Question / Help Using Scenes as Sources in other Scenes

[My Living Room: Live!]

I started up a live weekly musical entertainment series streaming to Facebook Live using OBS. Each week, I try adding a bit more each week as I learn the ins and outs of OBS.

I currently run 3 cameras in total: a Logitech C920 for the main shot, a Zoom q2n for up close piano work, and the integrated webcam for the laptop we stream from. I turn the additional cameras on and off throughout the broadcast. I used to simply add each additional camera as a Source to my main Scene. Then I wanted to add some coloured borders and maybe some text to these additional camera views.

Last week, I tried creating a Scene with each additional camera to then use as a Source within the main Scene. I added the borders and text to the camera source within its own Scene and then I added that Scene as a Source in the main show Scene.

After making this change, I noticed significant delay in the additional cameras, like maybe 500 ms or so. I had to add render delay to the main camera and main audio to compensate. It was enough to make me question the merits of this method.

Is this the best way to achieve the effect I am looking for? i.e. to add borders and frames to picture-in-picture style cameras that will be turned on and off throughout the broadcast.

If there was a way to "link" elements together, i.e. group the webcam, border, and text together so that they can be shown or hidden with a single button press, then that would be awesome :)

Thanks for any and all feedback!!

 

[Fenrir]

Are you making sure to use Add Existing and not creating duplicates of the webcam sources?

 

[My Living Room: Live!]

Yes, I made sure to choose Add Existing. I only see the 3 video input sources in the list, 1 one each of the cameras I am using. Nothing duplicated.

Good idea though, thanks!

 

[Fenrir]

The scene as a source is the best way to accomplish what you're looking to do, though.

Doing it that would should definitely not add any kind of delay, though.

Can you grab a clean log from OBS and I can take a look?

To make a clean log file, first restart OBS, then start your stream/recording for ~30 seconds and stop it again. Make sure you replicate any issues as best you can, which means having any games/apps open and captured, etc. When you're done select Help > Log Files > Upload Current Log File. Copy the URL and paste it here.

 

[My Living Room: Live!]

Well, certainly good to know that I was going about it the right way :)

I will do exactly that, I'll set the cams up, run the stream/record for a bit, and then copy the log here.

I appreciate it very much!!

 

[My Living Room: Live!]

Ok, here it is!

https://gist.github.com/6cf73f5a477ee291d3519efd93191c84

Thanks so much!

 

[Mroczny_Gustaw]

This pc is too slow and tbh you should not even try to setup streaming channel on it. Think of it as a typewriter and web browsing box, nothing else.
For a good streaming pc you would need something like Ryzen 1600X or 1700 cpu, 8 gigabytes of ram @3000 and GTX 1050Ti video card. That could be solid base to arrange all cameras, scenes and setup x264 encoding with good quality

 

[My Living Room: Live!]

We never had any issues until a couple of weeks ago. We have been using 3 cameras since nearly the first episode without any issues. We started off at 720p and moved to 1080p without issue. We only noticed problems when we moved to using Scenes as Sources.

Was there extra processing power needed when we moved to using Scenes as Sources? Or could it be something else that is bogging our laptop down? Maybe it's just a coincidence and there is something else hogging resources all of the sudden.

Is there a way to figure out if something else is causing a performance issue?

I mean, we'd LOVE to get a new machine to stream from, but it would need to be a laptop due to where we stream from. Also, we plan on shooting the show remotely next year. A beefy laptop of those specs just isn't in our (non-existent) budget.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Fenrir]

So, the main issue here is actually the video card (or lack thereof)

20:36:35.671: Output 'simple_stream': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 457 (24.0%)

This is likely just due to the number of sources and filters you have, and the integrated GPU on your laptop-class CPU is just not up to the task.

You might need to reduce the amount of sources that you have, and try to consolidate things as much as possible. I would also recommend splitting up your scenes into multiple scene collections (menu at the top of OBS, not just a new scene) for scenes you don't need for every stream.

 

[My Living Room: Live!]

I appreciate you taking the time to look into this. Sounds like I'm either going to have to drop some features from the show or splurge on a new machine.

Would there be a laptop that would be up to the task?

 

[Fenrir]

If you absolutely have to have a laptop, you'll want something with an i7 "HQ" line CPU, and some sort of dedicated GPU.

But, you should understand that a laptop like that is going to probably cost somewhere around $1600-2200.

You could get a comparably powerful desktop for around $800.

 

[My Living Room: Live!]

Even $800 is more than we can spend at the moment. And we're in Canada so it'll probably cost even more.

Would a desktop with an Intel Core i5 2400s processor with integrated HD Graphics 2000 and 8GB of DDR3 work? Found something that might be in my budget but it does not have a dedicated graphics card, just this integrated Intel HD2000 that I don't know anything about.

 

[Mroczny_Gustaw]

This cpu is only about 30% faster than what you are currently using and Im not sure it would be able to handle software encoding.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-2400S-vs-Intel-Core-i5-5200U/m304vsm22169
HD2000 is out of the question, you would need to buy separate card additionally. Maybe used GTX960, you could use its hardware Nvenc encoder similarly as you are using Intel's Quicksync now. That might work. You would need to check if the onboard audio card in this pc is up to your audio standards, it may be of pretty low quality.

 

[My Living Room: Live!]

Just to update:

We tried using an old desktop PC with dedicated nVidia GPU we had lying around. Performance was dramatically improved but either due to a hardware or driver issue, network connection kept dropping intermittently making the machine a non-option.

We instead moved back to the laptop and removed all Scenes as Sources and, voila, no dropped frames.

It really seems like going with Scenes as Sources just taxed the CPU way too much. We'll keep the show simple for now and when we can afford a nice brand new PC, we'll try getting a little fancier :)

We're thinking of a nice All-In-One with a dedicated graphics card that's easy to set up and tear down in the living room. Looks like it'll run around $900 to time to start saving!!

Thanks for all your help, everyone!