OBSs seems to buffer and make motion kinda jittery every 30 seconds.
Hi everyone. I'm running a 2 pc setup with 2 pretty powerful pcs, but I've been having an annoying issue for as long as I can remember and just never been able to resolve it. Basically, on the 2nd PC (streaming) when ever I stream or record, in motion every 30 seconds or so the motion gets kinda jittery for like 5 seconds and the returns to normal. So if I kinda pan around in a 360 motion, it'll be smooth for 30 seconds, but then the motion just goes a bit jittery for a few seconds and then returns to smooth. I'm not missing any frames due to rendering lag, but theres a definite almost "buffering" that kinda occurs. It's the sane if I just use the 2nd PC to capture the 2nd PC gameplay rather than via the gaming PC so I know it's nothing to do with the elgato 4k X.
The streaming PC has 64gb ddr4, 5900x, rtx 3090, with everything installed on my.2 gen4 ssd's. While it's not cutting edge the cpu only gets used around 2% in the obs stats window. Would anyone know what would cause this?
The streaming PC has 64gb ddr4, 5900x, rtx 3090, with everything installed on my.2 gen4 ssd's. While it's not cutting edge the cpu only gets used around 2% in the obs stats window. Would anyone know what would cause this?
19 Replies
Are you using NDI or a capture card to send the gameplay to the capture PC?
Oh nvm I see you are
Have you tried messing with the buffer setting for the video capture device source?
You could be running into an issue with the chipset of your motherboard or something
It’s hard to diagnose stuff like this
Maybe post a sample recording and a log file
OBS Forums
Question / Help - Help me understand "Buffering" on a Video Capture...
Hello,
I want to understand the Option "Buffering" in the "Properties" dialog of a video capture device better.
I use two USB capture cards and I have to enable "Buffering" in order to get a smooth framerate out of them. If I set them to disabled or auto-detect I get micro stutters. All good...
thanks for the reply and sorry for the delay in responding. Beause I had no answer for a while, I just gave up checking. So, It doesn't matter which method I use, whether it be direct passthrough, cloning monitors on gaming pc and sending to capture card or my favourite method projecting to the capture card from gaming pc to the stream pc. I get this weird slowing every 20 seconds or so like something is trying to catch up. It doesnt appear to be any buffer setting in OBS as I've tried with 3 different capture cards (Elgato 4kx, Elgator 4k60 mk2 and Avermedia Gamer 4k). It also does it if i just capture a game on the stream pc not using the capture card. So I'm sure its gotta be something to do with pc hardware rather than capture hardware.
Odd thing is I've a pretty beefy streaming pc so maybe just chipset thing or pcie lane sharing issue. I'd have thought an x570 motherboard, NVDA 3090, 64GB Ram using m.2s would be more than enough, but gotta be something in there causing it somewhere. Maybe time for a 9000 and an x870 platform anyway.
got a gopro video here of the laggy preview window...this is worst case, never really smoothed out. Only using around 2% CPU on that OBS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rftURrBXY0
My only guess would be something like frame pacing issues being caused by running the game at an uneven multiple of the capture fps
But idk
It does look like something is interrupting the system and causing hangs
Have you tried Streamlabs or something other than OBS?
^ What he said
You should try setting the capture to 60 fps and have the monitors set to output either 60 or 120 fps
yeah its definitely smoother when I do that...but seen so many of these top streamers playing PUBG, COD ETC with uneven frames over 300fps and their streams look amazing. Yes tried streamlabs, no different...I actually went from Streamlabs to Studio because of this exact issue years ago, but it was the same so just stuck with Studio. If I watch the preview back though the Elgato software or the Avermedia software it's so much nicer. It seems like it's something to do with OBS for me, but even fresh instals don't resolve it, even putting it on different Gen4 m.2 NMVE's hasnt helped. Maybe just something in my hardware setup on that streaming machine just doesnt like OBS. Everything is updated, chipset/gpu/ motherboard bios etc. It's an annoying as hell one for sure
Gaming OLED is set to 120, obs and capture are set to 60 and most of the time i'll be pegged at 120 anyway so should be a smooth 2:1 frame delivery
Does this stutter only happen in the recordings/ streams or does it happen in the OBS preview as well
its more evident in the OBS Preview, but you can still see the stutters every 10s or so in the live stream/recording
when i match up TV, capture card and OBS recording all to 60, if i was to rotate a camera in constant 360's the moving is definitely nicer...but even so every 10s or so its like it just buffers for a few seconds and then goes back to being smooth again
GG @TonyTurbo78, you just advanced to level 9 !
honestly, this has wound me up for years and years being a creator..I've asked so many times and so many people, never gotten to the bottom of it. Bought so many different capture cards, same every time
Are you on Windows 10 or 11
Do you have Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) enabled or disabled
Are you running OBS normally or as admin
windows 11 on Gaming PC, Windows 10 on Streaming
run admin on both, but understand that admin isnt needed on Win11
gaming^
streaming ^
optimally these should be off shouldnt they?
So generally you don't want to run both as admin AND have HAGS on
For Win 10, disable HAGS and run OBS as admin
For Win 11 do the opposite, HAGS on and don't run OBS as admin
Test that out, and if the issue persists, then pull your OBS logs when the issue happens and upload to the OBS log analyzer: https://obsproject.com/tools/analyzer
Analyzer | OBS
OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers or record your own videos with high quality H264 / AAC encoding.
thanks Hunter. Just about to go live myself here. Will do that later