after that. Its a difficult issue to address, because there's no apparent cause, and they would need a machine having the exact issue available to them. I also have been in contact with some NVIDIA peeps to try to look into the problem.

I've got hundreds of hours of testing different settings, swapping out hardware, tweaking bios, running a dozen different monitoring programs for everything from system latency to exact frame times to error logging, dxgi info, flip info, things I had never even heard of. Nothing seems out of the ordinary that could help nail down a cause. I've tried older versions of windows, drivers, bios, etc. I have two separate systems with the same problem that share no hardware. I built the second PC specifically because of this issue.

The only thing we can do right now is wait. It sucks but aside from spending MORE money trying to build another system just to have it potentially have the same issue. You're not the only one.
 
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