Updating to OBS 29 Killed my NVENC (Nvidia K1100m)

[Nass86]

I can no longer start/record the streaming on my streaming laptop. The laptop is old. I only use it for 1080px30 stuff.

Nvidia don't support / update the drivers for this card anymore which OBS suggests is the problem.

I tried installing an older version of OBS again (28) after this problem and the problem persisted.

Question:
Does anyone know which version likely works - or maybe i'm receiving the same error because I'm not uninstalling the new OBS in a certain way?

Warning to those on old machines (I was successfully using a 2012 Lenovo Thinkpad W540 with Nvidia K1100m graphics card for several years)

 

[AaronD]

I had that problem with a Linux laptop. Dell Precision M6800 with an NVIDIA K5100M. Bought it new in 2015 with Windows 7 pre-installed, added Ubuntu Linux to dual-boot, took the free upgrade to Windows 10, and last year switched completely to Linux full-time when Windows refused to update anymore.

Ended up explicitly (Linux command line) installing a newer GPU driver that was not in the GUI updater, that the new version of OBS could use, but not so new that it didn't support that card anymore. Trial and error.

That got my OBS compatibility back, but it didn't like the internal laptop screen. A BIOS setting fixed that, to present it differently in a way that the driver liked.

That got my laptop screen back, but the name was different, and so my touchscreen remap script didn't work anymore. But that was an easy change to the new name. Fortunately, I had left a comment in that script, for how to get that exact name. (Self-documentation: always do it!)

Whew! And now I have everything fully up to date and working on this 2015 machine...and Ubuntu Studio Linux.

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You might be able to avoid all that by going all the way back to v27. That's before the major Qt "eye candy" update that broke all the plugins, and I think it also supported more of the older graphics drivers.

BUT...v27 is getting horribly out of date now. Practically none of the plugins are maintained anymore for it. I'd take a serious look at getting a late enough GPU driver that OBS v29 can support it...however you have to do that.

If you end up on Linux, there's a sticky thread in that part of the forum about how to add the official repo (PPA) for OBS. Do that, and the normal install / update process will get you the latest version.

 

[Nass86]

Thanks for the comprehensive reply. If I remember correclty 28 did work on my Windows Laptop BUT it may actually be 27. I tried to do a 'smart restore' where windows rewinds back to a certain date and it failed unfortunately.

I'll just try OBS 27 as I'm not needing anything fancy. I was wondering, though, why 28 didn't seem to work. Was I doing it incorrectly trying to install 28 over 29? Should I have uninstalled OBS then reinstalled the older one?

 

[AaronD]

That I don't know. Sorry.

The "incomplete rollback" theory seems as plausible as anything. And if nothing works anyway, then a complete uninstall / reinstall can't hurt.

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It was a nice idea by Microsoft to try to make a "safety net" for each specific thing without wrecking what else was done in the meantime, but with so many different developers either "doing it right" or "hacking their way to something that works", not to mention the variety of things to do anyway, I'm not sure that such a goal is even possible in the general case.
So you still have to understand that, short of a complete wipe and start over, there can still be remnants, and those remnants can cause problems. Sometimes it's enough to explicitly uninstall the app; other times you have to wipe the OS too. The concept of a "linear install process", with things that are known to work, is still very much alive and well.

Linux has several different ways to avoid that, as variations on encapsulation and sandboxing, but those have other problems, mostly with access to system resources and each other.
For example, you could get OBS as a native install (from the PPA), or a Snap package, or a Flatpak, etc. Each different type is managed by a different team, and thus lags the official release by a different amount. Likewise for whatever plugins they might have pre-installed.

 

[Nass86]

Thanks.

In the end I just uninstalled 29, restarted, and installed the 26.xx one that was still in my Downloads.

Only thing I needed to reinstall was Advanced Scene Switcher but its all working nicely now.

All I do is this: https://youtu.be/YB5fYKHBJKM?t=3342

• Record 2 x 1 Canon M50 and a C922 Webcam
• Scene switch on a timer
• Add a logo
• an Audio Spectraliser
• Browser source the song ID

To go next level / 4K I'd need newer kit all round as this is a 2012 Lenovo Thinkpad with the Nvidia K1100m graphics card.

 

[AaronD]

All I do is this: https://youtu.be/YB5fYKHBJKM?t=3342

• Record 2 x 1 Canon M50 and a C922 Webcam
• Scene switch on a timer
• Add a logo
• an Audio Spectraliser
• Browser source the song ID

Nice!

Glad you got it working, even if it was just a rollback to what you had before.
I did that a few weeks ago on a different rig because a 4-input capture card didn't work.

I had everything set up, and found that the 2022 operating system (latest long-term support) didn't like 4 copies of the same cheap HDMI -> USB capture card, like the 2020 one did. So I got a single 4-input card, but that didn't work either. Support for that new card was stumped too.

Then I found that the motherboard refused to boot from the old drive that still had the old system on it. (#%&* security!) So I re-installed the 2020 OS and everything on it, and I'm (functionally) back to where I was and working.

I have a different 4-input card in the mail again - different brand - and a "sandbox" system to test it on before I touch the production machine again...

The entire purpose is to consolidate the scripts that I put in various places because that's where each hook is in the older versions, all into the Advanced Scene Switcher because the new versions of that can now do everything inside of OBS, and call an external script for everything else. I'll get it eventually.