Audio stopped while livestreaming but visuals continued, anyone any ideas why?

[Chris Hanna]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the world of streaming so thanks in advance for any responses! I ran a stream last week where we did a 6 hour set and the audio started looping on one track around 2 hours in and I'm unsure why as the visuals continued to stream fine, has anyone else had any similar issues? I was streaming through Restream.io to Mixcloud, Twitch, Facebook and Youtube with trippy videos and several camera angles being worked throughout. The latter three all got copyright hits but I don't think this would cause audio to loop on Mixcloud as I have a paid subscription to avoid copyright. Could it maybe have something to do with my Mac and it's RAM or CPU. The CPU usage ran at around 5-50% throughout the stream. My mac specs are MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012), Processor 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7, Ram 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3. Could it maybe be an issue with my laptop specs, or possibly from running through multiple platforms? I've spent a lot of this project and delved in at the deep end so am going to have to try everything to get it running smoothly for next months show. Any and every idea suggested is highly welcome as I'm prepared to try anything to get this going, thanks again for any suggestions! :) P.s Sorry I haven't included a log file, I ended up just uploading the audio and deleting the file as I was gutted and it took up too much space on my mac.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Realize real-time video encoding is VERY computationally demanding. and you have a 9 year old battery performance (not CPU) optimized system. So.... might an under-powered laptop be a root cause issue when combined with your OBS sources and settings? could easily be
Next steps
- decide if worth it to get a new, more powerful computer which will be more forgiving of non-optimized OS and OBS settings
- or try to get your system stable and reliable [no guarantees]
Can you laptop stream. sure. With all the cameras, pre-recorded content of various types/sources, and OBS audio and video filters/effects, at the resolution/framerate you want, etc? depends

A few months into my OBS journey, I tried a simple stream with an Intel i5-6300HQ (2.3GHz 4c/4t circa Fall 2015), 8GB RAM, SATA SSD Win 10 Home edition, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M (to enable GPU encode offload) and failed as the PC wasn't up to the task (no gaming, just alternating between USB webcam and simple pre-recorded videos, alongside a PPTx slide show window capture, streaming at 720p 30fps with no OBS effects/filters). I’ve learned a lot more about OBS since then, and I might be able to just squeak it out, but wasn’t worth it [got a new computer and didn't look back]
Others can stream at 1080p with older CPUs without a problem. but it took them time and expertise (OS and OBS) to get that to work. Do you have the time?

For commentary of which OBS settings might be causing excessive CPU load on such an old system, you'll need to post an OBS stream/recording log

 

[Chris Hanna]

Realize real-time video encoding is VERY computationally demanding. and you have a 9 year old battery (not CPU performance) optimized system. So.... might an under-powered laptop be a root cause issue when combined with your OBS sources and settings? could easily be
Next steps
- decide if worth it to get a new, more powerful computer which will be more forgiving of non-optimized OS and OBS settings
- or try to get your system stable and reliable [no guarantees]
Can you laptop stream. sure. With all the cameras, pre-recorded content of various types/sources, and OBS audio and video filters/effects, at the resolution/framerate you want, etc? depends

A few months into my OBS journey, I tried a simple stream with an Intel i5-6300HQ (2.3GHz 4c/4t circa Fall 2015), 8GB RAM, SATA SSD Win 10 Home edition, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M (to enable GPU encode offload) and failed as the PC wasn't up to the task (no gaming, just alternating between USB webcam and simple pre-recorded videos, alongside a PPTx slide show window capture, streaming at 720p 30fps with no OBS effects/filters). I’ve learned a lot more about OBS since then, and I might be able to just squeak it out, but wasn’t worth it [got a new computer and didn't look back]
Others can stream at 1080p with older CPUs without a problem. but it took them time and expertise (OS and OBS) to get that to work. Do you have the time?

For commentary of which OBS settings might be causing excessive CPU load on such an old system, you'll need to post an OBS stream/recording log

Hi

Realize real-time video encoding is VERY computationally demanding. and you have a 9 year old battery (not CPU performance) optimized system. So.... might an under-powered laptop be a root cause issue when combined with your OBS sources and settings? could easily be
Next steps
- decide if worth it to get a new, more powerful computer which will be more forgiving of non-optimized OS and OBS settings
- or try to get your system stable and reliable [no guarantees]
Can you laptop stream. sure. With all the cameras, pre-recorded content of various types/sources, and OBS audio and video filters/effects, at the resolution/framerate you want, etc? depends

A few months into my OBS journey, I tried a simple stream with an Intel i5-6300HQ (2.3GHz 4c/4t circa Fall 2015), 8GB RAM, SATA SSD Win 10 Home edition, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M (to enable GPU encode offload) and failed as the PC wasn't up to the task (no gaming, just alternating between USB webcam and simple pre-recorded videos, alongside a PPTx slide show window capture, streaming at 720p 30fps with no OBS effects/filters). I’ve learned a lot more about OBS since then, and I might be able to just squeak it out, but wasn’t worth it [got a new computer and didn't look back]
Others can stream at 1080p with older CPUs without a problem. but it took them time and expertise (OS and OBS) to get that to work. Do you have the time?

