Video Freezing in the Middle of a LiveStream

[s_Harrison]

Hello,

So we have a church stream that we use OBS to stream every Sunday. We've had a problem every now and then where the video will randomly freeze and the only way to restart it is to close OBS and then open it again. So far we've been lucky in that until last Sunday whenever that happened before service we were able to restart and it worked fine for the 1-2hr max service that we're streaming. This last Sunday however it refused to unfreeze. We didn't want to stop the stream in the middle of the service and activating/deactivating the camera didn't work. Changing the source camera didn't work. Plugging/unplugging the camera Eglato 4K USB didn't work, plugging/unplugging the cables didn't work, restarting the camera didn't work. We left it streaming and changed to images we already had ready in a slideshow and let the audio keep running since that seemed to be working but I don't know what happened to the camera.

We haven't changed anything in our hardware as far as I know, is there something that's happened on OBS that could explain this? It's been working perfectly for quite awhile. I can't actually remember when we last had this problem except for the most recent one last Sunday. Does anyone know what causes this and how to fix it or prevent it?

Thanks!

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

You've most likely had Operating System changes over time (regular monthly updates)
Hopefully you aren't on Windows 11

I had a problem on an older computer, when intermixing pre-recorded and livestream video. I had to pre-play the videos before service started, and make sure the Source checkbox for unloading when not in use was not enabled. But that doesn't sound like you situation
One thing to consider is whether an OS update changed/fixed something, and now you need to make sure your drivers are up-to-date, in this case Elgato related especially [which I seem to recall being an issue, though I didn't pay attention to model/details. I'll let you research that further].

And, I know may folks casually say random... in reality, with a computer, its rarely random. Rather, we simply don't see the sequence. Real-time
video encoding is VERY computationally demanding. As such, until you know your computer has way more resources that you use, I strongly recommend monitoring hardware resource (CPU, GPU, RAM, Disk I/O, etc) utilization [for ex. using Task manager’s Performance tab and/or Resource Monitor] to see if your system is being maxed out with your settings https://obsproject.com/wiki/General-Performance-and-Encoding-Issues and https://obsproject.com/wiki/GPU-overload-issues
Make sure you don't have background processes that interfere (like cloud sync backup, antivirus scans, or a dozen other common background apps that should NOT be running during a livestream, etc)
Another possibility is that you are overloading your USB Root Hub (a PC issue, nothing to do with OBS). You could be near a limit, and occasionally go over that limit, and then you have the issue. In such a case, I'd think disabling (turning off) the video source in OBS, unplugging the Elgato would make a difference... but if it is the Elgato driver that went sideways, I could see the video not getting through the USB adapter until driver restarted (usually done via OS restart, though if you know your way around the OS, you can often restart a driver manually without a OS restart. I had to do that once with a VirtualUSB NDI driver)
In my case, I knew which app was associated with the driver to kill (End Task) in Task Manager, and the associated OS Service to stop/start. This does require understanding Task Manager and Computer Services Mgmt, and how to use RunAs (assuming Good Practice of NOT running as local admin). *If* the driver does end up being the issue, and an update doesn't fix the problem, but a driver/service restart resolves your issue, I'd be inclined to write a script, using admin credentials, to stop the process, restart the service, etc upon execution, so a volunteer could be trained that when Video stops, double-click this script to resolve... sort of thing.. of course, your issue could be something else entirely