• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 12:25
CEST 18:25
KST 01:25
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Serral wins HomeStory Cup 2914Serral wins Maestros of the Game 243ByuL, and the Limitations of Standard Play3Team Liquid Map Contest #22: Results and Winners7Code S Season 2 (2026): RO4 and Finals Preview12
Community News
Neeb returns to progaming; rejoins ONSYDE12Weekly Cups (July 20-26): Early returns on 5.0.16b8IntoTheTV X SOOP SC2 League : Weekly & Monthly4Clem: "I don't have that much hope in Blizzard"9ZeroSpace Early Access is Now Live!42
StarCraft 2
General
Clem: "I don't have that much hope in Blizzard" Neeb returns to progaming; rejoins ONSYDE Weekly Cups (July 20-26): Early returns on 5.0.16b Balance hotfix patch 5.0.16b (July 16) Terran or Protoss
Tourneys
RSL Revival: Season 6 - Qualifiers and Main Event PIG STY FESTIVAL 8.0! (13 - 23 August) Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament IntoTheTV X SOOP SC2 League : Weekly & Monthly INu's Battles#18 - Cure, herO, Rogue & ByuN
Strategy
[G] Having the right mentality to improve
Custom Maps
Nexus Wars 2021 GUIDE [M] (2) Industrial Park
External Content
Mutation # 536 Railroad Switch The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 535 Assembly of Vengeance Mutation # 534 Burning Evacuation
Brood War
General
BW General Discussion Making an Online Broodwar Manager Game ASL22 General Discussion screpdb: new Starcraft reporting tool ASL 22 Proposed Map Pool
Tourneys
2v2v2v2 Tournament [Megathread] Daily Proleagues Star Con San Diego 2026 Escore Tournament - Season 3
Strategy
Fighting Spirit mining rates Odyssey Mineral Stack Saturation Simple Questions, Simple Answers PvT advise for noobs
Other Games
General Games
Path of Exile ZeroSpace Early Access is Now Live! Nintendo Switch Thread Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread General RTS Discussion Thread
Dota 2
Looking for a Dota Mentor Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
TSM pausing esports and CLG Dead
Heroes of the Storm
Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Power Rank TL Mafia Community Thread NeO.D_StephenKing vs This Guy From 1 Million Dance
Community
General
Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Artificial Intelligence Thread US Politics Mega-thread European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread How to buy a book - shipping from Korea to Europe
Fan Clubs
The IdrA Fan Club The HerO Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
Anime Discussion Thread Movie Discussion! Series you have seen recently... [Req][Books] Good Fantasy/SciFi books
Sports
2024 - 2026 Football Thread 2026-27 Football Thread placeholder TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 Formula 1 Discussion MLB/Baseball 2023
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread Simple Questions Simple Answers FPS when play League Of Legend on laptop
TL Community
Northern Ireland Global Starcraft The Automated Ban List
Blogs
Games, Hormones, and "Dark" …
TrAiDoS
Hello guys!
LIN1s
ASL S22 English Commentary…
namkraft
Poker (part 2)
Nebuchad
An Exploration of th…
waywardstrategy
ramps on octagon
StaticNine
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 19267 users

OBS lowers encoded frames when I switch to SC2

Forum Index > Tech Support
Post a Reply
RyoNara
Profile Joined October 2011
Germany9 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-03-17 03:25:23
March 17 2014 03:23 GMT
#1
Hi,

I have recently upgraded my PC and finally have found some time to figure out
my stream settings. I have read on these and the OBS forums for guidance and
set up my stream accordingly - at least I believe so.

But I have a problem that is seemingly disconnected from bandwith and/or CPU usage.
If I am streaming (1600/900, 30fps) my stream looks fine, with minor stutters and/or
pixelation. Those I tribute to my amazing ~800kBit upload (thanks Germany!) and
are not the problem I want to solve here.

So stream is running fine as long as I do not have the game (SCII) in focus - as in I
have selected any other window (win7), OBS is claiming 0 dropped frames, 800kbit up
and 30 FPS. Great. CPU usage varies between 50% and 60% on the "veryfast" preset.
I can setup my windows so that I can see my, not yet focussed, SC2 fully and the OBS
FPS next to it. As soon as I click into the window - wich does not change my CPU usage
or my ingame FPS or anything that is displayed on my screen or on the resulting stream
- the FPS that OBS encodes drops to a whopping 8 FPS.

I have tried to change Bandwidth, Encoding preset, resolutions and FPS settings to all
possible extreme values - both high and low - and always hit the same result.
As soon as I switch to the game the encoded FPS drop drastically to around 8 FPS.

Now my only guess here was, that windows somehow throttles the process as soon
as it is considered in the background, but changing process priority or designating cores
does not have any significant impact too...

I am at a loss - can anyone help?

i5 4670k
8GB RAM
Windows 7

Thanks,
RyoNara
"I know you are out there. [...]" -Neo
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20342 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-03-17 08:54:02
March 17 2014 08:49 GMT
#2
Are you using Game Capture with nothing else in your sources?

CPU usage varies between 50% and 60% on the "veryfast" preset.


That's a lot, even for high resolutions

you should probably be using 2.0x resolution downscale with that limited bitrate (and ~medium preset, though you can adjust that after it works)
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
RyoNara
Profile Joined October 2011
Germany9 Posts
March 17 2014 18:57 GMT
#3
How is 50% a lot ?

Should I not aim to use way more than that while streaming and plaing? ~80% sounds like something i would aim for?

