When OBS crashes, it takes my entire system with it

[BlazeHedgehog]

So for the last year or so, OBS has started getting very crash happy for me. It used to be very stable, but something in the last year or so has made it extremely touchy. It mostly seems to do with opening new windows: opening a new browser window, opening a game, opening whatever will cause OBS to suddenly disappear without even generating a crash report.

I've tried lots of recommended fixes. I run OBS in administrator mode now, I've checked all kinds of compatibility mode settings, and it still happens. It's been annoying, but I've been dealing with it the best I can.

This last week, a new problem has emerged: When OBS crashes like this, it hard locks all of Windows. Something inside the system seems to max out the CPU and nothing else can function. I can't bring up Windows menus to see what task needs to be killed, half the time I can't even move the mouse. One time, I got control of the system back because Chrome said a specific tab was causing the problem. Chrome forcibly closed that tab and my system was restored. But it still happens even when Chrome isn't open. And when it locks up like this, I can't even force a shut down with my system's power button; I just have to hard power-off the computer, cold.

OBS does not have to be recording or streaming. Just having OBS open, at all, period, can trigger this, even while the system is idle. I wanted to go live 20 minutes ago and OBS opened, instantly crashed, and for the first time ever, tried to generate a crash log. It said it wasn't able to generate a crash log because it said there wasn't enough space in the temp folder. But there's 40gb free on my Windows install and nearly 300gb free between my other two drives?

Windows 10 Pro (Build 19045)
Intel Core i5-4690K
16GB DDR3 RAM at 2166mhz
GeForce 1060 GTX (6GB)
OBS Studio 64bit 31.0.1.0

My normal (non-crash) OBS log is included.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

Okay, got OBS to crash without eating my entire system alive. Here's the crash log.

I dunno if I'm tech savvy enough to read this right, but it looks like Stream Elements is the thing causing the crashes?

 

[PaiSand]

The crash is caused by the streamelements plugin, which is known to break OBS.
Uninstall it via the uninstaller they provide. Now manually remove the leftover file they keep inside inside %appdata%\obs-studio\ for no real reason but this files keep interacting with OBS causing issues.
Once your done, uninstall and reinstall OBS in order to fix any other changes this plugin may have perform.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

Good to know. I had another crash tonight during a stream, but OBS kept running even with the "Oops, OBS has crashed!" error message up. Seems the sound capture plugin I'm using might have been the cause that time, but if Stream Elements is leaving cruft behind that continues to interfere with things, I'll definitely do as instructed, and if the problem persists I'll make another post after this one.

 

[koala]

Locking the whole computer means there is some kind of hardware issue. OBS and its plugins are not the reason for the crash, they're just trying to use some system function and the system crashes.

Your system is quite old and was working well before, so it's a probable cause is your hardware became defective. Check overheating (may be some fan stopped working and check dust within the computer case). Run a memory test. Run some CPU testing app, run a some GPU testing app.

 

[rockbottom]

Add to the above:

HAGS is enabled, it's known to cause crashing.

Waveform is stale, needs an update, the next version fixed some potential crashes.

Waveform - Updates

obsproject.com

Get rid of the baggage, test using a new Scene Collection, add just (1) Scene/Source.

 

[rockbottom]

Yeah, I'd kick this to the curb....
16:04:03.465: [win-capture-audio] Version 2.2.3 (74323e6)

win-capture-audio - Updates

obsproject.com

This is (as with previous releases) a beta release - use at your own risk.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

Yeah, I'd kick this to the curb....
16:04:03.465: [win-capture-audio] Version 2.2.3 (74323e6)

win-capture-audio - Updates

obsproject.com

This is (as with previous releases) a beta release - use at your own risk.

Well, is there a good alternative to this? I know OBS kind of has a version of this built in now, but it only works through window capture, I thought? As weird as it is, I prefer having a list of whitelisted executables since I don't use window capture unless I absolutely have to.

 

[rockbottom]

I not aware of any other options. You have a nice list of things to address, leave it for last. If things don't improve by the time you get down that list, it may need to go.

 

[prgmitchell]

Well, is there a good alternative to this? I know OBS kind of has a version of this built in now, but it only works through window capture, I thought? As weird as it is, I prefer having a list of whitelisted executables since I don't use window capture unless I absolutely have to.

The win-capture-audio plugin is the source on the crashes you linked, not the se.live plugin as someone else mentioned. The plugin is not maintained and hasn't been updated in years so the only fix is to remove it. I wrote a guide on the built in application audio capture source which works fine

Application Audio Capture Guide | OBS

OBS Knowledge Base. Separate your audio to have per-application audio capture sources

obsproject.com

Now as far as your entire PC crashing, that indicates there is an issue external to OBS and like a driver/hardware issue.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

I understand how OBS's built-in audio capture works and I don't like it. With Win-audio-capture, I can set up three distinct sources:

- "Guest Audio" (capturing audio from discord, such as voice chat)
- "Gameplay Audio" (from the list of games I have set up)
- "Music" (from my media player, playing from a local library of music files)

This makes it extremely easy to make sure the chain of compressors and filters and whatever else is set up fine. So, for example, when people speak (either me through my microphone or discord), it will automatically duck the music and the gameplay audio.

