Capture card frame stutters - not the card or software, what else could it be?

[Fullmental]

Hi, I'm trying to track down the source of some intermittent frame stutters on my capture card. When recording 1080p60 content, the recording will occasionally act like it's dropping frames, even though the capture or streaming software reports no such thing. It's hard to describe, but it's like the content goes from 60fps down to 30-40 for a fraction of a second before picking back up again. This is not present on the actual content being captured - it is running at a locked 60fps and I don't see the same stutters or slowdowns while playing via passthrough.

 

I was convinced that it was my capture card or a USB issue, so much so that I ditched my old usb-connected elgato hd60s and bought an elgato 4k60 pro mk2 pcie card. Except, the problem still occurred. I returned that card and bought an avermedia gc573, another 4k pcie capture card, thinking maybe it was just bad drivers from elgato. No dice.

 

This stuttering occurs whether I use OBS Studio, elgato's 4k capture utility, avermedia's RECentral 4, even Xsplit Broadcaster. The stutters will happen both in x.264 software and Nvidia's nvenc encoders, and no adjustments in quality settings seem to make any difference whatsoever. It seems whatever issue I am having is not specific to the capture card or the software, so I'm at a loss what else it could be. Any ideas?

 

My system:

 

3900X

32GB RAM

Nvidia gtx 1070

Avermedia Live Gamer 4K GC573 card

750w psu

[Scarftail]

I have the exact same problem. Unfortunately, I'm not certain what the problem is either, but I noticed two things. First, when I set my power settings to Power Saver as opposed to Balanced or High Performance, the stutter was significantly reduced (albeit still there). Second, I noticed that when I was capturing off of a Live Gamer Extreme on a Surface Pro, these issues didn't reproduce. So clearly, something about the hardware isn't playing nice with the capture card. I initially thought one of my parts was too slow, but that evidently isn't the case. It's some sort of compatibility or power management issue. I assume it's either the CPU or motherboard.

[fatmatrow]

Were you ever able to find a solution to this, I've been going thru the same thing on 2 systems

[jibbitjay]

On 10/7/2020 at 9:57 AM, SJP176 said:

I've been actually discussing my problem with other people here (although still mostly with myself!):

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/ill-pay-£300-to-anyone-who-solves-this-problem-for-me-intermittent-video-stuttering.131223/

I just recently bought a zasluke 4k capture card and want to record from my macbook. While on my macbook the picture looks „fluent“ in obs i get stuttering every 2 second. My pc is strong enough i have an i5-10600k with 32gb ram and a rtx 2080super im thinking if that is a goddamn win10 issue and maybe works in win7 ? since so many people seem to have that problem... could you ever solve this issue man ? 

[Mithandir]

Hi guys. I want to help you exposing my case, because i almost become mad trying to solve this issue.

I also had the video/sound Stuttering with my elGato HD 60 PRO.

 

The tricky thing is that 3 weeks ago, my elGato capture card worked fine in my Setup (more than 1 year working fine). But due to some problems on my PC and changing my graphic card i had to reset my BIOS to default settings.

Sooo. i configured again my BIOS, enable the XMP profile for my 3200Mhz RAM, doing my Overclock ect...

And when i recived my RTX 3070... the capture card didin´t work fine... with all this stuttering shit.

 

I tried all. Reinstalling elGato Capture software, reinstalling drivers, trying OBS, use low requirements for the recordings (bitrate, fps, resolution ect...)

Nothing of this worked. So i Though that the problem was in Windows or in the hardware... But, how could be the hardware? because 3 weeks ago my capture card worked fine with the same hardware except the new graphic card...

 

So after trying several things i noticed that the problem was that, the capture card was unable to have stable fps in the preview screen, for the recording.

If you press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + D in the prefiew screen, in the elGato Capture HD Software, you can see an advanced Overlay, that shows the fps in the in/out/mix signal and the bitrate. In my case, i had 15-25 unstable fps maybe less, in a configuration for 30 or 60 fps.

It doesn´t matter if i changed parameters for the quality of the recording (fps/resolution/bitrate), nothing solved my problem.

 

So, finaly i found the solution that worked for me. The problem was the RAM frecuency... The capture card doesn´t work stable at 3200Mhz, i had to lower the frecuency to 2933Mhz (trial & error, or follow the recomendation configuration from your BIoS), until the preview screen in elGato Capture HD software show the stable 60 fps in the overlay advance parameters. Of course I did a test video, capturing a short gameplay from my Nintendo Switch, and both, recording and playback were working fine again.

 

I hope, you try this solution if you didn´t find any solution or explanation to these Stuttering shit. I hope it can be of some help for you, and that my English is quite understandable.

Cheers!!

 

My Setup

-Motherboard: Asus Z170A

-CPU: Intel i7 6700K

-RAM: GSKILL Trident Z 3200Mhz 14-14-14-34

-GPU: RTX 3070

-Capture Card: elGato HD60 PRO

-SSD: Samsung 850 EVO

-OS: Windows 10