Question / Help Video Stuttering / Frame Lag While Streaming / Recording

[alexitx]

Hello!

From a long time I, friends of mine and others have serious problems and issues too with OBS Studo while Streaming / Recording on high-end hardware with a lot of experience and knowledge.

I'm personally struggling and trying to understand a couple things related to stuttering, jittering or some sort of frame skipping.

There are some strange things, such as sometimes everything runs butter smooth (video, output file, stream, etc.) without any issues, but on the other hand - sometimes there is enormous stutter, "jumping" over serveral frames and so on.

This happens with all settings combinations, I've tried dozens of things and I'm experimenting with everything even more from couple months...

A short while ago I recorded and uploaded to my YoTube channel these examples on different games with different settings to demonstrate the problems.
For each video the individual settings are in the descriptions along with some additional information.

[Example 1 - Minecraft 720p30 4000kbps]

[Example 2 - Minecraft 720p60 5000kbps] (At the beginning of this example everything is butter-smooth, how it's supposed to be. The stuttering starts from nowhere at 0:56)

[Example 3 - CS:GO 720p30 4000kbps]

[Example 4 - CS:GO 720p60 5000kbps]

If you want to fine-analyze the examples you can watch them in full screen at maximum resolution. Try to look at and follow the distant objects e.g. the trees / foliage in Minecraft or CS:GO.
Even the quality for 720p60 5000kbps / 6000kbps on Fast / Faster CPU Preset is terrible for some reason...

No missed / skipped frames due to encoder overload or anything similar.
Here are some screenshots after recording some of the examples:

[Minecraft 720p30 4000kbps - Stats]

[Minecraft 720p60 5000kbps - Stats]

[CS:GO 720p60 5000kbps - Stats]

The "frames missed due to rendering lag" is because of "Alt+Tabbing" while the game is running (not paused / not in the menu) there are 4-5 frames missed from 15000, so 0.0%

Here are some of the log files:

[2018-04-04 13-16-28.txt] [2018-04-04 14-06-53.txt] [2018-04-04 14-13-18.txt]

Here is my Setup overall:

● MOBO: Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3
● CPU: Intel Core i7 6700K 4C/8T @ 4.4GHz
● GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB Gaming-X @ 1900MHz
● CPU Cooler: BeQuiet Dark Rock 3 with Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut (Liquid Metal)
● SSD: Samsung PM961 M.2 256GB R: 2800MB/s / W: 1100MB/s
● HDD 1: Toshiba P300 7200RPM 64MB Cache 1TB
● HDD 2: Seageate SV35 7200RPM 64MB Cache 2TB
● PSU: SeaSonic X-Series 1050W 80 Plus Gold
● Monitor 1: Acer G246HL 1920x1080 60Hz
● Monitor 2: 1600x900 60Hz

Everything I've tried (without any success):

- Upgraded OS (I was using Win 7 for 6-7 years without any problems, now I wanna delete Win 10 forever...)
- Reinstalled OS (Win 10 re-installed twice, because of these and also other issues)
- Upgraded the Case (because the old one was noisy, hot and so on)
- Checked temperatures and all BIOS settings (CPU Prime95 - 60°C Max, GPU Firestrike - 70°C Max)
- Experimented with HPET
- Tried overclocking the CPU (from couple weeks runing at 4.4GHz rock-stable, ~ 10% performance gain)
- Tried overclocking the RAM (X.M.P / Manual / Manual Timings + Frequency)
- Tried running Games & Recording on the SSD
- Cleaned the OS from useless Win 10 crap, programs, background processes, startup processes, etc.
- Done dozens of experiments with all Video Settings, Encoder Settings, etc.
- Weeks of testing NVENC (GPU) & x264 (CPU) Encoders
- Tried 720p30 2000kbps at Ultrafast CPU Preset using the lowest Bilinear filter (Which is negligible for that CPU & System overall)
- Unplugged all USB Devices & Secondary Monitor, except mouse and keyboard
- Limitting the games framerate via OBS, RTSS, NVIDIA Profile Inspector, V-Sync, Free-Sync, Double, Tripple Buffering
- Removing the FPS cap / limit on all games
- Changing the Resolution, Quality & All settings on all games to the minimum
- Reinstalled most of the games
- Reinstalled OBS Studio & Tried older versions
- Reinstalled MB, Chipset, GPU & Audio Drivers and tried older versions
- Tried everything on old laptop + other PC from 2013 (Same results...)
- Probably more things that I forgot right now...

If you have any suggestions or opinions about these problems I would appreciate them very much!
Thanks in advance, have a nice day! :)

 

[alexitx]

Bump...

 

[Sasurame]

I'm having some trouble too. I've streaming normal with 80~100 FPS in League of Legends and works fluid. But I was having some issues with HD use and Blue Screen, so I've formated the OS.