It's two things: the separation of being able to capture only the audio of an application and not the video, and being able to maintain a whitelist of applications to capture audio from. I slap a display capture under all my stream overlays, I add everything I plan to stream that day to the whitelist, and I don't have to think about anything for the rest of the show. I pop the game into full screen and everything just works. Or it used to.

Having to monkey around with window captures to grab audio from a single source one at a time creates clutter and hassle. And what am I supposed to do if I run into one of those games that rejects all forms of window capture? I've run into them. That's part of the reason why I lean more on display capture, because if all else fails, display capture usually works. And whatever win-audio-capture did, it never failed to grab audio from whatever I told it to, as long as it was on the list. Again: set it and forget it. A setup that was compatible with everything I could throw at it with very little fuss.

Regarding what's happening to my computer when OBS crashes, the computer itself isn't necessarily crashing, it's freezing. There is a difference. I am not getting blue screens (or any error messages at all, really) and absolutely no signs in any other software that a larger problem is emerging. It only and exclusively happens when OBS crashes, nothing else, and it is very much like something is redlining my CPU and refusing to let anything else have breathing room.

Further reinforced by the fact the system has even recovered from it, and the times it recovers from it usually involves killing something in a web browser. In the process of uninstalling and reinstalling OBS during all of this, I've even noticed that OBS demands I close Google Chrome as part of that uninstall/reinstall process, because something in Chrome is blocking the OBS installer from modifying its files. I know the browser source is Chromium, but the actual Chrome browser itself shouldn't be touching or interfering with that, right?

 

[koala]

I understand how OBS's built-in audio capture works and I don't like it. With Win-audio-capture, I can set up three distinct sources:

I don't understand what functional difference exist between an audio source created by the win-audio-capture plugin and the built in source called "Application audio capture (BETA)". It seems you're talking about the global audio sources configured in Settings > Audio. But you're able to do exactly the same as win-audio-capture with this built in source. It also handles just audio, no video. It enables you to do exactly the things you mentioned.

As far as I see, they're interchangeable and feature identical. I used the plugin myself, but when the internal source became available, I switched from win-audio-capture to the internal source, uninstalled the plugin, and everything was running as before.

About your system OS freeze: not all hardware defects result in a bluescreen. Freezing as you report can be a result as well.

Requiring Chrome to terminate while running the OBS installer can happen if something from OBS hooks into Chrome to capture video (some video source) and audio (some audio source, for example the win-audio-capture plugin) and not gracefully terminating that hook upon OBS termination.

 

[prgmitchell]

Yeah I guess the point is that whether or not you prefer the plugin doesn't really matter, it is not maintained and will not be updated so your crashes will continue as long as you have it installed.

As mentioned above though, a system freeze may be triggered by something happening in OBS but the root cause is either hardware or driver related. Something like OBS which operates in the user space cannot be the direct cause of an entire system freeze.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

I don't understand what functional difference exist between an audio source created by the win-audio-capture plugin and the built in source called "Application audio capture (BETA)". It seems you're talking about the global audio sources configured in Settings > Audio. But you're able to do exactly the same as win-audio-capture with this built in source. It also handles just audio, no video. It enables you to do exactly the things you mentioned.

As far as I see, they're interchangeable and feature identical. I used the plugin myself, but when the internal source became available, I switched from win-audio-capture to the internal source, uninstalled the plugin, and everything was running as before.

About your system OS freeze: not all hardware defects result in a bluescreen. Freezing as you report can be a result as well.

Requiring Chrome to terminate while running the OBS installer can happen if something from OBS hooks into Chrome to capture video (some video source) and audio (some audio source, for example the win-audio-capture plugin) and not gracefully terminating that hook upon OBS termination.

I guess I'll look into it more. I just have a system that works very, very easily for me. To explain how win-audio-capture works, I add that as a source and it gives me a list to add or remove applications I want to capture audio from.

And it's all managed from that one source. So every game and piece of software routes through a single source, as long as its on the list. Makes it easy to stay organized. For "Application Audio Capture (BETA)", I'd have to add a new source for every application and copy filter settings between them, or dip into OBS settings between switching games. It's not as convenient.

You folks got me looking into if there are problems lurking in this system. A "sfc /scannow" supposedly found corrupted files and repaired them, but I feel like it tells me that on every hardware configuration I've ever had and it never tells me what was repaired. I'm pretty sure I've even done it on a fresh, brand new install of Windows and it'll still tell me it found something to repair.