The OBS Forum is telling me, that my "terrible" graphics card is the issue - wich should not have anything to do with
the problem described. I tried XSplit today and had no such issues at all.
"I know you are out there. [...]" -Neo
R1CH
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
Netherlands10342 Posts
March 17 2014 19:02 GMT
#4
On March 17 2014 17:49 Cyro wrote:
and ~medium preset, though you can adjust that after it works

Just... no.
AdministratorTwitter: @R1CH_TL
TL+ Member
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20342 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-03-17 19:22:43
March 17 2014 19:09 GMT
#5
On March 18 2014 04:02 R1CH wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 17 2014 17:49 Cyro wrote:
and ~medium preset, though you can adjust that after it works

Just... no.


What's wrong with medium preset 800x450, 30fps on a 4670k? At least provide reasoning.

Can't really do it @1080 (5.76x the resolution) but it's pretty laughable on even a stock Haswell cpu at 720p~30fps and cutting preset from veryfast to medium actually makes significant differences to encoding quality (below that not so much, medium is the "default" of x264)

I see no problem at all with suggesting to use 800x450@30fps@veryfast and then adjusting to 800x450@30fps@medium if stuff works good. Do you see one that needs pointing out?

I know there at least used to be a lot of people wildly changing presets at inappropriate times. 1.5 or 2x downscale from 1600x900 (~17-31% of 1080p) at 30fps and medium preset should be child's play for even a stock 4670k though. I've played with Haswell a lot, they're encoding monsters.
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20342 Posts
March 17 2014 19:15 GMT
#6
How is 50% a lot ?

Should I not aim to use way more than that while streaming and plaing? ~80% sounds like something i would aim for?


It's just quite high. Spikes in CPU load are way higher than average, if it read 80% you'd often spike to 100 most likely with stuff like fast camera pans. It seemed like a bit of a weird number to me because it's way higher than what i get with higher resolutions and framerates
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
RyoNara
Profile Joined October 2011
Germany9 Posts
March 26 2014 02:09 GMT
#7
I just want to confirm that this is a OBS specific problem.

Since my post I have switched to Xsplit and do not have a comparable problem
- although I have others that I will now try to solve
"I know you are out there. [...]" -Neo
herbalshotz
Profile Joined December 2023
1 Post
December 03 2023 10:51 GMT
#8
--- Nuked ---
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
OSC
13:00
King of the Hill #257
WardiTV742
EmpressLilyy34
Liquipedia
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
ByuN 524
ProTech99
StarCraft: Brood War
Britney 36068
Calm 6586
EffOrt 912
Soma 568
Soulkey 476
Shuttle 335
Snow 279
BeSt 257
Rush 227
hero 111
[ Show more ]
Dewaltoss 109
Killer 80
Sharp 75
Hyun 61
Mind 52
ToSsGirL 45
Sexy 35
HiyA 25
Terrorterran 21
zelot 15
Shine 13
IntoTheRainbow 11
Mong 1
Dota 2
Gorgc10444
qojqva1483
Dendi1193
League of Legends
Trikslyr39
Counter-Strike
fl0m3853
x6flipin459
Other Games
FrodaN2830
singsing1602
hiko865
Mlord597
B2W.Neo559
DeMusliM329
ToD205
uThermal205
crisheroes122
XaKoH 115
QueenE66
MindelVK8
Organizations
StarCraft 2
TaKeTV 165
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
[ Show 17 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• Shameless 15
• Kozan
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• sooper7s
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Migwel
• IndyKCrew
StarCraft: Brood War
• Pr0nogo 1
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
• BSLYoutube
Dota 2
• C_a_k_e 3018
• WagamamaTV516
League of Legends
• Nemesis3889
• TFBlade429
Other Games
• Shiphtur242
Upcoming Events
Patches Events
35m
Reynor vs Solar
ByuN vs TBD
OSC
1h 5m
Replay Cast
7h 35m
Escore
17h 35m
CrankTV Team League
18h 35m
Big Brain Bouts
23h 35m
Spirit vs sOs
GgMaChine vs Percival
Serral vs MaxPax
OSC
1d 6h
Replay Cast
1d 7h
Afreeca Starleague
1d 11h
RSL Revival
1d 16h
ByuN vs SHIN
Solar vs Lambo
[ Show More ]
WardiTV Summer Champion…
1d 18h
Afreeca Starleague
2 days
RSL Revival
2 days
Clem vs Serral
herO vs Rogue
WardiTV Summer Champion…
2 days
WardiTV Weekly
3 days
Sparkling Tuna Cup
4 days
PiGosaur Cup
5 days
Replay Cast
5 days
Kung Fu Cup
5 days
Replay Cast
6 days
The PondCast
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Proleague 2026-07-29
SCTL 2026 Spring
Eternal Conflict S2 Finale

Ongoing

CSL 2026 Summer (S21)
KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 3
RSL Revival: Season 6
CranK Gathers Season 4: BW vs SC2 Team League
BLAST Bounty Summer 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer Qual
Stake Ranked Episode 3
XSE Pro League 2026
IEM Cologne Major 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 2
CS Asia Championships 2026
Asian Champions League 2026
IEM Atlanta 2026
PGL Astana 2026

Upcoming

Escore Tournament S3: W5
ASL Season 22: Qualifier #1
ASL Season 22: Qualifier #2
Acropolis #5
Escore Tournament S3: W6
Escore Tournament S3: W7
Escore Tournament S3: W8
HSC XXX
SC4ALL II: StarCraft II
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
PiG Sty Festival 8.0
Light Tournament 2026
ESL Pro League Season 24
Stake Ranked Episode 4
Logitech G Connect 2026
SL StarSeries Fall 2026
FISSURE Playground #5
BLAST Open Fall 2026
Esports World Cup 2026
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.