Single‑ and Dual‑PC Issues With OBS Recording
(I tried to keep this as short as possible, so let me know if you need more details.)
I have a dual‑PC setup and also use consoles.
On my gaming PC I use an RTX 5090 with two 1440p monitors (one at 240 Hz and another at 155 Hz, set to 120 Hz).
When recording directly on this PC, OBS recordings are not smooth at 60 FPS. They look like judder, lag, or heavy stuttering — I’m not even sure how to describe it. Some recordings stay like this the whole time, others start smooth and then randomly get choppy, even when the game is running perfectly at high FPS or locked to any FPS.
Using my two‑PC setup doesn’t help. I have two capture cards (Elgato 4K60 Pro MK.2 and 4K X). The MK.2 used to be acceptable, but after upgrading my setup nothing works properly.
On consoles (PS5) through passthrough I notice small spaced stutters, but nothing serious — on the MK.2 they happen more often than on the 4K X.
I don’t want to use cloning or passthrough because I want to take advantage of my high‑FPS PC. I did test both with matching refresh rates and other adjustments, but tearing still occurs, so those options aren’t viable.
Using OBS projector to feed the capture card works for a few seconds or minutes, then both preview and recording visually drop to around 20 FPS and become completely horrible. After a while they randomly become smooth again. Restarting the projector or disabling/re‑enabling the card doesn’t fix it.
There’s no “lag in rendering” or “encoding overload” in OBS, nothing even close to that on either PC while recording — no high usage issues.
Specs
Gaming PC:
Ryzen 9 9950X3D
5090 ROG Astral
64 GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 6000 MHz
1440p 240 Hz + 1440p 120 Hz
Capture PC:
i9‑12900KF
4060 Ti ROG Strix
32 GB XPG Lancer 5200 MHz
1080p 240 Hz
Capture Cards:
Elgato 4K60 Pro MK.2
Elgato 4K X
10 Replies
Have you tried watching your videos on a 60hz display
I did.
Tried using only my main 240hz monitor set to 60 Hz and the game locked at 60 FPS, and the recording still doesn’t even come close to what I see on the monitor.
do you have a video sample?
sorry for the delay
CAPTURE CARD OBS SOURCE PROJECTOR
https://youtu.be/3Y5sJ_0Kt0A
video smooth for a some time and then suddenly a lot of lag
MONITOR CLONING WITH 4K 60 PRO MK 2
https://youtu.be/syrSRVC66gE
screen tearing and 144hz cap, but smooth video
5090 RECORDING WITH ONE PC
https://youtu.be/8H2IKAzvG0Y
brief time of smooth footage and most of the time looks bad
Well just spot checking
1&3 have wildly varying framerates way above common 60 multiples and seem to have a bit of judder
#2 looks like silky smooth 60
yep, that’s it
Gotta frame limit
300-400 variable fps is very difficult to get even frame pacing from
The videos themselves are 60fps but the pacing between each frame that gets sampled is all over the place
Causing the lack of smoothness in perception
Different amounts of time between movements of the camera
yeah, I already knew about that pacing issue, but even after limiting the frames to 240, 120, and 60 across about 8 games I tested, the only one that gets anywhere close to decent is when limiting to 60 — and even then it’s still not as good as the video #2 from the examples.
GG @The_Horns, you just advanced to level 1 !
on the other hand, I also tried different ways of using monitor clone with the 4K X, and only in games running at 240+ fps (not all of them) the recording looks excellent. below that, there’s tearing.