Help: Random slowdowns in recorded gameplay videos?

[Whateverchan]

Hello,

 

I've been using OBS to record my gameplay videos. The game itself runs fine, but in the recorded footage, there will be at least one instance in which the video shows that the game slowed down for a second or so, then returned to normal again. FPS counter shows no frame drop, and I swear I did not notice any slowdown when I played the game. At first, I thought this was an OBS issue. But upon further testing, using NVIDIA and Xsplit, they both showed the same problem, only perhaps at different time interval.

 

You can see it here (OBS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uElf22L8FAs

Slowdowns most obvious at 1:10, 5:02, and Heihachi's final round. Easiest way for me to test is to play Fireman's stage. It's a guarantee that the slowdown will occur at the boss room, either during the door sequence or during the boss fight. It's like the game slowed down or dropped some FPS for a second, but it surely didn't. Tried testing with different settings, resolutions (720, 1080, 4k), configurations (CQP or VBR or simple), software (Shadowplay or Xsplit), ran as admin, and quit Malwarebytes in the background. Hell, I even put 300,000 for bitrate and it still did nothing better. Basically, whatever tricks or tips I could find, I tried them all. This is clearly an issue with using any recording software. Question is: what could have caused this?

 

System: 1660 Super, 3600 Ryzen, 16GB Ram, 1920x1080p monitor, 60fps 1080p output. I know my rig is capable of recording even 4k. Someone with this exact same build uploads 4k videos on Youtube, but just with a different recording program. Tried asking in other places but got no response. I really have no one and nowhere else to go to ask. Hope someone here can help me.

 

Thanks in advance for any replies!

[Forbidden Wafer]

Video seems fine to me. ._.

Only noticed slowdowns caused by damage and transitions between stage parts.

[Whateverchan]

45 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

Video seems fine to me. ._.

Only noticed slowdowns caused by damage and transitions between stage parts.

 

Well that's the problem right there. Those slowdowns were never present during gameplay and shouldn't be in the video at all.

[Forbidden Wafer]

Do you have free sync or vsync? Maybe that is why you didn't notice, but it's just speculation. It does look OK for me. Seems part of the game.

[Whateverchan]

Yeah, I do have Vsync on. I think I once tested without Vsync and the game ran worse, not sure about the video or if I was recording at all. But still, surely people record and play games with Vsync on, no? It's puzzling to me that other people record just fine but I have this strange problem.

 

And it will be noticeably annoying to see many instances of this in a long video.

[Forbidden Wafer]

I'm not sure if it should impact anything, just speculating.

 

Never tried recording/streaming game sessions, so I'm not sure what could be the case. Never had problems with desktop recording, but it is far less taxing on GPU and CPU.

[Whateverchan]

Frames missed due to rendering lag: 1

Frames missed due to encoding lag: 1 (sometimes 0)

 

Surely the problem lies here... But CPU usage is always lower than 1%?

[LogicalDrm]

Are you recording on SSD or HDD? If you are using so high bitrate that your storage can't keep up, that can be the reason too.

[Whateverchan]

I don't have HDD. Both of my drives are SSD.

[LogicalDrm]

19 hours ago, Whateverchan said:

I don't have HDD. Both of my drives are SSD.

Well, there's some bottleneck which gets effected when there's more happening on screen. What about pagefile? Or have you monitored system usage while recording?

[Whateverchan]

@LogicalDrmSystem usage is only about a few percent last time I checked in task manager. OBS's stats say CPU usage is less than 1%. Not sure what's correct but it shouldn't be too much.

 

More information: I tried another program called Mirillis Action, and it recorded both games smoothly, at 60fps and VBR. So at least there's a program out there that can record without hiccups. Problem is that this is a paid program and its layout and functions are not as customizable as OBS.

 

Now, back to OBS. I decided to turn preview on and play the game from there, just to see how it's like. I was able to see when the slowdowns occurred. Normally, I would just play the game then watch the recording and wait until I see a slowdown. I don't know if this means anything or not, just saying.

 

Curious, I switched to 59.94fps for video output, and Mega Man ran perfectly fine, no more slowdowns, at least not so far I haven't encountered any. However, Tekken 3 still had those choppy instances, as if some frame rates were dropped while playing. I already disabled preview, by the way. I did keep my eyes on the in-game fps counter, it never exceeded 59.94 or 60. Really confused at how these things are supposed to work... Tested with fractional fps values, too. 60/1 and 120/2, still got slowdowns in Mega Man. Integer fps value is probably the same, anyway. So, 59.94 seems to work for one game, but couldn't help the other. Not sure how the other games will be. 

 

Any idea what I should do next?

 

[Whateverchan]

OK. Update:

I went into NVIDIA control panel and set the max limit frame rate for OBS, PS1, and PSP to 60, then set the common fps in OBS back to 60 again. Miraculously, Mega Man doesn't have slowdowns anymore. But Tekken still has hiccups. I still have yet to test the other modern games, like Vanquish or DB Fighter. Not sure how this worked, but, welp, it worked, at least for now. Ah, I also switched to VBR, 60k to 300k.

 

Also took screenshots of the task manager's performance.

 

I think this was after I watched a recording. Not sure what that spike is...

 

And this is when I was still recording another Tekken video.

 

 

I don't know if the other games will be like this or not. Let's hope not. Do I have to set the max frame rate for everything in NVIDIA control panel?

 

Update again: I just recorded a gameplay video of DB FighterZ with no lag! Everything ran smooth at max settings! So, this is clearly an issue between OBS and emulators. There's no way my computer can handle a modern game and not some old games. Well... at least the problem is not as bad as I thought.