And now (1 day later after format and after did a lot of tests) my fps shows 80 but looks and works like 10 FPS. Video shuttering a lot (and I don't need to be streaming, just with the OBS capturing the game screen)

I'll attach some logs here, hope that you guys can finally save me from this nightmare. :(


Also, I'll post a clip who was made before I format the pc:

https://clips.twitch.tv/HyperSleepyTroutCopyThis

-------------------------------------------------

Thanks 4 all,

Sasurame.

 

[FreeDSmittyTV]

I have this issue too. I tried fix it 6 month but have no idea how it can be fixed. In the microsoft support gave me an answer: we can help you more if you pay for it. I bought win 10 for 6.5k RUR, and get this answer...good. Now i wanna get my money back or changing my win10 for another win... And now i really know: it's issue for win 10.

 

[alexitx]

I have this issue too. I tried fix it 6 month but have no idea how it can be fixed. In the microsoft support gave me an answer: we can help you more if you pay for it. I bought win 10 for 6.5k RUR, and get this answer...good. Now i wanna get my money back or changing my win10 for another win... And now i really know: it's issue for win 10.

Well, I'm using OBS Studio from a long time ago, I had basically all these issues and even some more before any of the reformats / OS reinstalls. (I was using Windows 7 for 7-8 years without any problems)
Yeah, I'm having issues with Win 10 from quite some time, but that's whole another topic.

On these Official Forums, Reddit, Discord and eveywhere overall many different people create threads and posts every day about experiencing similar issues, problems, difficulties and so on.

This indicates clearly that not every issue is related to hardware fault / malfunction.
But nevertheless, the majority of the responses / suggestions / help states "check and verify your hardware for faults" or something like "it's probably component overheating / overloading"...
(I'm not trying to offend someone or anything like that, just expressing my opinion and thoughts about the topic overall)

 

[FreeDSmittyTV]

Well, I'm using OBS Studio from a long time ago, I had basically all these issues and even some more before any of the reformats / OS reinstalls. (I was using Windows 7 for 7-8 years without any problems)
Yeah, I'm having issues with Win 10 from quite some time, but that's whole another topic.

On these Official Forums, Reddit, Discord and eveywhere overall many different people create threads and posts every day about experiencing similar issues, problems, difficulties and so on.

This indicates clearly that not every issue is related to hardware fault / malfunction.
But nevertheless, the majority of the responses / suggestions / help states "check and verify your hardware for faults" or something like "it's probably component overheating / overloading"...
(I'm not trying to offend someone or anything like that, just expressing my opinion and thoughts about the topic overall)

Yep, they try to make us guilty...

By the way, this issue have with every capture video program like OBS (Xsplit, Bebo).

 

[alexitx]

The exact same issues are still present with no changes at all.
There were other (hardware / software) changes and tweaks since I created this thread about 6 months ago, but that has no effect on the issues and trying even more things that can potentially solve some problems doesn't lead to a solution or significant progress.

I'll provide adittional and updated information if necessary, but generally everything from the main post is still accurate and fully valid.

Also here are some other threads in which many people experience basically the same issues:
- Random stuttering in preview which goes into recorded videos. (Page 4, Post #66 has detailed explanation)
- Video lag issues but no lost frames...
- Great fps but stream looks very choppy always.
- 0 dropped frames, smooth gameplay - still x264 @ 720p 60fps is not looking smooth
- how do you actually stream at TRUE 60 fps 100% of the time?

Because in this situation nothing else can be the direct cause (Hardware, Software, OS, Driver faults, etc.) I'm thinking that the way OBS captures a game for example (providing the frame buffer to the selected encoder or copying it to the system memory in some cases like with Display Capture) or the scene composition (rendering) on the GPU maybe the cause of most of the problems...

I know that rescaling using the CPU / capturing a game with Display Capture / transferring the frame buffer from multiple GPUs in SLI and so on causes a lot of data to be transferred and thus the results are sometimes huge performance hits. So that's why I don't use and advise everyone to avoid such setups when possible, because of the inevitable issues.

So all in all regardless of whether the capturing doesn't work well with dividing framerates, consistent / inconsistent frame times, hard caps / limits and so on, the exact same tough issues are still present for me like before, and as far as I can see for other people too.

Assistance and advices are still welcome!

 

[calvin2sr]

Hi, i have the same problem. I create a post but i didnt fnd solution. Can you help me? Please

Always streaming and recording game stuttering.

Hi, i need your help. When I am streaming or when i am recording from obs, I always notice stuttering in the final result but not in game playing. I don't know what is the reason. I have tried everything. I have disable the game mode, disable preview, I have left only a main monitor 144 hz...

obsproject.com