In truth, I have also been having very minor problems with my Elgato HD60 Pro for a long time where the Elgato software itself will claim its receiving an HDCP signal even when it's clearly not. It's never caused any problems, it's just something the Elgato software does, but now I'm wondering. Rooting around in the event viewer, I see some of these crashes/freezes are citing Audioses.dll which seems to be a generic Windows audio driver (hence why I decided to run sfc), and another crash is referencing VideoCaptureFilter.ax, which is Elgato's.

I've reinstalled my Elgato drivers for now, will continue to monitor things.

 

[koala]

I understand. The plugin source is able to store references to many different exe in the same source. As far as I see, you're mainly capturing game executables. I do use game capture for games, and the game capture source contains the option to capture audio from this game as well - that's an integrated application audio capture that refers to the game exe. So whatever that game capture source captures, it always captures video as well as audio, so I don't need multiple exe references in the same source. That's the way I use this. I remember from above you're not using game capture but instead display capture. That's not how I do it, so I cannot comment more on this.

I don't have that many different games I capture. Usually, I'm playing one or two games, then move on to new ones. Whenever I move on, I remove the previous games from the OBS config to not clutter it and to make sure the not used game references don't interfere with the current config. Keep in mind every exe you refer in any source s checked for capturing every time, and if it is never run any more, these are useless checks that just increase the OBS workload.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

Well, I'll say this. When OBS crashes, assuming I get an "OBS has crashed" pop up, I can end the task using the task manager and spare my PC the freeze. It's only if I click "OK" that everything grinds to a halt.

Not entirely sure how safe that is for my system, though.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

So I've been slowly moving away from using the win-capture-audio plugin, but now a new issue has arose: OBS's "Application Audio Capture (Beta)" isn't picking up audio from a custom piece of overlay software I've developed. I've fought with it, I've tried every option the plugin has, and OBS refuses to capture audio from it.

win-capture-audio grabs audio from it just fine, however.

 

[prgmitchell]

So I've been slowly moving away from using the win-capture-audio plugin, but now a new issue has arose: OBS's "Application Audio Capture (Beta)" isn't picking up audio from a custom piece of overlay software I've developed. I've fought with it, I've tried every option the plugin has, and OBS refuses to capture audio from it.

win-capture-audio grabs audio from it just fine, however.

The unfortunate thing here is that plugin dev has already stated they will not be maintaining/updating their plugin and it has been years.

The virtual audio cable section of this guide I wrote should be an easy work around for anything that doesn't work with the built in application audio capture source though:

Application Audio Capture Guide | OBS

OBS Knowledge Base. Separate your audio to have per-application audio capture sources

obsproject.com

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

So I'm still trying to use win-audio-capture and I'm still struggling with it. I really cannot understate how much better it is than the solution OBS has built in. You can link tutorials all you want; I understand how OBS's built in application audio capture works, and the plugin is still easier and more convenient. Until OBS matches win-audio-capture feature-for-feature, this is how it's going to be. I refuse anything less.

So much so that I've been trying other ways to diagnose things. My system still does not show any signs of other hardware problems. My Elgato sometimes thinks it's receiving an HDCP signal, but I've tracked down the source of that now (simply put: it's a side effect of the cheap splitter I'm using). Otherwise, things continue to be business as usual. And win-audio-capture still continues to cause crashes.

I even went so far as to toss bozbez $5 on his kofi, effectively begging him to update the plugin. He's still out there. He may not post here anymore, but he's not dead. He's a minorly prolific Trackmania 2 player, having a few thousand dollars in tournament winnings under his belt -- and he's competed in tournaments as recently as three months ago. He was also active on Github as recently as this week.

Of course, if he doesn't want to update the plugin, that's his choice. I respect it. I'm being a bit of a creepy stalker, but he's entitled to his own life. I'll lay off.

In the months since I started this thread, I've gone back to school, learning a little bit of coding. And it made me wonder: if his plugin is up on Github, couldn't it be forked? I even briefly wondered if I could create my own fork and somehow diagnose what was causing the issue. It was just an idle thought.

Fortunately somebody already has. There are several forks, but the one by nyakowint could be the silver bullet I'm hoping for. The releases page suggests this may be a handful of quick fixes, but bare minimum, starting and closing OBS is ten times faster with this fork installed, and so far, I haven't experienced any crashes (catastrophic or otherwise). That doesn't mean the problem is gone, I've hit stretches where OBS acts completely normal for a while, but I am crossing my fingers.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

I ran a test stream where all I did was switch between different programs, adding them to the win-capture-audio list live on stream, and in almost six hours OBS did not crash once...

...except at the very end when I tried to shut the program down after the stream was over. But that crash also did not catastrophically freeze my system.

Tentatively calling it a success. Nyakowint's fork seems to be doing the job.