For commentary of which OBS settings might be causing excessive CPU load on such an old system, you'll need to post an OBS stream/recording log

Hi Lawrence,

Firstly thanks very much for your response, much appreciated! I ran another stream without the visual effects and just three camera angles and it ran absolutely perfectly so maybe I am just being too ambitious for my old laptop but I haven't the money to upgrade for a while unfortunately. I've not much time either juggling a 9-5 with DJing, streaming and the works is tough but I'll definitely look into the OS and OBS settings in more depth to try and get a resolution! Finally when you said about and OBS stream/recording log how would I go about this? Thanks again mate, really appreciate your advice! :)

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

As for OBS log, Per pinned post in this forum

Please post a log with your issue! Here's how...

OBS Studio creates a log file each time you run it which contains very useful diagnostic information. Without a log file, it's much harder for any support volunteers to figure out problems and your post may be ignored. To upload a log file, go to the Help menu > Log Files > Upload Last Log...

obsproject.com

Realize all modern Operating Systems (OS) have lots of Eye-candy, which is demanding on CPU, RAM, etc. So.. when trying to maximize performance of an old system, turning off features meant for newer, more powerful systems, can help. But your mileage will vary as to what is important to you, and the impact certain effects/features will have. Some folks care more about aesthetics, others for functionality (form vs function). Using OBS is probably one of the most demanding tasks you'll as your computer to perform.
If some of the performance optimization aren't to your liking, you may want to learn some of your OS optimization settings/options, and configure your system to bulk turn them on/off as needed (ie turn off eye-candy, unnecessary background processes, etc when using OBS, and turn those things back on when done with OBS). Can this be done on a Mac? absolutely. Can I explain how? no .. sorry, I'm not a MacOS subject matter expert.

Another option you would have, would be to use something like Atem Mini or similar, ie a external processing box that all your source video feeds into, and only a single video stream feed to OBS computer. Why? as processing multiple webcam video is probably a key driving performance impact item. The simpler/cheaper route (I think, I haven't done this myself) is to button-press on the Atem to select video channels (ie, you aren't doing camera selection in OBS). I may have read there is a programmatic way to use OBS to send signal to control box to select video input. but I'll let others comment on such details, or let you do your own research. And I think there are ways to set up buttons on the external Atem Mini (or streambox, or similar), that can control OBS. The consideration is you are already doing something (DJing) and you need to consider how many interfaces you have to interact with

 

[Chris Hanna]

As for OBS log, Per pinned post in this forum

Please post a log with your issue! Here's how...

OBS Studio creates a log file each time you run it which contains very useful diagnostic information. Without a log file, it's much harder for any support volunteers to figure out problems and your post may be ignored. To upload a log file, go to the Help menu > Log Files > Upload Last Log...

obsproject.com

Realize all modern Operating Systems (OS) have lots of Eye-candy, which is demanding on CPU, RAM, etc. So.. when trying to maximize performance of an old system, turning off features meant for newer, more powerful systems, can help. But your mileage will vary as to what is important to you, and the impact certain effects/features will have. Some folks care more about aesthetics, others for functionality (form vs function). Using OBS is probably one of the most demanding tasks you'll as your computer to perform.
If some of the performance optimization aren't to your liking, you may want to learn some of your OS optimization settings/options, and configure your system to bulk turn them on/off as needed (ie turn off eye-candy, unnecessary background processes, etc when using OBS, and turn those things back on when done with OBS). Can this be done on a Mac? absolutely. Can I explain how? no .. sorry, I'm not a MacOS subject matter expert.

Another option you would have, would be to use something like Atem Mini or similar, ie a external processing box that all your source video feeds into, and only a single video stream feed to OBS computer. Why? as processing multiple webcam video is probably a key driving performance impact item. The simpler/cheaper route (I think, I haven't done this myself) is to button-press on the Atem to select video channels (ie, you aren't doing camera selection in OBS). I may have read there is a programmatic way to use OBS to send signal to control box to select video input. but I'll let others comment on such details, or let you do your own research. And I think there are ways to set up buttons on the external Atem Mini (or streambox, or similar), that can control OBS. The consideration is you are already doing something (DJing) and you need to consider how many interfaces you have to interact with

Thanks so much mate, I've been looking more into it from your previous post and once again thanks so much for taking the time to give me all that advice! I'll be running a load of test streams and will alter everything during and after each on what is giving me the best results. One of my projects is a back to back DJ stream so the external processor could be a great idea for that, bit harder when I'm doing solo streams but will definitely work on it! You've given me more than enough to get on and do my own research, I just couldn't find a good entry point as to what to begin working on but you've definitely given me that, thanks again mate you're a legend, take care! :)