OBS dropping 2/3s of frames, but only on YouTube.

[T1GlistenerElf]

First of all, thank you in advance for your help.

Four hours into a stream on YouTube, OBS began dropping around 65.8% of frames. At the time, I didn't know what it was, and so I tried the ever-so-tech-savvy tactic of turning it off and on again, both for OBS and by restarting my computer. I then made sure that OBS, Windows Update, and Alienware Update are all up-to-date, and it persisted. I am currently connected via ethernet, and I have not adjusted my firewall settings, though I cannot rule out an automatic update during the stream.

However, in testing unlisted streams today, I found that I could stream smoothly to Twitch, at least in Bandwidth Test Mode, but going back to YouTube did not work, neither for the primary nor the backup YouTube ingest servers, including the legacy RTMP. Given all of the people streaming the Elden Ring DLC right now, I'm fairly certain that it's something on my end and not on YouTube's.

The first attached log file is for my most recent stream, which had the issue for the whole time. The second is the one in which the issue initially arose. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions that you might have.

 

[T1GlistenerElf]

In case the comparison helps, I have also attached the log file for a test stream on Twitch (Bandwidth Test Mode.) Please let me know if there is anything else that you might need from me.

 

[T1GlistenerElf]

As a quick update, I just tried using the free versions of both Restream and StreamlabsOBS (with the latter carrying settings over from vanilla OBS,) and both were able to stream smoothly to YouTube. It would seem that the issue is with OBS, and specifically while it is sending to YouTube, or at least not to Twitch for the Bandwidth Test Mode.
If you need for me to clarify anything regarding this, then please let me know.

 

[PaiSand]

Normally you only need one game capture. In case you need more than one for specific settings on a given game you should use it on another scene specific for this game. Most games are capture without any issues using the game capture method as is.
It's similar with window capture, where you add it as needed.
Why? OBS starts capturing and keeps trying to capture with each capture source you add. And this could end with multiple captures of the same game abusing of the precious resources.

Remove all this clutter and make it simple.

Also:

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.

obsproject.com

For some cases you may also want to create a totally new scene collection to avoid anything that may cause issues on the every day scene collection, reducing even more the resources used.

 

[T1GlistenerElf]

That's good to know, PaiSand. Thank you.

However, I was able to fix my issue by reverting back to the latest version of OBS 29 (i.e. 29.1.3). To be clear, I tried it on an older version of OBS 30, specifically 30.1, and it had the same issue. Now, OBS works on both YouTube and Twitch, with 0.0% dropped frames. Using an older version is just a temporary solution, I'm sure, and in the case of future updates, I'll make an unlisted stream to see if the issue comes back before I actually go live.

I don't know how to pass this along to the devs for OBS, but it might be something into which they could take a look, since it did end up being this version of OBS itself that was the problem. I'd be happy to provide whatever other log files, etc. that I can to help out so that this doesn't happen to anyone else.